Nophek Gloss Read online

  “Yeah.” Taitn smiled, eyes sad. “They are. What do you say we get some space under these wings?”

  “You mean fly?” Fast and powerful, destructive like those ships he’d seen before. A flutter of fresh energy coursed through him, and he gathered it up desperately. “Can you teach me to pilot it?”

  When he’d stood before the overseers at his Appraisal, waiting for them to place a value on him and assign a designation, his heart had cried Pilot. But his cuts and calluses said Mechanic.

  “Come on.” Taitn gave him a gentle grin and turned him around. “A ship this beautiful shouldn’t sit in the desert.”

  Finally free of sand and water, the ship perched like an insect, with gill-like arrays, translucent water-metal, gels that changed color at different angles, and countless plates with near-invisible seams. The ship was longer than it was wide, a thick nose and base tapering to blade tails, and two wings on either side, sharp and sickle-shaped like a falcon at high speed, preened back now tight against its body. The reflective black shell was chafed with white scars, fine cracks, dents, and a sand-wind burnish. A narrow strip of crystal was bared down the ship’s spine from nose to tail. At its backside, silvery engine cylinders clustered, complicated and larger than any turbines Caiden had worked on. Even the dusters were like mites compared to this beetle. And he had never seen anything so beautiful.

  The only thing he could trust for now was this machine. Real, solid, and contained.

  Taitn said, “Sleeker but much smaller than Laythan’s Dava, may she rest in the dust.”

  Caiden managed a brief smile, cheered by at least one ally among the crew.

  They walked down the dune and back inside. The interior was a one-room bay, the cockpit an alcove at the end, and in the middle, a ramp led to a lower level with the long engine room and two other spaces. Smooth walls hid inner compartments, seats, and tools. The ship was a sanctuary compared to Caiden’s old bed-pad bunk, or the insides of cramped aerators.

  The memories ached. He thrust them aside and tested a new notion, “This ship is home.”

  “We should dump you here and leave,” blurted Ksiñe, the medic and scientist, as he shoved Caiden aside and opened the cockpit console housing. His shoulders had a coiled angle, his short stature carried with grace and ferocity.

  “Kis!” Taitn snapped. “Not the time for an ethical argument.”

  The masked Andalvian managed to glare by mere intensity. “Not time for strays.”

  “Layth made his call. This ship is the kid’s; he can call it home. Have you got the interface working?”

  Heart stinging, Caiden shuffled out of the way.

  “Never seen half these parts,” Ksiñe muttered, his accented voice purring. He fussed with the console’s innards until the cockpit air fogged with light. The glow congealed into hovering diagrams.

  Taitn wiggled into the flight seat, his leathery green jacket magnetizing to the metal of the chair. He raised his hands into the light, and it shifted into flowing patterns as he gestured through data. His fingers and dark-blue eyes moved at blinding speed, while the hard lines of his face softened with awe. “These … are the strangest wings I’ve ever seen. My bet’s Graven tech.”

  “You say every time,” Ksiñe accused.

  Caiden watched mystified, bundling up a hundred questions. The diagrams flowed like a landscape: tiny rivers, layered ground, bits cut and replanted, branching. Even without knowing the language, Caiden understood signal flow.

  “Winn.” Taitn turned to Caiden. “You should give your ship a name.”

  Ksiñe sniped in, “She is 90-NN C-Center class.”

  “She pretends to be. Kis, this ship is like nothing I’ve encountered before, and I’ve piloted everything. Winn might’ve found a gem even more valuable than the gloss.”

  Caiden warmed at the praise.

  “She conceals, not pretends.” Ksiñe slunk from the cockpit. “Panca will find out what it is.” The skin around his neck and collarbones clouded gray-blue, and what Caiden thought was a furred scarf wriggled off Ksiñe’s shoulders and bound to his arm.

  Caiden tucked his curiosity back beneath the soreness of rejection.

  “Don’t mind him,” Taitn said. “You’ve displaced him as the newest, and he’d only just gotten his spots settled. It’s a fine ship.”

  “Thanks, Taitn.”

  “Ready to pop engines!” the pilot called into the bay.

  En strode jovially from the engine room, tied hair swaying. “Maybe we should all get out first? In case it just … blows.”

  Laythan closed the bay doors. “We can’t waste time with tests. If this is the end … well, good run.”

  The captain’s bravery didn’t soothe the prickling in Caiden’s gut. He was in capable company now, but a sense of urgency and dread was thick beneath their quips and Taitn’s busy hands.

  “Panca,” Laythan called down to the engine room, “keep feeling the engines, make sure this heap’s good for escape velocity.”

  “Quit with the ‘heap,’ Layth.” Taitn’s voice hushed with awe.

  En cruised by and leaned over with a grin, whispering to Caiden, “I think he’s in love.”

  Taitn swatted En away. “Winn. You’re too short for the seat, so come here in front.”

  “Wait, you’re really going to let me fly it? Now?” Caiden moved in front, facing the console and the sprawling desert.

  Taitn’s dark beard framed a kind smile. He gestured to two crystalline plates on the console. “Put your hands on these.”

  A surge of excitement turned Caiden’s stomach prickles to butterflies. The plate surfaces were soft as skin, and yielded to engulf his fingers and cloud around them.

  A rumble juddered deep in the ship’s belly. Resonant metals moaned and a muted sound plumped up inside every surface.

  Caiden shivered in anticipation.

  Taitn laid his big hands over Caiden’s. The surface sank farther. “Keep your fingers still but not rigid. This is called a twitch drive style. The bare minimum. Like riding without a saddle. Did you have riding creatures where you’re from?”

  Caiden opened his mouth to reply. He didn’t feel Taitn’s fingers move on top of his, but the acceleration hit. He stretched into a streak of a person, insides left his body, then snapped back against the jab of the console. His eyeballs bulged. Skull vibrated. Squeezed lungs reinflated.

  Taitn’s wild laugh resounded over the ship’s song. “Graven tech never ages. She could’ve crashed yesterday.”

  Caiden’s heart leapt as the ship roared. The sand outside rippled in fountains. A chorus of vibrations rose from a hard judder to a smooth purr as if the thrusters had narrowed into a sleek, powerful stream. The resonant materials relaxed, and the interior hushed except for the patch Panca had fitted over the bay door. The salvaged piece buzzed, secure but unhappy.

  Caiden gawked. Through the windows, dunes slithered by at a sickening speed. The horizon brightened as they traveled, until a bright object finally surged into view, resolving into a faraway sphere of luminous, freckled blue.

  “Relax.” Taitn pressured Caiden’s fingers up and down, singly then all together. The ship responded to each; built speed, banked, dipped its nose to a stop, glided over dunes, and spun around again. “It’s like falling. If you’re rigid and scared, it’s going to hurt. If you’re relaxed and drunk— well, you probably didn’t even notice.”

  “Don’t let him tell you drunk pilots are better!” En called from the bay.

  Taitn rolled his eyes.

  Caiden tried his own fingertip motions, to which the ship swayed side to side. Taitn’s hands squeezed into a claw shape and the vessel slowed to a hover. Rolls of sand cascaded over the nose.

  Caiden slid his hands free of the controls, then dragged in a deep breath.

  “Right?” Taitn patted him on the back.

  “I’ve never driven anything like this …” He massaged his knuckles as if they had changed, somehow.

  Abruptly,
the ship’s metal shrieked. With no one at the controls, it nosed down hard, and Caiden slammed the console rim. Taitn’s arms vised around him and hauled him back. Curses burst from the crew behind. A vessel ripped past the cockpit view, its velocity having thrown their ship forward.

  The vessel in front of them was liquid glass. It shredded the air, the transparent layers of its hull clinging wildly to metallic bones within. It was the same weird ship Caiden had spotted before. An overseer ship. It had to be.

  “All damned”— the swear leaked from him—“that’s them, one of them.”

  The glass ship spun so it faced them nose-to-nose, re-forming its body more than it actually turned. Churning liquid wings solidified into sharp vanes.

  “Crimes!” Taitn barked a curse, shoved Caiden back, and slapped his hands on the twitch drive plates. He plowed the ship forward to escape while En darted in and hooked Caiden’s waist, pulling him back to the wall.

  “Hold tight!” A thrill quavered Taitn’s voice, as if the enemy weren’t right on their tail.

  Sand blasted around the ship, and the air shrieked as they tilted upward and gained speed. Caiden felt smeared into a streak of a person again at this velocity. Darkness filled the cockpit windows. The star spots turned to lines of pure speed.

  The glass ship torched past their nose, forcing Taitn into a bank and Caiden’s insides into knots. Taitn focused on evasive maneuvers while the crew somehow fended for themselves calmly, strapping into secure positions against the bay walls.

  “You’re a bit too short,” En told him, fear well hidden in his voice but not his eyes. He lifted Caiden clear of the ground by his jacket collar, with one arm, up to the height of the wall’s restraints.

  Caiden wheezed, “How are you this strong?”

  En laughed and pinned him against the wall, securing him with metal foot struts and cinched straps before letting go and strapping himself right beside. “Don’t worry, we’ll lose the pursuit. Taitn can fly out of anything. Welcome to the family, kid.”

  Family.

  “Taitn!” Laythan bellowed. “Lose this Casthen cur! We don’t have the fuel to play around.”

  “Casthen? Whose ship is chasing us?” Caiden yelled, but between the stress and the restraints, his voice was winnowed and no one heard him.

  The transparent ship wheeled past the view, distorting the world through its morphing avian body. Taitn swerved and accelerated again, then stalled to fall behind and jet in a different direction.

  Tones babbled through the fuselage as the vibration increased. The ship’s shuddering returned Caiden to the huge cramped box, the roar, the stench. Horrific visions reared, and he sobbed while no one could hear him. He clamped his jaw shut and ran his palms up and down the straps, unable to move anything else. He closed his eyes so tight they watered through his eyelashes and tears jiggled sideways across his cheeks.

  This box would crack like an egg and the beasts would rush in. The overseers would land in a splash of liquid glass and take him. His tears streamed, sorrow slipping out as his mind fissured.

  The roar snapped off, motion halted, and like a light switch, Caiden lost consciousness.

  CHAPTER 6

  MULTIVERSE

  Caiden regained consciousness, still in restraints. Beyond the windows lay an unmoving splash of milky dust and glittering “stars,” and one small, dull ball hanging in the middle.

  “Where’s the sand?” he muttered groggily.

  En said, “We’re off-world. Taitn lost the Glasliq— the translucent vessel— in the fray.”

  Caiden blinked. “There’s nothing holding the ship up … What if we fall?”

  En sniggered and released the restraints, catching Caiden’s stumble.

  Stunned stiff, he stared at the expanse. He was shrinking in the vastness of all he didn’t understand. He tried to imagine the faintly luminous sphere containing deserts and beasts and wreckage. Specks of light amassed around one side like flies at a carcass. “That’s … But …”

  “It’s all very far away now. Those are passager ships wanting the gloss, fighting your ‘overseers,’ who are struggling to reclaim it. They can detect which mature nophek have complete gloss in their brains.”

  Caiden could have walked all the way around one of these “planets” and ended up where he started. His world had been a cage, keeping the population safe but stupid.

  That horrific world shrank from view, and the things Caiden once believed were real and true shrank with it. But he knew one thing now: exposing the lies to save whoever else might have survived or be in danger was enough of a purpose to his life.

  He drifted toward the view.

  “Brave of you to get through this,” En said. “You’re safe now.”

  Brave of you.

  Caiden had said it to Leta.

  Said he’d come back for her. Ran. The end.

  Cold sheeted through him. “We have to go back.” His voice was half whimper, half choke. Panic surged him to the cockpit. Taitn twisted in the pilot’s seat and caught Caiden’s rush in the slam of one arm.

  “Easy!” Taitn raised his other hand to stop En and Laythan from approaching. “You’re all right.”

  “We have to—” Go back for her.

  “How come?” Taitn’s voice lightened.

  Caiden glowered at that luminous corpse sphere amassed with flies in the dark, so very far away. Reminded himself how very small the hope was that she’d survived at all. Leta would have waited, like he— her hero— told her to … until the teeth came.

  The reality snapped him. His shoulders twitched.

  Worry pleated between Taitn’s brows and he bent to look Caiden in the face, but Caiden’s stare was locked on that distant wasteland and the reality, the failure, the hollow in his heart, because if he met the pilot’s kind gaze, the cracks would spread. Instead, Caiden cinched up tight, clamped his quivering jaw, and let fury burn up the start of tears.

  “We understand,” Taitn said, soft as feathers. “You’re safe with us. We won’t push you to take your mind back there yet, or explain what you don’t want us to. In your own time.”

  Laythan was sorting a bundle of salvaged weapons, and he boomed across the bay, “We’re not going back, boy.”

  “I know …” Caiden belted his little knot of helplessness tighter. Despite being safe, he was within a well-greased machine of relationships still strange to him, even if En’s nonchalant words from before— Welcome to the family, kid— still ricocheted in his heart. The moment he made a wrong move, these people could kick him away. Like Leta’s family had rejected her, a bad fit.

  “Here it is—” Taitn tapped a lit-up glyph on the console. The entire cockpit erupted in luminous, hovering lines. Translucent bubbles of all sizes stuck together, filled with tiny specks labeled with strange symbols. Unlike the paper map Caiden had once seen, with pasture blocks, road grids, and housing all squares and angles, this one was spheres, curves, and clouds.

  “The multiverse,” Taitn announced. “Each bubble is a complete universe with its own features. Some safe, others not. They can be any size. Think of them like rooms. We can pass from one to another through their walls, which are like membranes.”

  With a flick, Taitn zoomed the map out, revealing countless bubbles clustered into an intricate foam.

  Laythan came over. “These are stars, and planets,” he said, indicating specks with specific symbols.

  Caiden squinted at the map, then out the window, wrestling with the immensity of the idea.

  “These are stellar egresses— shortcuts.” Laythan indicated tiny rings with lines curving across universes to other distant rings. “Unity.” The largest and central sphere, without any smaller universes inside it. “Unity was the original universe. The rest bubbled off it. Unity expands continuously, as do the outer edges of the multiverse where new universes are born.”

  Caiden hoarded unknown words and concepts like treasures. He surveyed the breadth of the map: if Leta or his father had sur
vived and escaped as he had, he would never find them in all these worlds. We have to go back sizzled desperately on his tongue again, but Taitn’s soft words, and En’s firm cheer, and Laythan’s unwavering stance had all insisted, in their own way, Move on.

  Taitn zoomed the display in to a little green chevron— the ship— hanging in the center of a red sphere that squished up against others.

  “This universe is called CWN82, and the red means it was publicly declared a no-fly zone with unstable physics. But those dangers were all lies fabricated to conceal it. Nophek need both a special universe and a special atmosphere to survive in, and this universe was perfect. Passagers finally tailed the slavers here and learned it was safe all along.”

  The scope of it all hashed in Caiden’s brain. He observed, “We’re right next to a border … between universes?”

  “That’s right.” Taitn whisked the map away and settled his hands in the twitch drive panels. He turned the ship all the way around and accelerated. The view filled with a gleaming surface of distortion cutting the darkness. It was the edge of a vast domed surface stretching out of sight, rippling with iridescent swirls.

  Just like the little bubble that had expanded and collapsed around the ship—“but huge,” Caiden blurted, eyes widening.

  “That’s a rind,” Laythan said, “a border between universes. ‘Crossover’ is what we call travel through them. Universes can be very different from one another. Physics, probabilities, laws … A slight shift in parameters can either be unnoticeable or catastrophic.”

  “Slow down, Layth.” Taitn twisted in the pilot’s seat to give Caiden an earnest look. “Does this all make sense?”

  Caiden recalled the dead overseers, and the nophek that had charged the ship’s bubble only to be turned inside out into a red mist. His stomach flipped, but he nodded.

  Laythan rushed on, “Material shifts phase, or gravity is inconstant, nonlocal memory or communication breaks down, other times electromagnetic variables render a ship unworkable. Passing through a rind requires a ship that can handle both the stress of the crossover and the conditions on the other side. Panca assures me this ship is so advanced, we’ll have no problem. Generally, the more expensive a passager’s ship, the more places they can go, and the more trade or exploration they can take on, which means more finances and ship upgrades to go even farther.”