Saints of the Void: Atypical (2 page)

She had a husky voice
and a vowel-chewing southwestern accent, so most of what she said
sounded
nice whether it was or
not.

"I did explain, as
muc
h as I could,” Dastou told
her.

“A story ending in ‘I
don’t really know’ does
not
count as an
explanation.”

“Yet that’s all I
have,” Dastou said, accompanying his words with a matching
open-palm hand motion. “You know me well enough to be sure I
wouldn’t hide things this dangerous or critical. I honestly have no
clue why I had to go to Silverline Sharp. By the black, I haven’t
been there in years, since before the Academy even
opened.”

“
When you and your
mentor were the last ones left?”

“Essentially… yes,”
confirmed Dastou. He decided to hide the not quite ‘critical’
information about Silverline Sharp’s importance to him. Saan-Hu
didn’t need to be told about his personal life before the Academy.
“I'm fine, though. It wasn't as big of a risk as it sounded
like."

"I honestly wish you
were not
'fine
.' Maybe a broken
rib, a concussion, getting blinded in one eye. Something to remind
you that you can no longer do this type of thing. Something more
than just a headache."

She was actually
turning a little red from anger. Saan was good at keeping her
composure, but this time she was having difficulty not laying into
Dastou – even if he was her commanding officer and leader. She
moved a step forward and grabbed the wheeled instrument table from
next to him, moved it to the washing area, and began placing the
used tools into their designated cleaning or recycling containers.
She spoke without looking back towards her patient.

"Your people, they did
this kind of act often. It was something they were famous for. That
occasional daredevil mentality. But, sir... you are the last. And
our headmaster."

Dastou took in and
exhaled a deep breath.
"I
know, I know. I won't do it again if it can be helped. I haven't
pulled something like this since my mentor died. But there was
something at that location I had to see again.”

"And you say you have no
active knowledge as to what that something is or was?"

"I think... it was
footsteps. There were none there when I arrived, not from people
anyway. But I think
my
search had to do with
a person. A man standing very still. A citizen. Watching.
Smiling."

The last word left
Dastou's lips with unplanned anger. He now also realized that he
was looking down as he tried to remember his vague reason to be at
that damn cliff, and when he looked up again Saan-Hu was staring at
him. He told only his mentor about the tragedy that happened at
that location, and that grey-bearded hard-ass was long dead. His
administrator's fear for him was about taking deadly risks when he
was the spearhead of something very important, something she cared
for deeply since being recruited.

He stopped pushing the
ice pack to his temple and tossed it lightly at Saan. She caught
the bag with one hand, barely moving any other part of her
body.

"My headache is pretty much
gone. You can recycle that."

She dropped it into the
proper receptacle as Dastou dropped off the exam bed. He stretched
his back and neck, and cracked his knuckles.

“
Seeing as how we had
to leave as soon as I arrived,” said Dastou, “I never asked what
happened while I was gone.”

“If you mean the scholastically,
nothing much, sir,” she responded, much calmer now
that she’s on a subject she understands. “The third-years almost
all passed their exams. A new record by both percentage and capita.
Your decision to do
early, pre-test
releases for unsatisfactory scores
or
conduct paid
dividends.”

“
Were there any
surprises in the ones we figured would fail?”

“No. The
easterners failed the portion on metallurgy since you changed it
last month, just as you expected. I scheduled a field test for next
week, which they should for the most part be able to sail
through.”

“Alright, then.
I’ll have to take a look at my new test phases and make sure
nothing is discriminatory
against easterners when we get
back
. Thank you,
Saan.”

He grabbed his leather
jacket from the peg hook next to the doorway just as the remaining
member of their skeleton crew came to visit.

"Is this because of the
new nickname?" asked Nes from the doorway, leaning casually against
the jamb, hands in pockets.

The young man
wore a freshly pressed, e
xpertly
-tailored dress uniform. His lightly tanned skin tone and
shoulder length, lightly curled brown hair always made Saan-Hu look
like she spent her life in a dungeon. Nes' badge, a slightly larger
one than standard fare to go with his fancier-than-normal attire,
said "
C
orporal
Nesembraci Jaydef, DSF."

"What new nickname?"
asked Dastou as he put on his jacket.

"They've been
calling you 'The Castor Wolf' for a little while now
,”
responded Nes. “
You didn't
know?"

"I don't exactly
track what people call me these days. Being the headmaster of a
school isn't exciting enough for me to get interesting pseudonyms
anymore
.” His jacket was on, and he fiddled with it to make
it fit perfectly.

"Yeah, last
year's 'Educator of the Void' was pretty bad
,” said Nes.
“
I did like 'Grey Principal,'
though."

The latter nickname was a reference to the eye color
of all Saints and members of their entourages. Dastou's eyes were a
pure, bright, and unsullied by tint, while Saan and Nes' were
grey-blue and grey-dark green, respectively.

"I'll admit," said Dastou, "I liked Grey Principal,
too. Castor Wolf doesn't make any sense. What, where, or who is
Castor and why am I it’s wolf?"

"Who knows," said Nes, dismissing a topic he had
broached to begin with using a wave of his arm, then letting the
loose hand rest on his hip. He tended to be physically emotive.
"You alright, though?"

Nes had asked Dastou, sure, but looked at Saan
instead, an eyebrow raised. The administrator had been eyeing their
exchange, and took the hint to answer the question herself. "He is
going to be just fine. Unfortunately. Nothing more than a headache
and a pain in my rear end."

Nes squinted at
the near use of foul language by the clean-spoken Saan, then looked
at Dastou again. "
Fantastic
," the corporal said. "I checked the navigation pane on the
way here, and we're twenty minutes out. The delay in leaving the
city due to your... ahem... absence, will get us there barely in
time."

"
That’s
good
," said Dastou. "Let's get
to my office and have a quick lunch. Saan, make sure our software
is ready to go before we arrive. The new code I had put in by a
student team a few days ago hasn't been checked on."

"Hmph.
Because
you
were
supposed to do that," Saan-Hu elaborated. "And went missing.
Sir."

"Basically. Let's
go," said Dastou, and walked into the hallway with Nes.

“Bullshit,” cried Nes. Apparently the story didn’t
satisfy him.

“What?” Dastou asked, pretending to be dumbfounded at
his disbelief. “That’s what happened, all of it.”

“That can’t be it, there has to be more. You’re
telling me you just
‘woke up’
one day, got found, renamed,
and became a Saint?”

Ever since Nes was recruited away from civilian life
three years ago, he became insistent that the origin story of how
his boss became a Saint be told, as if it was anything special.

They were eating as Dastou talked, using the
hand-made, dark-brown wooden office desk as a table. Their routine
of moving the phone and lamp aside before setting food down was
well-practiced from previous meal time chats, yet Nes had never
appeared more impatient than while waiting for his friend to start
this narrative. The story had been told over lunch in the Caravan
office while the pair waited to be summoned for their appointment,
which was now an almost an hour overdue despite having arrived just
barely on schedule.

He expected: Behold and be regaled! The account of a
Saint’s ascendance as told by the Castor Wolf himself!

He received: A five-minute bedtime story. A
boring
one.

To sum up, Dastou was a ten-year-old boy, lost and
crying in the rain after a Social Cypher – a mass-hypnotic event.
He was found by his would-be mentor and two others, got renamed…
and that was basically it. He became a member of the Sainthood that
very evening, with no pomp whatsoever.

The corporal sighed when Dastou, instead of adding to
the yarn, mocked his lunch date by very deliberately taking a
forkful of good beef from his stew, putting it in his mouth, and
chewing slowly. Nes stared at him for a good quarter-minute before
realizing there really would be nothing more.

“Weak-eyes...” he cursed, using a derogatory term for
civilians that he knows Dastou hates. “You’re a Saint, not the I.T.
guy. There
has
to be more.”

Nes looked right into Dastou’s eyes and waited again.
The young agent’s own eyes were grey-green, a typical deviation for
a DSF soldier, and they always saw right through the Saint’s pure
grey, which had changed within a year of being renamed on the rainy
street. This time, there was nothing to see.

Dastou finished chewing, swallowed, and then gently
wiped at the corner of his mouth with a cloth napkin, all with the
patience of someone trying to irritate a good friend. Grinning, he
said one word: “Nope.”

Nes threw up his hands and sighed again in an
exaggerated gesture of aggravation. He turned in his swiveling
chair, starting a full circle, his ash-brown hair swaying. He did
the swaying thing on purpose, as he was a little obsessed with his
hair and wrongly thought the shaven-headed Dastou was jealous.
Admittedly, it
was
a fantastic set of locks.

The young corporal eyed the library spread out before
him in the substantial office space as he turned in his seat. Six
deep shelves on six book cases on the side walls, hundreds of
books, all written by Saints. They were in chronological order and
only a fraction of the full set, the rest relegated to a depository
in their home city of Davranis. Dastou’s eight contributions so far
were to the right, in the middle of the final shelf, with his name
in bright silver leaf against the vermillion-colored leather
bindings. The bottom three shelves on that bookcase were empty, and
he wondered when he would have time to once again fully dedicate
himself to research and writing.

The huge window behind the desk, tall enough to reach
from the floor to the five meter high ceiling and replace the rear
wall, was letting in the late morning sun. The Saint turned his
head to glance outside. Months ago, when Dastou was asked what
space he wanted for the Caravan’s moor, he kept his request simple:
“I want to be able to see people.” Today, the first time he was
able to come here, he happily looked out on a busy downtown street.
Scores of people went about their daily routines, with apartment
and office buildings between eight and fifteen stories taking up
the view above the crowds. It was a modest but attractive skyline.
The embassy they were currently docked in was surrounded by a ring
road, allowing traffic to easily get around the structure.

Dastou looked back toward the office space. The
sunlight made the metal leaf by-lines on the bindings of every book
in the room shimmer; the effect was almost mesmerizing. All the
covers were leather for the sake of protection, but the dyes and
leafing for the names were different for every author. Saints
created the dye colors along with the combination of materials
needed for imprinting the writer’s name in a unique way. That level
of personalization and detailing was almost pointless until
recently, as only the members of Sainthood or connected entourages
ever even knew of the library’s existence. This subsection of books
was placed here, where Dastou attends to his administrative duties,
as a reminder of the proud and philanthropic collection of beings
of which he is the only living member.

“Dastou...” Nes said quietly as he finished the
three-hundred-and-sixty degree adventure on the chair, “there’s
more. Maybe you don’t realize it, but there is. Like... how did the
other Saints know to come get you when you’d awakened?”

“No idea. It just happens, like some animal instinct
leading us some place. That instinct is... gone now.”

Dastou didn’t like to think of how he was the last
Saint, the final nail in the coffin. Those thoughts never led to a
positive disposition, that’s for certain.

“Don’t get dour on me,” said Nes, perfectly aware of
his friend’s mood. “The Saints could very well come back. We don’t
even know how they really started, or why. We don’t know what comes
next.”

“No we don’t, which is why we need the DSF to be as
good as they can be until we
do
know more,” replied Dastou
as an obvious change of topic.

“Blah, blah, blah, grandpa. I don’t want to hear it.
I didn’t study and I’d do it again,” said Nes after rolling his
eyes dismissively.

They were both twenty-six, but the corporal had
gotten into the habit of insulting Dastou’s age due to his role as
a leader. Truthfully, the Saint doesn’t allow himself to act like a
young man would since he oversees operations for an ever-growing,
complex organization – one that he conceived of and created. He’s
also worshipped as a god by many people around the world; that kind
of attention ages you a bit.