ONE
When I clocked into my execution shift this afternoon, I was thinking about how happy I was.
I’d had a fantastic morning. Woke up to a double ration of scrambled eggs seasoned with real planet-grown moon pepper, a reward for six months of exceptional service. Ran into Neve and Simon at breakfast and let them each take a few bites, making them promise in return that they’d score me some real coffee the next time they went down from orbit. Then we spent a few leisurely hours together, playing cards. When I got to my desk at one, there was a note from Darius tucked beneath my lunch rations, thanking me for covering his last morning shift when he was hungover, inviting me to the ship’s bar tonight so he could buy me a drink.
Three days before my twenty-fifth birthday, I was feeling like I’d finally found a life I loved.
The shift started easily enough. I double-checked all my entries from yesterday for spelling errors and translation mistakes. There were three entries: one propagandist from Planet Eight and two revolutionary soldiers from Planet Two.
The Planet Two revolutionaries, Erit and Tirit, were the most interesting. They’d chosen to use their time with me to justify their actions. They explained how their land had changed since the Silver Empire’s companies had come to grow cash crops there: with the forests of their childhood cleared, the rivers had flooded their banks and changed course, the rich soil had thinned to dust and eroded away, the rains had grown infrequent until drought choked their village last winter and claimed a dozen lives. Reading the testimonies over now, I still shivered at the visceral images they’d evoked. What an addition to the archives.
With everything proofread, I encrypted the files and sent them to storage. I wrote up a little report recommending that imperial companies on Planet Two investigate their farming practices for possible areas of improvement. Then I sat back and gazed out my office’s little window, where Planet Nineteen was visible below us.
I like Planet Nineteen. It’s a small planet, temperate, not over-industrialized, and the Moonbeam has been orbiting it for nearly a year now without any large-scale conflict. That’s a long time for a military enforcement ship. But who’s going to trouble us here? All the Silver Empire wants from Planet Nineteen is access to their mountain springs, where we’ve discovered some volatile bacteria that turns water into highly combustible jet fuel when heated. And all they want are some basic assurances about trade rights. It hasn’t been hard keeping the few malcontents in line.
So I was surprised when I checked my updated list of the condemned and saw someone from Planet Nineteen had been added. Usually other ships bring prisoners to us from far away. This was our first home-grown rebel.
I checked the condemned’s file. Stranger and stranger; it was a ninety-six-year-old woman. X377 was her designation. She’d been labeled no danger of violence, so what had she done to warrant execution?
Naturally I was thrilled when I received her request to speak with me. I approved it right away. The door to the tunnel that led from the brig slid open, awaiting her arrival.
When she appeared, she was even smaller than I’d expected. A bent woman beneath a grubby blue robe, face swathed in wrinkles. She stumbled on her last step into the room, and I stood to catch her arm before she fell. I steadied her, shocked at how light she was.
She looked up at me. Her eyes were clear and dark as the sky. Her teeth gleamed when she smiled. “Thank you, dear.”
She spoke the Planet Nineteen common language, Tseren, so I followed suit. “Would you like some food? Water?”
“Thank you.” Her smile widened. “My, you wear our tongue well.”
“It’s my job.” I pressed a button and a glass of water appeared, then a soft bread roll. She took the bread, but didn’t touch the water.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Athara.”
I reached for a pen and paper. I always record my interviews longhand; it feels less clinical that way. “Well, Athara, you can talk to me about anything here. You can make any confessions, share any regrets, or give justifications for your actions. Everything you say is faithfully recorded, but nothing can be used as evidence against you or anyone else. The records won’t be released for seventy-five years. So, this is your chance to share your story with future generations.”
She swallowed the last bite of bread, dark eyes glowing. “I haven’t come to share anything with future generations.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“I’ve come to deliver a prophecy.”
I almost dropped my pen with excitement. I’d heard there were old religious orders in the mountains of Planet Nineteen that claimed to see the future, but they were secretive, and I hardly ever went planetside anyway; I’d never thought I would get a chance to meet one.
“You’re a prophetess?” I breathed. “A real one?”
She nodded, and suddenly it all made sense. No danger of violence, because the danger that religious orders posed to the Silver Empire didn’t come from violence. It came from words. From what they could cause the rest of their planets to believe.
“Go on,” I said eagerly. “What’s your prophecy for the archives?”
“Not for the archives, Tyren. For you.”
That’s when my skin prickled and turned cold. When my pen, which had felt hot in my fingers, itching to write, seemed to freeze over the paper. I stared at her, openmouthed; I couldn’t bring myself to ask how she knew my name.
She drew closer, still with the same smile on her face. My mind wandered back to the button on my touchpad, which I was supposed to press if a prisoner got rowdy. It would re-magnetize their cuffs, forcing them together and restraining the prisoner until enforcement arrived. Part of the excellence of my six months of service had been that I’d never needed to use it; I always managed to calm and placate the condemned in my care. But now, though Athara was calm, her steps slow, I felt the urge to press it and stop her coming any closer. I might have, if I wasn’t frozen.
“I have come,” Athara said, “to tell you how you will die.”
Goosebumps rose on my arms, crept up my neck, prickled over my scalp.
“I was condemned because I foresaw the Silver Empire crumbling,” she said. “I saw the fate of eventual ruin befalling every other member of this starship. But you, Tyren, are destined for a different death.”
She took another step toward me, and suddenly despite her stature, with her standing and me sitting, it felt like she was towering over me.
“You will die with molten silver poured into your eyes,” she said.
I can’t even begin to explain my reaction. Thinking back on it now, surely she was playing some kind of mind game with me. Trying to frighten me with the same death she’ll be facing in two days. How do I even really know she’s a prophetess? Do I even believe in prophecies? But at that moment, my eyes locked on hers, I swear I felt dread seep straight down to my marrow. I swear my heart started frantically thumping, expanding through my chest and up my throat, like it was fighting to unfreeze my blood.
“It will be a slow death,” she said. “Of course, you’ll go blind first. Then the silver will melt your skin and fuse with it. If any runs down your throat, it may choke you before you burn to death.”
“Stop,” I whispered. I was picturing it.
“But otherwise it’s likely the steam that will kill you. Though you know all this already, I suppose; you’re probably quite familiar with the procedure.”
“No,” I said, a little louder. “Stop it.”
“I’m almost finished.” She leaned toward me. I leaned away, hand fumbling backward for the button that would restrain her.
“I’m warning you,” I said.
“You, Tyren of Zyrr, will die laughing.”
My hand hovered over the button. My breath was coming fast and shallow. Athara stood perfectly still.
“What?” I said.
She stepped back. “My prophecy is delivered. If you would be so kind as to return me to my cell.”
There was a moment where I wanted to question her further. To ignore the last of my professional ethics, to not accept her request for dismissal, to turn this interview into an interrogation. I was desperate for her to tell me more. Silver in my eyes, skin burning, laughing. The picture made no sense. And I still had no idea how she knew my name or where I was from. She hadn’t even said Planet Five; she’d said Zyrr, and how did an old religious recluse from this backwater planet know Planet Five’s geography?
But I got hold of myself. I cleared my throat and sat up straighter in my chair. “Well… thank you, Athara. Like I said, your final testimony will be faithfully recorded.”
“I’m sure it will.” She smiled her widest smile yet. “I’m sure.”
The door back to the brig slid open. She turned and stepped onto it, sure-footed this time. I stared after her as she made her slow, careful way down the passage.
So. How could I go back to my good mood after that?
I typed up a sparing report, translating Athara’s words from Tseren to Solar Common. I tried not to dwell on the question of whether recording a prophecy of me being executed as a traitor was a bad idea; no one’s supposed to read these archives except the ones who encrypt them. Not that someone with sufficient authority would be refused if they went snooping around, but why should they? And why should it matter anyway? Everyone knows I’m a loyal servant to the Silver Empire.
The rest of my shift passed by without any visits. Those uneventful hours are usually serene, a time to watch the stars spin by outside my window and daydream, but today the hours crept by like slugs. I would have killed for a distraction. Instead, I couldn’t take my mind off Athara’s face.
Dinner was soup with synthetic beef, another of my favorites, and I could barely taste it. I downed it too fast, burning my tongue. Neve and Simon joined me, chatting about their afternoon going planetside; I couldn’t keep my attention on what they said. By the time I reached the bar to join Darius for that drink, the world felt wrongly shaped, out of tune.
Darius was already seated at the smooth gray bar surface when I arrived, guarding the stool beside him from the influx of off-shift ship workers, and his face lit up when he saw me. Darius is a round-faced, round-bellied guy whose uniform is always a little rumpled. Just looking at him is enough to get most people to like him. As I hurried over to claim the stool, I tried to shake off my discomfort and focus on him.
“Tyren, man, how are you?” he said, slapping me on the back. “I already ordered us the special. Chocolate mint beer.”
“Hey, Darius.” I grabbed a handful of crackers from a bowl in the center of the bar. They tasted like glue.
“How was the shift?”
“Oh, crazy as usual. What’d you do today?”
“Went down to the climate simulator. And, man, I found a couple of rats down there. Big fat Planet Nineteen rats, nibbling on the flowers. We’ve been orbiting this place for too long.”
“Hey, don’t say that,” I said. “I like Planet Nineteen.”
“Don’t get me wrong, they’re a fascinating culture, plenty to study,” he said, taking our beers from the bartender and passing mine to me. “And it’s nice to have a quiet place to do our work. But this ship’s going to go native if we stay here another year.”
“Like you wouldn’t be going planetside every day if the captain would approve your research project.”
“That’s work!” He held up his hands.
“Yeah, and you like their lemon bread.”
“Well, sure, but –”
“And the coffee, and the spices, and the silk…”
“I’m not made of stone!”
I laughed and lifted my beer; we toasted.
The drink went down smooth and blurred the edges of the world. I watched Darius talk about Planet Nineteen rats and cakes and culture and I thought again about how lucky I was, to have coworkers I liked this much, people to drink and laugh with at the end of a well-paid work day, muscles not screaming, eyes not leaden with exhaustion.
I thought about my teenage years doing grunt work on the silver mines of Planet Five. Three billion miles from that system’s sun, clad in a cheap, flimsy temp suit that only kept you warm if you never stopped shivering, not daring to stand still for more than five seconds over a fourteen-hour shift for fear of losing fingers and toes. Living for two hundred and fifty milliliters of thin oatmeal at dawn and dusk. And now here I was, living like this. I had so much to be grateful for.
But the thought didn’t sink in. I drained the rest of my beer too quickly.
“Want another one?” asked Darius. “It was good, right?”
“Sure, yeah.” I didn’t remember what it tasted like.
“So, what are you up to tonight?”
I considered it. “Want to do a round of combat training? If I lose I’ll buy you back these drinks.” Darius and I don’t really need combat training, being the Moonbeam’s resident academics, but training is practically a social activity here.
“Love to, man,” said Darius, “but I have to work at nine.”
I took my second chocolate-mint beer from the bartender. “Hmm. Isn’t there a holo-show down on the lower levels tonight? Maybe I’ll go to that.”
“That show closed a week ago.”
“What?” I blinked. “How did I miss it?”
“I don’t know. What were you doing last week?”
I couldn’t remember. I took a long gulp of the beer, trying to quell an inexplicable rising panic. My heart was thundering in my throat again, like it had before with Athara. Was I supposed to have seen that show? No, but I’d vaguely wanted to, had made a mental note to get to it before it closed. What had I been doing every evening instead? Just getting drinks and going to bed?
“They’ll have another holo-show up within six months,” said Darius, shrugging. “If you want to see it, let’s make a plan with Neve and Simon.”
“Sure,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck, pressing hard on the first vertebra of my spine to try and calm myself down. “Sure.”
“You all right?”
I stared down at the bar and took a deep breath. “Yeah, yeah. I’m fine.”
It felt like only minutes later that the eight fifty-five shift-change bell sounded, and Darius had to go.
I went down to the combat training room myself for a little while. I was the only one there, a spot of light in the cavernous dark training room. I got a personal record with the stun blaster; I cheered, but the cheer sounded hollow in the emptiness. For a moment, with the sound still echoing off the back walls, I imagined how I might look to someone outside the Moonbeam, how depressing I’d seem practicing combat alone in the dark.
I don’t know why I’m talking like this. Writing it all down, I sound insane. How did Athara manage to screw with my head this badly? Today should have been a great day. It was a great day. I got a personal record in combat training, I saw my friends, I got those moon-pepper eggs as a reward for excellent service. And I made a never-before-seen addition to the archives. A real live prophecy from Planet Nineteen. And I’m looking ahead to eight or nine hours of sleep, if I want it.
I’m happy.
TWO
I had the nightmare last night. I haven’t had it in years, but I should have known it would come back after yesterday. Shit, I forgot how it sends my whole body into fight-or-flight, even when I’m awake, even when I’ve spent hours repeating to myself it’s not real.
When I took my first job for the Silver Empire on Planet Five, I learned about the traitor’s punishment right away. And almost immediately after I learned, I started having a recurring nightmare, twice or three times a week, of it happening to me. I couldn’t believe how lifelike the dream was; I would wake up still feeling the ropes around my wrists, tightening as I thrashed back and forth, and the squealing, skin-dissolving burn of the silver in my eye sockets, turning my eyes to runny white yolks dribbling down blackened cheeks, and the steam choking out my ability to scream, to breathe, so my lungs burned for air even as I prayed to die.
When I started moving up the ranks on Planet Five, when I started to get glowing reviews from my supervisors, the dream receded. During my years studying history and archival science on Planet One, I got a voucher to see a therapist, who gave me advice on how to manage it. She explained I was experiencing a disorder called displaced empathy, my mind trying ill-advisedly to empathize with the Silver Empire’s enemies. The cure was as simple as doing daily reality checks, reminding myself that I was a friend to the empire, that the traitor’s punishment had nothing to do with me. It worked; by the time I started this job, I could face five to six people sentenced to silver execution in a single shift without batting an eye.
And it was a relief to know the disorder had a name. Before, I used to wake up from each dream worried it had a darker significance, worried I was having subversive thoughts. I told my therapist about that, and she cautioned me never to let my mind go down that road. I’m a loyal servant to the empire, and I can be sure of that.
But last night the dream came back. I woke at three in the morning, sweat burning on my neck. I wanted to throw open a window and gulp in the freezing air of Planet Five, but I couldn’t, of course. I pressed the button to open my bedroom window onto the climate simulator – quite the privilege, that window – but it just sent a mild breeze in. I lay flat on my back and tried to calm my racing heart with the therapist’s grounding exercises.
I’m safe, I thought. I’m safe. The Silver Empire is my home.
It didn’t work as well as it usually does.
At my next shift, I got two new testimonies. The first was stone-faced, spitting his last confession at me despite all my attempts to ingratiate myself and get him talking. The second, though, I could tell would be the worst kind the minute I opened the door for him.
He flung himself to his knees immediately. His eyes were bloodshot, his face white.
“Please,” he said, “please, you’re the only one they’ll let me talk to. I’m innocent.”
I wrote his appearance down slowly on my notepad. Reluctantly, I noted down the accent with which he spoke Solar Common, which marked him inescapably as Zyrri. But I didn’t dredge up my mother tongue to reply; he’d begun the conversation in Solar Common, so I’d continue it. “What’s your name?”
“Finn, sir, I’m Finn.” He rose and scrambled toward me, then knelt again by the foot of my chair. “Will you listen? I’m no threat to the empire, I swear. I was only trying to protect my friend. I didn’t know he was smuggling imperial goods. I would never put the Silver Empire at risk.”
“I…” I wrung my fingers together, hesitating to write down what he said. “You know I’m just an archivist, right? What you tell me, it doesn’t go anywhere. It doesn’t change your sentence.”
He looked up at me, face twisted, uncomprehending.
“It’s for historians,” I said helplessly.
“But… but you can talk to the captain, can’t you?” He held his arms out to me, pleading. “You can tell him what I said.”
“That’s not…”
“I’ll do whatever work you want. I’ll go back to Planet Five and work in the mines for the rest of my life. Put me on half-rations, I don’t care, just not the silver, please, please!” He lurched forward and grabbed the hem of my pants. His hands were shaking badly. He hiccupped as if smothering tears.
My stomach churned again. I didn’t remember what I’d eaten for lunch, but suddenly I felt like I’d eaten far too much; it felt dangerous to open my mouth. Displaced empathy was rearing its head again.
“Listen,” I said desperately. “Don’t – don’t come any closer.”
He stilled. His eyes rose slowly, a growing, frightening look of recognition in them. Too late, I realized I’d let my own accent slip through. His mouth formed around a Zyrri phrase. “My brother, you can’t let them –”
“Get off!” I kicked him. I’d never gotten physical with a prisoner before, not ever. He stumbled back, and I managed to mash the button that snapped his cuffs together. He cried out and tried to wrench them apart. I put my face in my hands.
Within sixty seconds, two guards had emerged from the tunnel and dragged him backward, struggling, sobbing.
The door shut and left me in silence.
I held my head in my hands for a long time. I was trying to calm my rioting thoughts, to banish the image of his panicked expression. It was nothing I hadn’t seen before. Usually I kept calm, usually I could talk them down, usually I didn’t remember their faces at all once they’d left. But his eyes wouldn’t leave me any more than Athara’s eyes.
And then the eyes of those others, the dozens I’d watched plead with me for their lives over the past six months, came back to me one after another. Perfectly preserved; a nightmare parade. All those eyes filled with molten silver. Then, finally, my own.
I spun around in my chair and vomited.
The captain’s voice came in over the intercom. “Tyren, are you there?”
I hauled myself up, trembling, and pressed the button. My voice was weak. “Hey, boss.”
“I noticed you use the restraint button. What happened? Are you all right?”
“I…” I shook myself. I tried to dredge up the words I’m fine. But then, unexpectedly, nausea rose up in me again, and I had to lean away from the intercom to be sick.
“Is that you?” The captain sounded shocked.
I made an inarticulate affirmative noise.
“I think you’d better take the rest of the day off. I’ll call Darius to cover your shift.”
I didn’t have the strength to argue. One of the ship nurses came and ushered me out, took me to a sick bay and gave me a fizzy drink for my stomach. Another little luxury. Back in the mines on Planet Five, if you were too sick to finish a shift, you had to go back to your bunk and sleep it off without dinner.
But I felt the nausea passing the second I was out of that room. Half an hour later I was discharged from the sick bay, and I found myself facing a free afternoon.
The reality checks hadn’t worked, but my therapist had recommended plenty of other treatments too. I took a trip down to the climate simulator.
The climate simulator is like nowhere I’ve ever really lived. A warm garden with a perpetual soft breeze, an idyllic blue sky dotted with pure-white clouds, a smooth carpet of grass, bunches of flowers in every color imaginable. It feels like a taste of paradise. I lay there basking in synthetic sunlight, which felt warm and real on my skin, and I tried to think soothing thoughts.
I thought about my mother. The soft, coal-scented folds of her skirt, where I used to warm myself late in the evenings when I was little. Her hand smoothing back the hair from my forehead, melting away clusters of snowflakes. Her arms around my waist, holding me up to the window to watch the sun rise over the tundra.
I tried to imagine her saying you’re safe, Tyren, I won’t let anything hurt you. But the more I pictured her, the more the memory of her death loomed over everything else. The way her cheeks had hollowed, her skin sagged, her lips turned gray. How she refused to eat by the end. She always said the fish in the lake didn’t taste the same since the mines had sprung up on the other side.
My therapist told me never to think about that. She said it would lead to self-blame, but I knew it might lead somewhere else, too, to the blind resentment I’d felt at fourteen, to the fury that had almost driven me out of my mind, that had almost made me try to
I shouldn’t even write that down.
The climate simulator wasn’t working. I thought about going to the gym for some exercise, but I didn’t feel motivated enough; I paced fast through the ship’s halls instead. It pushed my heart rate higher, but it was still more soothing than sitting still.
I visited the training room, then the cavernous empty space where they’d put on the holo-show until last week, and finally the cafeteria. Neve and Simon were there playing cards.
“Hey, Tyren!” Simon called. “You’re not at work today?”
“Nah,” I said, standing in the doorway.
“Well, want to come planetside with us? We just got our latest assignment. Some religious fanatics are spreading the word about that prophetess we took aboard.”
“If we get rid of them quick, we can stop by a marketplace before we come back,” said Neve. “Get some of that coffee you wanted.”
I stared at them for too long. They looked back at me, waiting. I thought about accompanying them, like I had dozens of times before, and staying inside the transport while they dealt with the fanatics. They’d shoot some and leave the rest bloody and beaten, thoroughly warned. Then we could ride together to a marketplace for coffee.
Suddenly the nightmare vision returned, and their faces were looming over me, lit in shifting orange as though by flame, grinning maniacal grins.
“Nah,” I said, and raced away.
There was only one place I was positive I shouldn’t go to make myself feel better. So, naturally, it was where I ended up.
“Captain,” I said through the intercom. I stood over the desk in my office, Darius seated beside me.
“Tyren?”
“Listen, I need to talk to prisoner X377 again.” I searched my mind for a good reason. “I… when I encrypted her testimony this morning, I already wasn’t feeling well. I just realized there are some pretty big gaps in the translation. We spoke in Tseren, you know, Planet Nineteen’s language, so I had to translate.”
“All right.” The captain sounded bemused, like he always did when I brought up something academic, but he wasn’t suspicious. “I’m giving you access to her cell now. It’s cell 12.”
The door to the brig slid open. I stared down it, and goosebumps rose on my arms again.
I’d never been down the prisoners’ corridor before. It was cramped and smelled acidic. My shoes made no noise on the floor; the whole place dampened sound. I took quick, purposeful steps. The ceiling seemed to lean down close to me, like it was watching my progress. The temperature increased by degrees the farther along I went. Somewhere ahead of me, silver was being boiled even now. I shuddered and clutched my arms around myself. By the time I reached cell 12, a windowless bunker-like room, I was fighting to keep my breathing steady.
Athara lay on a foam pallet on the floor, eyes serenely shut. She looked far more relaxed than I’d felt in the climate simulator.
“Get up,” I snapped.
She opened her eyes. Still smiling, she replied in flawless Solar Common. “So, we’ve abandoned civility, have we?”
“You did something to me yesterday.”
“Oh, really?” She sat up and rested her chin on one hand.
“Don’t play games with me. I can make your last days alive a lot more miserable than they already are.” I hardly knew what I was saying. I didn’t even know if it was true; I’d never even thought to wonder if I had the authority to hurt prisoners. That wasn’t supposed to be my job.
“Tyren of Zyrr, from one traitor to another, let’s not waste each other’s time,” Athara said.
My fists clenched. “I am not a traitor!”
“Now, now, there’s no need to get defensive.”
“Why are you doing this? What has the empire ever done to you, anyway? We treat Planet Nineteen well. We’ve given you modern technology. All we want is the bacteria in your mountain springs, which you don’t even use –”
“Who says we don’t use them?” said Athara. “Those springs are sacred.”
If I’d been in my right mind I would have asked what she meant. It sounded like an opportunity to learn more about the religious beliefs of Planet Nineteen. But I wasn’t thinking of the archives or the history books; I was shaking with fear. “So what? Planet Five had sacred places, before the mines. The religions survived without them. Yours will, too.”
“I don’t doubt it.” Her teeth gleamed.
“You… you should be a lot more afraid of me.” I tried to put some of the authority of the Silver Empire into my tone.
Her tone was mild. “But you aren’t going to hurt me.”
“Really?” I folded my arms. “You can predict that, now, too?”
“Yes.” She stood, leaning against the wall for balance; her eyes never left my face. “You’re going to try to help me escape.”
I laughed. It sounded brittle and forced. My fingers dug into the skin of my arms. “You’re crazy.”
“You’ll have to do it before noon tomorrow,” she said. “That’s when I face the silver.”
I stared at her. She stared right back, utterly calm, unshakable. Then, with nightmare vision, I saw her tied to the machine, knees cemented to the ground, arms spread, head tipped back as though in prayer, the white-hot silver steaming as it poured into her eyes. And her glowing with some terrifying inner light.
I forced myself back, around, toward the door.
“I’ll be waiting,” Athara called after me.
That word, waiting, followed me down the corridor. It followed me through the ship, echoing off every surface. I didn’t stop hearing it at dinner, when Neve and Simon and Darius and I all sat together, Neve and Simon sharing out the delicacies they’d picked up from a Planet Nineteen market, Darius gushing about Planet Nineteen’s pastry-making methods, which were the most intricate he’d ever seen. My head ached by evening; Darius invited me for a round of combat training, but I declined. I came straight back to bed.
I’m afraid to fall asleep. I know what I’ll dream about. Shit, I need to go back to that therapist, I need to figure out what’s wrong with me. When I was a teenager I would have killed for this much sleep, this many friends, this much ease; why can’t I enjoy it? Why the hell can’t I just be happy?
THREE
It’s ten in the morning; today’s the day Athara will die. At three, when I woke up in a burning sweat again, I finally thought of something to calm me down. So I spent the morning down in archival storage.
It’s the most beautiful place on the ship. Massive towering shelves, temperature-controlled and softly lit, housing over twenty million distinct hard drives. Each drive contains the equivalent of a ten-volume encyclopedia, on topics ranging from the Silver Empire’s military history to culinary practices on Planet Twelve. Technology changes fast, but these files are built to last for centuries.
I found the Planet Nineteen section, which has been growing the fastest. I found a file marked Prophets and pulled it out. When I gave my credentials, it pulled up two holographic image windows and a wall of text, explaining everything we knew about the planet’s elusive mountain religion.
I spent hours down there, sitting in an armchair with the hard drive on my lap, reading. I learned how, when the Silver Empire first made contact with Planet Nineteen, its inhabitants said their prophets had foretold the arrival of men from the sky. When the imperial scouts asked if they could meet these prophets, they’d been rebuffed; apparently, no one should go to the prophets uninvited. They had to wait for the prophets to come to them.
Some explorers tried to forge their own way up the mountains. The journey was harrowing, beset with winds and snow and false trails, but eventually they found a set of caves that were watered by springs and lit by luminous bacteria. That was the bacteria they’d later learn was good for combustible jet fuel. They stayed there for a few days before deciding to retrace their steps. They journeyed back down, staying a few nights in a village. Then, one morning, they woke to the news that a prophet had arrived; an old man, bent, clad in a blue robe. He went straight up to the scouts, laid his hands on their shoulders, and informed them that the water they’d drunk from the mountain springs would sicken and kill them. It did, not even twenty-four hours later.
I learned that prophets on Planet Nineteen often came down from the mountains to predict trouble. Athara herself was mentioned a couple of times; she predicted a bad harvest one year and warned a dozen villages to save up their grain, then, during a year of plenty, she warned them about a parasite they’d need to guard against. Among some village elders, she was considered a kind of harvest spirit, providing guidance against starvation.
She was a kind woman, I learned. She made toys for children out of acorns and sticks. She accepted invitations into people’s homes and at their tables. No one could have foreseen this gentle soul would one day descend the mountain foretelling a bloody revolt.
Reading through all of it, I remembered why I do this work. If not for the historians of the Silver Empire, how could a library like this exist? How could such a massive collection of knowledge, spanning nineteen planets and seven solar systems, reaching centuries into the past and maybe thousands of years into the future, ever have been compiled?
And these libraries help the planets. Like how I heard Erit and Tirit’s stories from Planet Two and recommended an investigation into the farming there. Athara’s prophecies, dangerous as they are, can be helpful too in this form. They can remind the Silver Empire to be open-minded and concerned with their people’s welfare. To not overlook the rich history and culture of a planet like Planet Nineteen, just because they’re small and easily conquered.
In fact, Athara is a compelling enough character that I’m thinking about writing a biography of her. It has all the bestseller potential a budding young academic could wish for. The setting, a brand-new planet most people in the empire have never seen; the subject, a mysterious religious order that claims to see the future; the protagonist, a kindly, eccentric, courageous old woman who dies at the end. I’d have to anonymize everything to keep from compromising the secrecy of her final testimony, but that’s easy. This kind of project could really help make the empire a better place, more compassionate, more understanding.
It could help me, too, if it takes off. It could set me on a path to acclaim and fortune. And isn’t that worth celebrating too? That a nobody like me from the bare tundras of Planet Five has come this far, and might become the author of an interplanetary bestseller? The power of the Silver Empire makes that kind of thing possible.
So, sure, the empire destroys. It levels forests, it poisons lakes, sometimes it kills kind and gentle people. But you have to weigh that against all the good it does. You can’t just blindly hate it. You can’t try to fight it either; anyway, you’d never win against it in a million years. But if you embrace it, if you let it change you, you have the chance to
Fuck’s sake, I sound so stupid.
FOUR
I went to go get her out.
It was forty-five minutes before the scheduled time of her execution. It should have been harder to get in there. But the captain didn’t suspect a thing; I spouted off more crap about testimony I needed from her, and he gave me clearance right away. I strode down the hall, sweating bullets, sure I could feel the heat of the silver from where I stood.
When I flung open the door, Athara was already on her feet.
“Shall we go?” she said.
I grabbed her wrists and tapped out a combination on her cuffs. They fell away; her wrinkled skin was red beneath them.
“Come on,” I gasped.
On the other side of the brig from my office were the more unsightly rooms, the rooms where interrogations took place, where people like Neve and Simon did their dirtiest work. As we hurried past, I caught glimpses through thick windows: rooms with floors covered in frost, blood laced stark and red through it. In one, I saw someone slumped in the corner, head hanging so low it looked detached from the rest of him. No way of telling if he was dead or alive.
How many prisoners came to me after having been in those rooms? Were they cleaned up and fed just to look more presentable for me? I’ve never let myself think about that before. Then again, maybe I wouldn’t have noticed blood in their hair or around their eyes, if they told me an interesting enough story.
Losing Athara’s cuffs bought us a little time without detection. We made it to the end of the corridor without being stopped. But when we reached the door that would lead to the rest of the ship, when I tapped in my credentials and then pulled Athara through, our luck ran out.
Her left foot had hardly touched the ground on the other side when an alarm started to blare. Red lights flickered above us.
I grabbed her wrist. “They’re coming!”
Athara pulled away. “No need to drag me, dear, I can walk.”
An intercom located just beyond the door crackled to life. The captain’s voice came through, confused. “Tyren? What are you doing with X377?”
“More translation work,” I said, and dashed away, Athara on my heels.
We ran through empty halls until we reached the exit wing. I knew the route to the exit pods from my times going planetside with Neve and Simon. The system of clearances had always been a mindless chore; typing in my credentials at one lock, a second, then a third. Sometimes if I hadn’t been cleared to go, I just snuck in behind Neve, and if an alarm sounded, she disabled it. Now, when I was met with the first locked door, my credentials didn’t go through, and I was faced with unforgiving steel.
Another intercom came alive. The captain’s voice again, this time tight, somewhere between anger and panic. “Tyren, I’m sorry, but you need to explain yourself before I let you go anywhere.”
“Look,” I said desperately. “We don’t need to kill this prisoner. She’s just an old woman.”
“You’re not really trying to help her escape?”
Suddenly, Darius’s voice came over the intercom too. He spoke slowly, like he was trying to calm down someone waving a gun around. “Tyren, man, what are you doing this for?”
“Darius,” I said, “you’re an academic, too, right? Isn’t it our job to have open minds? Athara’s gift for seeing the future is real. Why should we kill her just for predicting something we don’t want to hear?”
“Listen, Tyren, I think this is the displaced empathy talking. We can get you some help, okay, just –”
But I was done listening. Sweat dripped down my forehead, into my eyes, and the dream was coming back to me; my heart was beating hard again, and it made me reckless. I braced myself and swung my elbow hard into the intercom machine. It crunched, sparked, then went dead.
I turned back to the door, racked my brains, and started entering Simon’s credentials. I’d seen him type in the alphanumeric code a hundred times.
Running footsteps sounded behind me. I punched in the final number, and the first lock slid open, but I’d no sooner shoved Athara through it than a second alarm started blaring, louder, outlining the doorway in red.
“Tyren!”
I turned. Neve and Simon were charging toward me, blasters out and pointed.
“Hand us the prisoner,” Neve said.
Neve was completely transformed from the friendly, smiling off-duty soldier I’d had dinner with last night. Her voice and eyes were cold as stone. I stood in the doorway, stopping the doors from sliding shut behind Athara; I spread my arms, thoughts racing, trying to come up with something to say.
“Guys,” I said. “Listen. I’m your friend.”
“Hand her over,” said Simon.
“She’s not a threat, all right? And neither am I. You know me.”
“I said to hand her over.”
I looked from him to Neve and back again. Not a single crack in their coldness. I tried to think of something to say that would remind them of our friendship, of the fact that, just yesterday, they’d been inviting me to blow off my duties and go planetside with them. But the only pleas that occurred to me were superficial. What had the three of us ever done together, besides play cards and talk about food? I didn’t even know what planets Neve and Simon were from. I didn’t know what had driven them to work for the empire.
All I really knew was that they’d been trained to respond to anything subversive with violence. I’d known that, and let them do it, the whole time we’d been friends.
“If you won’t hand her over,” said Neve, “one of us is going to shoot.”
She was serious. Her blaster was pointed right at my chest.
For a moment I thought we were finished. I was seconds from lowering my hands and stepping aside.
But then it returned to me again, stronger than ever, the vision of the nightmare I’d had since I was a teenager. The dream that I’d been told indicated disordered thinking. And Athara’s prediction, which must have affected me, really, because it had brought back into focus what I’d always known; because it had caused my whole carefully built facade to crumble.
And I knew that getting shot wasn’t how I was going to die.
My raging heartbeat started back up like a drum. I lunged at Simon, tackled him to the floor. Neve’s blaster went off. Pain slashed through the side of my head, but it wasn’t a direct hit. Simon’s head crashed against the ground. I drove a knee into his gut, heard him wheeze, then slammed my fist into his temple; he slumped.
Neve’s hands were on me in an instant. Her arm wrapped around my throat, pulling me back away from Simon. The world went fuzzy, like I’d had too many chocolate mint beers; wetness dripped down the back of my right ear. I struggled, thrashed.
“If you’re not a friend to the Silver Empire,” Neve hissed, “then you’re not my friend.”
I shouted numbers and letters, hoping I sounded pain-addled, praying she wouldn’t look behind her. Spots of black and red crowded to the left and right of my vision. I elbowed Neve in the stomach, but weakly; she didn’t even flinch.
There was the sound of a locked door opening. Neve swung around; Athara was striding toward the final door.
Neve released me and leveled her gun at Athara. I flung myself at her again, and her shot went wild; the blaster clattered to the ground. Athara reached the door and started tapping in the same number without hesitation. My knees buckled. The ship spun around me like a drunken top. But the blaster resolved itself right below me, inches from my hands; I snatched it up and spun, taking a wild shot back at Neve.
Personal best in combat training. The blast went into her hip. She stumbled, collapsed backward. Then I was flat on my back, and all I could see was the bright metal ceiling, still spinning, spinning, spinning.
Seconds or minutes might have passed before I felt soft hands on my shoulders.
“Come on,” said Athara.
I craned my neck until I could see her face. She was steady, calm, urging me upward.
My tongue felt too thick for my mouth. “You… you have to go. More are coming.”
“I’m taking you,” she said, and pulled me to my knees, then, shakily, my feet.
“No,” I tried to object. “No.”
But the whole world was too far away to fight, like I was staring through a telescope at the happenings on a distant planet’s surface. She pulled me down the hall, past one opened door and another and a third, ignoring the screaming alarms.
Running footsteps sounded from behind.
“Athara,” I pleaded.
“Hush, dear. I’ve lived a long life. I’ve already seen how it ends.”
Then we were in the pod bay. Athara’s hands were uncompromising as she pushed me into the nearest escape pod. She punched the button to start it up, and it oriented itself toward the release doors.
Five more guards appeared in the blazing red doorway.
“Athara!”
“Go to the mountains,” she said. Her smile was back, warmer than I’d ever seen it. “The prophets can teach you how to drink from the springs.”
“What?”
“At the right dose, the bacteria lets us see the future.”
As always, I wanted to ask her more – I had the sense she’d just told me something monumentally important, something I hadn’t understood, something that changed everything – but I didn’t get the chance. She snapped the pod’s door shut and backed away from me. Three of the guards advanced toward her with blasters raised; the other two sprinted forward to grab her by either arm.
She didn’t try to fight. Between them, she looked impossibly frail. A ninety-six-year-old woman without potential for violence.
The pod started humming, and the seat shook beneath me. It lifted off the ground and began to slide forward. But I didn’t look where it was taking me; my head was turned back, watching Athara be dragged away.
Somehow, despite the growing roar of my pod, despite the rushing in my ears that warned me I was seconds from losing consciousness, I heard, as well as saw, the final image of Athara before the doors shut.
She was laughing. Teeth still gleaming in the red light like her mouth was full of blood. The sound of that laugh was as huge and deadly as an avalanche.
And then at last I understood, so clearly and so instantaneously it was like remembering. It was like sliding back into the dream, feeling the same agony, the same death, but finally knowing what it meant. Finally hearing, over the squeal of molten metal on skin, the sound of my own laughter answering back.
My pod was ejected out into space, on a velocity to take it to Planet Nineteen’s surface. Through the thick slitted windows I saw the night sky racing by outside; the green dot of Planet Nineteen expanded in front of me, swelling out into great rolling plains, cornfields, lakes, majestic mountains. Behind, the Moonbeam receded. I turned my head to watch it grow smaller.
Just when the clock on my dashboard said twelve o’ clock, the second the boiling silver would have made contact with Athara’s skin, and just before darkness crowded out my vision entirely, I saw the explosions start.
I started writing this so I could try to control what was happening to me. But I’m finishing it now so you can read it.
When I woke up on the planet’s surface, the sun was setting and the inferno of the Moonbeam was just visible above the horizon. It looked so small from here, like a comet, a celestial indicator of good or bad fortune here below. I spent all of today trekking toward the mountains.
I’m staying the night in a village in the foothills. The people here have been good to me; they appreciate someone who speaks Tseren well. I told them my story, but they still cautioned me against going into the mountains alone. They said the prophets are probably already looking for me anyway. So I’ll wait for them.
As far as I know, I’m the only survivor of the Moonbeam. That bacteria water is combustible, all right. I wonder how long it takes, living in these mountains, to grow strong enough that you can drink from the sacred springs. I wonder how long it takes for it to be running so thick in your blood that exposure to intense heat will turn you into a weapon deadlier than a starship. Maybe it’ll be years, decades even. Maybe I’ll only be ready for my own death when I’ve lived to be as old as Athara.
How will I spend my time in the interim? Living in caves, eking out a meager living from the mountain, shivering through icy storms and fending off animal attacks, maybe. Or maybe the prophets have a thriving city up there and I’ll live better than ever, eggs and pepper and coffee every morning, no longer at the mercy of my captain’s good moods. Either way, I’ll stay with them. I’ll learn the ways of Planet Nineteen, and I’ll call it Tsere, like it was called before the Silver Empire came. I’ll help the people of the villages with their crops and illnesses. I’ll make toys for children. I’ll tell them stories about a faraway planet covered with snow, a planet I’ve never before allowed myself to mourn.
When another starship appears from the Silver Empire, ready to build a new world by turning the old one into stories, I’ll encourage the people to resist. I’ll recall Athara’s prophecy, that the whole massive apparatus of the empire will one day crumble, and I’ll tell them that we can be the generation to bring that future about.
When they capture me and I face the silver, the empire will offer me the chance to give a final testimony, perfectly recorded and sealed away, released after seventy-five years. But I won’t tell them anything. This story here, this is my testimony, and I’m not sealing it away. I’m going to find a way to broadcast it to the whole universe. Not a biography, but a battlecry. I am Tyren of Zyrr, and I’ve been a fool and a traitor and a heartless hypocrite. I saw the horrors the Silver Empire visited on eighteen other planets and let myself believe it didn’t matter. But as the universe is my witness, I won’t let that number become nineteen. This planet will be the beginning of the Empire’s end.
It’s my twenty-fifth birthday today. Today my real life is beginning.
Phoebe Barr is a library worker and environmental organizer writing from Boston, MA. Her writing has appeared on Terrain.org and in magazined Prompted and Ethereal Nightmares.