Stars of Charon (Legacy of the Thar'esh Book 1) (22 page)

“Who are
you?” I asked.

“We are
on what is left of Kalaedia’s moon,” he continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “Eons
ago, this small moon collided with a comet. The moon was cracked, and the
pieces were sent into a wide orbit. The remains of the comet shattered and the
eons turned them into dust while Kalaedia’s gravity shepherded them into rings.
The Collective built this place, and ended up surrendering it to us some years
ago in a border dispute. Travel six jumps in any direction and you will not
find a sight as beautiful. The Collective was sorry to lose it. But, such is
the price of peace: sometimes we must surrender the things we admire to save
the things we cherish.”

At last
he looked up at me, the skin on his forehead was flakey and dry. Unlike most of
the Celestrials I had met, his eyes were grey and dull with the exception of a
few slivers of silver that seemed to explode from the deep black of his irises
like the flares of a sun behind an eclipse. My silence didn’t seem to bother
him.

He leaned
forward, regarding me intently.

“Eli, you
are called,” he continued. “Or Elicio, but nothing more. No family name.
Curious. Serana, that is to say, the Matron, says she does not know who you
are, and that her pilot friend said only that he picked you up on the colony
with Ju-lin. And ah, yes. Ju-lin. I had a, how shall I say, spirited conversation
with her earlier.”

He paused
as he studied my reaction, I tried to bury my surge of anger.

“The
funny thing about the spirited ones: those whose passions burn hottest are also
the most brittle and easy to crack.”

“What do
you want?” I asked.

“But you,
you’re not on fire,” he reached up and peeled off a flaked piece of skin from
his forehead and gently set the remains on the table. “You are reserved. Well,
more reserved than the girl. That makes you interesting to me. There is such
variety in humans. I find it fascinating. Take the natives of Olster for
instance. Did you know that all native Olsterians cannot discern the color
green from blue? Two hundred and six years ago when Olster was first discovered
by the Domari Collective the penultimate technological achievement was a
two-masted sailing ship. And today? Nearly all of the best freighters in the
Collective are designed and built by Olsterians. Though they still can’t tell
green from blue.”

He
stopped again, and adjusted the collar of his shirt.

“You have
learned what the Collegiate stands for? Serana described us as historians I
believe? That is a simple and, I will say, inelegant description. We are so
much more than that. You see, Earthborn historians record and preserve records
of the past. You work to rediscover what you have lost, found, and lost again.
It is a perpetual cycle, you find a coin, you forget where you left it, you
stumble back over it years later and say ‘Oh my! Look at this coin!’ You’re
like children. It happens over and over again. An endless cycle of rediscovery.
It’s really quite absurd when you look at it.”

He picked
another flake of skin off his head, he set it neatly next to the last.

“An
acolyte of the Collegiate does not gather history,” he continued. “We are
Celestrial. History is not some distant ephemeral thing. We have lived it. It
is the Collegiate’s duty to discern which books should be written, which books
should be forgotten, and which books should be burned.”

“Why am I
here?” my hand was starting to shake, I took a breath to calm myself.

“Yes,
well, impatience is one of the most base of all human traits. I shall answer
your questions. I am called Alume. Like the Matron, it is a title, not a name.
I have a position of trust within the Collegiate, a position of power. And I
will use that power to do what must be done. You are here because you know
things that I must know. I want you to answer my questions fully and
completely.”

“Or?”

“Or?” he
sighed. “I will not lower myself to base and simple threats. I’m sure the famed
Earthborn imagination can fill in the blanks of what I may do with you or your
pretty young friend if you prove to be unresponsive or uncooperative. But
really, details aside, this all comes down to a simple thing: you will tell me
what I want to know.”

“What do
you want to know?” I asked without hesitation. I felt the burning fear and
uncertainty in my stomach dissipate, replaced by simple resolve. Alume knew
about the drone, he had been responsible for sending the fighters to attack the
colony. I was confident he knew more than I did. Maybe
I
could learn
something from
him
.

Alume
paused, blinked, and reasserted his gaze.

“Rational
thought? How unusual for an Earthborn,” he tapped his fingertips against the
table. “I want to know what happened to the ships I sent to the colony.”

“The
Draugari destroyed them,” I answered briskly, seeing no harm in telling him the
truth. “Two Draugari Slires and a pirated Carrack came in behind your ships as
they were making a bombing run over an innocent and unarmed colony.”

“You saw
this?”

“Ju-lin
and I saw the first one of your ships destroyed,” I answered. “After that I saw
them exchanging fire with the Slires. I didn’t see the second of your ships
destroyed, but I heard the Draugari celebrate when they destroyed the third.”

“You
heard them?”

“Yes, we
were taken prisoner aboard the Carrack,” I replied.

“And then
you escaped?”

“They
underestimated us,” I said as nonchalantly as I could. “We took over the ship
ourselves, but it was too damaged. So we crashed it on the surface.”

He
stopped a moment, pondering what I’d said.

“Ju-lin
didn’t tell you anything.” I said slowly.

“No,” he
scratched his chin. “No, as I said, the high spirited burn brightly but flame
out quickly. Her flame is still bright.”

“So that
is what happened to your ships,” I said. “The Draugari destroyed them.”

“And it
leads me to only more questions.” My statement had roused him. “How did the
Draugari defeat my pilots? What were the Draugari doing there?”

“Your
pilots were too distracted with the mission you sent them on,” I answered
confidently. “They were busy firing the plasma drone into the cave and bombing
an undefended colony. Maybe they forgot to check their scans?”

Alume’s
forehead wrinkled as he stopped to study my eyes. “Plasma drone,” Alume leaned
forward.

I
stopped, studying him in return. I couldn’t tell if it was a question or a
statement. His eyes widened slightly.

“Go on,”
he pressed.

I leaned
back in my chair as my mind raced. Ju-lin and I had assumed that the plasma
drone that had incinerated the cavern had come from the Celestrial ships, but
we hadn’t seen it launched. I had assumed Alume had given the order. Was it
possible that it wasn’t launched by the Celestrials? If not, could it have been
the Draugari? I delved into Lor’ten’s memories. I saw that night through the
eyes of the Draugari: I saw the deck of the Carrack as it and the Slires used
the clouds to mask their approach, closing in on the unsuspecting Celestrial
fighters. I felt the rush of the chase, the thrill of first blood as the first
fighter disintegrated into fire. No, I was certain that the Draugari hadn’t
launch the drone. If the Celestrials hadn’t either—

“Please
continue” his voice changed. “This, plasma drone I ordered destroyed the cave
successfully then?”

“Yes,” I
said quietly.

He tapped
his fingertips rapidly against the table. “You don’t think the Draugari raiders
fired it? I can see that in your eyes. How intriguing. And the cavern and the
symbols were destroyed then?”

He knows.
My mind raced. He knows what the symbols meant, or at least, he would know how
to read them. I thought back to the memory card stashed away back on
Tons-o-Fun
.
Part of me wished I had it with me now to show him so that then, maybe, he
could tell me what they meant.

“Do you
know what was in the cave?” Though I was fighting back my anticipation, my
voice faltered.

He
blinked slowly and stretched out his fingers flat on the table and then curled
his left hand into a fist and studied it for a moment.

“Know?”
He said finally. “No, I can’t say I know what it was. But my people have our
suspicions, and our suspicions lead us to our beliefs.”

“And what
part of these suspicions led you to ordering your pilots to attack a
defenseless human colony in the dead of night?”

“Suspicions
are powerful,” he snapped back. “Suspicions led your colonists to send the
messenger drone, and to keep the symbols on the wall a secret. Suspicions
brought the Draugari out of the darkness.”

“So what
do you suspect?” I asked.

“That
your little planet holds secrets and stories,” he stood up sharply. “That that
is a book that should not be written, or even forgotten. The planet holds a
book that should be burned.”

His
serene demeanor had slipped, and for a moment, I saw that the Celestrial’s cool
and even calm covered a deep seated rage. Loid was right, though they may seem
stoic, the Celestrial were a people full of passion, and Alume in particular,
was full of fear and hate.

He walked
over to the window and looked out at Kalaedia and her rings. He was shorter
than the other Celestrials I had met, and he was bent over with age. After a
long moment, he turned back toward me.

“The
symbols,” he said. “You saw them.”

“Yes,” I
answered. “Only briefly, we were only there a few moments before the drone flew
into the cavern and we had to leave.”

“Can you
describe them?” Alume asked. “Were they lines like letters? Mathematical
formulas? Pictographs?”

“I do not
know,” I answered.

“No, no,
now that is a lie.” he shook his head slightly. “Now is the time where you need
to decide what it is you admire, and what it is you cherish. The things we
admire are things that we enjoy, but can live without. The things we cherish
are the shining few things that give us the strength and purpose to exist. 
Your friend, the girl. An Earthborn would say she is pretty I think. Yes? And
young, surely she is young.”

I shifted
in my seat.

“You will
tell me what you know, or she will find pain. She will not die, but she will
live with agony. You are not simple, I can see that clearly enough. Even though
you are nothing but a child, I think that, perhaps, you may have already
experienced the darker side of life. Yes? Do you want her to experience it as
well? And, more profoundly, do you want to be the cause of her misery?”

I felt
rage within me, a rage I didn’t know existed. My fists clenched as my mind went
back to the Draugari blades in the display case on the wall. I pictured myself
taking them and cutting Alume apart, limb from limb. I fought down the urge,
trying to remain calm, remain quiet and think clearly.

“Take my
lamp there on the desk. The lamp is one of my favorite pieces. It’s an original
Earth artifact that I purchased from a Domari trader some years ago. The story
goes that it once belonged to the Earthborn queen of some long dissolved
country, if you will believe it. I know, sometimes it’s difficult to believe
what a Domari trader tells you, but the experts I consulted say that it could
be true. Whether it’s true or not, the fact is that I like it. I like the look of
it, slender neck and ornate, yet elegant design. But what is it to me? It is an
object of beauty, and an object of use. But it is not an object of necessity.
Though I may never find another lamp quite like this one, I can always find
another lamp. I admire it, yes. But cherish? No.”

I bit my
cheek, the pain helped me to fight off my rage.

“So Eli,
is she something you admire? Or is she something you cherish?”

I was
silent, searching for a response as I fought back my fear.

“I admire
her for her fire,” Alume said slowly. “But she means nothing to me next to the
things I cherish. My people. My culture. If I must, I will destroy her. Slowly,
and completely. So, Eli, tell me what I want to know. I think you will, because
I think she may be a thing you cherish.”

My mind
whirled. Alume had ordered the colony to be bombed, I had no doubt that he was
capable of torture. Though I was fairly certain that, whether I cooperated or
not, torture would be the inevitable end. Perhaps if I shared at least some of
what I knew, I could get a passing glimpse at the truth.

“Circles,”
I said at last.

“So easy
to break,” Alume clicked his tongue. “So like your Earthborn kin. What kind of
circles?”

“Two
circles,” I answered. “They were full of symbols and patterns.”

“They
were full of symbols?” he asked. “As in the symbols were on the inside of the
circle, rather than the exterior? You are certain?”

I nodded
in assent. He was surprised. It meant something.

He pulled
a tablet from his desk and hastily typed a message. When he was done he tossed
it back across the desk. Alume turned once again to look out the window. After
several minutes of silence, he said something in his native tongue. It was
flowing, rhythmic, and beautiful.