The tracks behind us are further than the ones ahead…
Unknown Solonian Author
Deep into a meeting she didn’t want to attend, the only thing running through Mevasi’s cluttered mind was another more famous moniker than her own... the Forge of the Galaxy. The common title bestowed by the many varied races throughout existence, the Forge was the singular home for all intergalactic vessel construction anywhere in the universe.
What did that effectively mean? Well, when a race of inquisitive souls needed a ship to escape their mundane existence. They travelled to the Forge. And when a vessel required repairs, large or small. It limped its way to the Forge. And finally, when the universe needed the stars to shrink closer to their eyes. They looked to the Forge to bridge such a gap.
So, for cycles upon everlasting cycles, generations of Solons had endeavored to adhere to those standards by willing into existence some of the most fantastical and sturdy space vessels ever constructed. That’s how things were and how they would always stand.
Still, Mevasi always thought the title ‘Forge of the Galaxy’ a bit pretentious given the limited anvil the arbiters allowed them to utilize. Not when so much more lethal things could be created within the bowels of this factory. And as strange as that name often fell to her ears, some of the others used to describe this place were even more exaggerated.
Take the Poxen for example.
An isolated and inquisitive race of subterranean lizards that stood no higher than the bottom of her knee. These fidgety, stumpy, piglike creatures had no means of leaving their own world. So, they often stole rides on the myriads of mining vessels which visited their backwater planet in hopes of seeing what lay beyond their underground cities of dirt.
At first, such harmless trespasses were greeted with uninterested reactions from the ship’s overworked crews. They jabbed and prodded these creatures for fun and curiosity’s sake, even going so far as to keep a few of them around as novelty pets. In fact, the Poxen often proved to be a very entertaining diversion given their odd shape and insatiable proclivity to mate.
Anywhere and anytime, that’s what the old timers would tell her repeatedly at the beginning of every long hauler’s arrival for routine maintenance. Thankfully, the Poxen required a substance found only on their planet to complete their mating cycle or every square inch of such vessels would be crawling with Poxen spawn.
But like any novelty, the gleam wears off and wears off very quickly. So quickly, that within a couple of cycles, these minuscule stowaways found their pilgrimages greeted by many an annoyed captain offering a short tour of the ship, followed by a long look inside the nearest open airlock.
An aged freighter captain once shared with her over one too many drinks that this ritual happened frequently. So frequently that no one would ever be able to count the number of frozen Poxen bodies clogging up the shipping lanes between here and his home world. He even cryptically told her that over the years the number of stars on his route had doubled.
She didn’t understand his meaning at first, but another drunken miner explained this eerie truth was attributable to the fact something unique in the Poxen anatomy made them luminescent in the absence of light. It was probably the reason they lived so easily deep underground.
“We call them Ghost Stars!” The miner shouted with a glass of overly fermented barley dangling from his drunken fingertips. “There’s so many of them, you can’t even navigate by the stars any longer?”
Not that this pest control through genocide was a concern considering the rate at which they astonishingly procreated back on their home planet. Millions of newborn Pox were created every cycle. And no matter how many of them ended up in space, floating around like frozen glow in the dark popsicles, there were always more waiting their turn.
The Poxen just wouldn’t stop trying to hitch rides to the place they came to know as the Bringer of Life.
“Bringer of Life?” Mevasi always wondered if that name was a sign of reverence from the Poxen or a sign of outright anger. After all, life on the Pox home world was as abundant as the rain could be on Solon. They did not require scavenging hordes of miners to illuminate the truth of reproduction to them.
But knowing the truth was very different from understanding it. And even though the Poxen home world was already teeming with ever bountiful life. It wasn’t until they ventured far away from their home that their innate need to propagate the species failed to bear fruit. Because sadly, the Bringer of Life meant nothing but death.
Still, she had her own problems right now. Namely, this blasted meeting.
Utterly and completely bored out of her mind with construction reports, Mevasi found herself absentmindedly tapping her fingers upon the long, weather-beaten table she sat at while staring dreamily out of the large observation port which dominated her surroundings.
Unable to focus on more sets of timetable projections, her thoughts listlessly drifted from a whole world of humping lizards to a single pair of uncontained and rather frisky Poxen very loudly trying to procreate down the hallway. Why they treated such an act with indifference was beyond her.
Of course, this line of thinking led her to think about the scars on her face. Scars which were borne of that indifference. And no matter how loudly the Forge’s various department heads prattled on about timetables and deadlines. The fact her people shared such a striking similarity with those creatures really annoyed her to no end.
Because in the end, both species happily treated the act of sex the same way: it was more about the result and less about the experience.
With that conclusion reached, her body involuntarily tensed up. In her view, such a dogma when it came to mating wasn’t right no matter how many times the Arbiters droned on about maintaining past traditions. Not that her hidden opinion mattered to the universal law givers.
After all, that’s why they were coming to judge that poor Sentee locked up in the Forge’s detention center. She broke free of such tradition. And she broke free of it in the most heinous way possible. According to the Arbiters anyway.
Even just thinking about that poor thing all alone in the security tower made her mind silently scream in frustration. Though Mevasi pruned back her anger as soon as it bloomed. The way things are may not be right on Solon for the Sentees, but she would not allow herself to become one of Fiore’s mindless lackeys.
“Mevasi,” an angry voice echoed throughout the small conference room and crashed into her already busy thoughts. “Are you going to answer me or not?”
Unaware of what inquiry had just been posed to her, the best the mining manager could muster was a determined look of stupidity while turning to face her irritated inquisitor. “What was that? I’m afraid I have wondered off the path, Commander.”
“That is surprising to no one, Ore Manager Mevasi. Though I would think with the Arbiters visit so near, even you could find the focus to make it through at least one meeting without getting… lost.”
Towering over everyone seated around the conference table loomed the hulking frame of Forge Commander, Duxon Ultim. Never one to suffer fools, his slightly grey fur bristled in time with taught layers of well-earned muscle. “I will repeat my question again. How far out is the last shipment from the belt?”
Instinctively, Mevasi stole another glance through the large window just a few meters from her seat. The first thing which caught her wandering eyes were the tendrils of gantry ways extending outward in every direction from the main manufacturing hub like an oversized, mutated erector set.
Then, her keen eyes darted from one bay to the next as hundreds of vessels sat moored in docking ports in various stages of construction. Surrounding each one of these works in progress were thousands of workers zipping around like swamp mosquitos on small metal skiffs of heat and light. Each tasked with a duty and each one of them diligently attacked it.
“Mevasi,” Duxon’s voice grew louder and angrier.
Long considered throughout the four provinces of Solon as a fair and just replacement for the previous Forge commander, Duxon Ultim normally took her dalliances in stride since the Ore Manager’s proficiency warranted a little leeway. But that undeniable competency often failed to harbor the discordant way she could ignore his words.
About a hectare below their current position resided one of the larger construction bays within the Forge’s main complex. She stared transfixed through the conference room’s dense port window at twenty structure fitters. Dockers, as they were called by the lower cast, moved impossibly large pieces of hull plating around a complex superstructure with only their bare hands to sustain such a monumental task.
“Nothing like a sweet spot,” Mevasi whispered under her breath referring to the strange gravity free zone which surrounded Solon’s outer atmosphere. This phenomenon of magnetic equilibrium produced by their unique twin stars was what allowed her people to construct such monolithic crafts without the aid of heavy machinery.
And that anomaly also gave them an advantage over other potential construction sites. Because those systems would have to employ monstrous machinery for ship construction, while the Forge was able to produce the same wares with only minimal mechanical help. An advantage that meant that anyone else would fall woefully back of Solon’s hectic pace.
Plus, those other systems didn’t have an endless supply of able body workers willing to throw shoulders to the cause.
But before she could ascertain what kind of the ship they were working on, Commander Duxon crossed the span of the room separating the two of them and violently slammed his gigantic paw against the already dent ridden table.
“I’m not going to ask you again, Ore Manager Mevasi. How long before the shipment arrives?”
Snapped out of her self-induced trance, Mevasi turned her own set of irritated, golden eyes to the Commander. “Constane contacted me just before I was reminded of this meeting, Commander Duxon. Given his heavy paw and his copilot’s lack of backbone, I would assume his arrival should be rather imminent.”
“Constane,” Duxon acted as though the name had already passed into history. “Why is that old fool still making ore runs at his age? He must be coming very close to the end of his fourth cycle. Shouldn’t that thorn in my side be making peace with his end on the surface?”
“His end?” The very thought of her old friend Constane’s time approaching made every muscle in her body become tense and painful.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Usually, when a Solonian passed on to the great unknown, few of their kind mourned the passing. The shortened limits of their lives precluded such wasted reverence. The accepted path to death customarily was a very private affair, no grievers. When one’s time drew near, he or she would simply wander off into the Great Fields outside of their city and expire.
There was no bellyaching or whining for more time. No useless bargaining. Just plain and simple acceptance. Though lately, some of the inhabitants of Solon had started to view the nature of death in a more contemplative light. And some, like Fiore and her sisterhood, even began mourning lost friends with private ceremonies of silence and empty words.
Acts which the Arbiters frowned upon. In both violent and permanent ways.
“You know what he always says, Commander.” She put those thoughts of trials and judges away and tried to play off his anger and her fear with a little inappropriate levity. “My copilot will just have to push my body off to the side and finish the run after I go.”
Her attempt at imitating her friend’s gruff and irritating voice lacked the necessary grating effect, but Duxon got the meaning of her words anyway.
“Acceptable,” Duxon bristled before once gain slamming his gigantic, clawed hand into the table. “But you tell him from me. If he happens to depart this world on the way to the belt, I won’t have his copilot bother with bringing his lifeless body back to the Forge. Instead, his orders will be to launch his sorry ass into space before the return trip.”
“Duxon,” Mevasi cackled at the mental image of Constane’s grey fur covered body forever tumbling alongside the gigantic asteroids which made up the totality of the Fringe. “I didn’t think you liked him well enough to ever grant him his last wish.”
“Just handle him, Mevasi.” Duxon strode back over to his empty chair and sat down in a overexaggerated manner. “Now how large is the last shipment? I know their run was cut short by our untimely visitors.”
Without needing a refresher from her notes, she prattled off the cargo shuttle’s payload numbers. “He’s currently got six hundred thousand cubic hectares packed away in the hull, or only about three fourths of a load.”
“Ouch,” the Processing Plant manager whined shrilly. “That pitiful excuse of a haul will barely be enough to finish what I’ve got formatting in the processors right now. Let alone the three large cruisers sitting ready for fabrication.”
“What does that mean for our timetable, Querun?” Duxon sighed heavily. More than anything in this life, he hated being behind schedule. “What can we finish?”
The slightly undersized Fentee with yellow and orange fir sized up the situation from the completely logical, non-emotional point of view of your average Forge engineer. “Depending on when our honored guests arrive and placing the cruisers on the back burner, we should be able to finish everything waiting in the yards save for the last one in.”
“The last one in?” His words met silence as everyone stared around the edges of the table apprehensively. They all knew exactly what the ‘last one’ meant. Because the last race to put a requisition order before the Arbiters announced their arrival was the Tralons.
“There’s no way to stretch the material further, Queron? Maybe we could shortchange a deck or two on a couple of frigates?”
Standing nearly two and a half meters high, Duxon Ultim was one of the largest fur bags ever born on the planet Solon. Lithe of frame and packed with layers of dense muscle, very little in the universe could unnerve the commander of the shipyards. Not even with the hundreds of species that arrived every cycle.
But the mere mention of shortchanging anything meant for the Tralons could clearly get him off his game. “I hate dealing with those three headed bastards.”
“We could tell him the Arbiters delayed their construction for a short time. Maybe blame it on the trial.” The Commander’s second in command spoke up from his usually silent chair in a subversive, almost whispering tone. “He would probably wet himself thinking the Arbiters had once again grown disheartened with his kind.”
“Leil,” Duxon raised an annoyed hand to strike but at the last minute stayed his usual instincts. Leil wasn’t the heartiest of Solonian Fentees, but he was the most loyal. “We don’t lie to our patrons. And as much as I despise the Tralons, we’ll just have to find a way to break the news honestly.”
“And how exactly is that going to be accomplished?” Querun asked incredulously. “The last Fentee who relayed a message of delay to the Tralon commander was hospitalized for half a cycle. When he finally was released, the rest of his time was spent in the care of an old Sentee nursemaid. The poor fellow even needed aid to get from his home to the Fields of Peace.”
A large area of barren woodland where volcanic springs bubbled up from under the planet’s mantle. The Fields of Peace was a fiery, desolate region which had long been the final resting place for the upper caste Solons when their time of passing grew near.
A place to meet the great rest on one’s own terms, no one wanted to visit the Fields until their four cycles had been completely usurped. And since no one on the Forge Council was over three cycles of age, everyone made sure to keep their grumbles silent. Why? Because they knew their boss would soon be seeking a volunteer.
And knowing this, all the construction managers tried desperately to look away from Duxon’s stares. Mevasi found their lack of backbone disturbing. Especially since these Fentees were supposed to be the pride of the Southern Region.
“Maybe you shouldn’t send a Fentee to do it.” Mevasi’s voice was subdued but still loud enough to be heard by all. Her eyes still lingered on the tiny superstructure waiting to be dressed in layers of solid metal. “They always talk too much.”
“Mevasi,” Duxon’s apprehension evaporated like the morning rain after a summer storm. “That’s the first helpful thing you’ve contributed today.”
“Excuse me?” She tore her attention away from the window and back to his absurdly happy face. “What did I say that was helpful?”
“My apologies,” Duxon appeared as though a great weight had been lifted from between his shoulder blades. “I was merely thanking you for volunteering to tell the Tralons their tiny cruiser must wait until after the Arbiter’s inquisition.”
“Hold, commander. I did not volunteer to do that.” Mevasi said, looking annoyed at all the contented faces staring back at her. “I was simply illuminating the fact that most Fentees lack conviction.”
Hearing the veiled aspersion, Duxon sneered at her scarred-up face for a moment. For over a cycle, he had wanted to vilify this whelp of a Sentee publicly for everyone on the Forge to see. And not because she was impudent. No. It was because of what the Sentees whispered as she walked by them.
Blood descendant.
Blood descendant... he almost hated that title as much as she did. What had she accomplished to be held in such high regard? Duxon had worked his way up from a lowly crop planter to the overseer of the largest endeavor in the universe. Her claim to fame was being the most recent bitch to escape her mother’s womb.
Hardly an accomplishment worth their bowed heads in his opinion. But still they bowed.
“Then now is a good time for you to show us all Ore Manager just how strongly you feel about the matter? I’m sure the general will be waiting for your friend to return by the main landing pad. You can greet them both when they arrive.”
Before Mevasi could explain to the commander her forthcoming plans to return to the surface, he and all the section managers fled from the room under cover of silent disdain. When the smoke of their cowardice finally cleared, the only person remaining in the conference room besides herself was Leil.
“You shouldn’t always try so hard to give them excuses to despise you, Mevasi.”
“Leil,” she grinned sheepishly at his playful admonishment. “You know I can’t bury my feelings the way you do. That’s why you were probably my only friend as a cub.”
The assistant commander returned her grin then strode around the smashed and buckled conference table to join her by the window. Together, they surveyed everything the Forge had currently in production. “That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try, Mevasi. To the heavens, that blood descendant nonsense will only buy you so many passes with him.”
“I wouldn’t call his order as a pass.”
At the mere mention of that sore subject, an awkward silence fell between the two friends like an old memory too painful to recollect. Growing up within the same village, the two shared a common history which made working together both easy and difficult. “Besides, you know I hate the title, probably as much or more than he does.”
“He doesn’t care about how much you hate anything, Mevasi.” Her friend grimaced at whatever thought was racing through his mind. “Give him the right opportunity to do so and he’ll happily make an example out of you.”
She tapped repeatedly on the glass partition with a well sharpened claw. Finally, Mevasi recognized the small superstructure as the Tralons yet to be built cruiser. “You mean like the example of what the Tralon will do to me when I tell him he’ll have to wait for his pathetic excuse of a ship?”
Leil broke out into a roguish smile. Perfected over their much-abbreviated childhood, Mevasi had always sought out the most potent forms of getting into trouble she could. While he was stuck extricating her from her own devises. And right now, it felt like he might have to revisit that old childhood job.
“Oh no…” The Fentee laughed heartily like in the old days. “You brought that one on yourself, Mevasi.”
“As I always do, old friend.”
“With that in mind,” Never quite relinquishing his role as protector, Leil considered the Tralon general and his reputation for being bluntly murderous. “How are you going to break the news to him anyway?”
“I’m unaware of how exactly to placate an angry Tralon.” Mevasi shrugged her slender yet muscular shoulders and sighed. She hadn’t really given much thought to reasoning with three stubborn heads before. “Maybe the same way I broke the news to my mother I was going to work at the Forge.”
“Truly,” he said jokingly, remembering the day Mevasi’s mother tried and failed to tear her daughter limb from limb for an unexpected change in career. “The only problem with that approach is… he’s a lot bigger than you are.”
“Leil,” she turned toward the open hatchway and smiled. “Everyone around here is bigger than I am.”
Before making it three steps toward her fate, Leil tugged on her arm and said. “Before running off to do something inappropriate, you should take a look at this.”
Outside the window, the Forge’s many construction bays stretched on like an unending parking lot which never suffered from the stagnation of entropy. Ships constantly moved through the process of being built, never once seeing the inside of a bay longer than half a cycle. And to the sky, hundreds of Hectares above floated an equally unending Resource Belt.
“What am I looking at?” She asked with true curiosity in her voice.
Leil chortled as more memories of their childhood surfaced from long forgotten places. “That’s why you were never made a descent hunter, Mevasi. Always too busy dreaming about what could be there, instead of what was.”
He pointed toward a large section of gutted space in the Fringe which allowed entry to the many species of travelers who visited Solon. And there, piercing through that rocky shield of protection like the tip of a razor fish breaching the surface of the water, the bow of the Arbiter’s blackened sky ship drew ominously into view.
“That’s not talent. That’s luck.” She chided her friend for his arrogant display of one-upmanship. “You know as well as I, the Arbiter’s color their vessels with a coating which makes them nearly impossible to see against the blackness of space.”
“Is that so?” Unwilling to argue with her pettiness, he only said. “I didn’t think they were so close to arriving. Duxon figured we at least had another day and a half to prepare.”
“The Arbiters never do anything according to someone else’s schedule. You should know that better than anyone.”
“Anyone other than you, you mean.” Leil grew placidly silent as they watched the ship emerge further from the gravelly curtain of asteroids above. Its sleek lines and stretched out hull were unlike anything ever built within the Forge. Which was precisely how the Arbiters wanted it. “Were you planning on attending her trial? After all, she was you’re only other friend here besides that old fool of a pilot.”
“That’s what Fiore and her kind would like me to do. Show up at the trial and be some sort of symbol.”
Leil had known of Mevasi’s struggles being the blood descendant from the time they were both tiny cubs fighting for scraps of food in the streets of Dadedos. Even then, at such a young age, his friend hated being defined by someone else’s deeds, especially deeds which were done so very long ago.
“So,” he tried remaining neutral. “You’ll decline to stand by her.”
Mevasi wanted to be insolent, wanted to tell her friend that it was none of his damn business whether she planned on standing by a convicted murderer or not. Why should he be treated any better than that infernal Sisterhood of Choice? Neither really cared about her on a personal level.
Fiore only wanted to turn her friend’s misfortune into a lightning rod of change just for the sake of convenience. Her kind didn’t care about Timarn anymore than those blasted Arbiters did. And Liel didn’t care about the supposed perpetrators guilt or innocence. He just wanted to be nice to an old friend.
Caught in between a set or waring emotions, she wanted to scream to anyone who would listen that no one, Fentee or Sentee alike, had the authority or enough will to decide what her destiny would be. She would die before that happened.
“Of course I’m going to stand by her, Leil.” She looked away from the burgeoning shipyards to resume her hasty escape from the room. “I don’t have enough friends in this universe to abandon one of them to such a cruel and lonely fate.”
“It could have just as easily been you standing before their judgment, Mevasi. Their visits to Solon fall closer together every cycle with no end in sight. All fate would have needed was for you to have a chance encounter with a Fentee who was too slow. That’s it. When I ponder all those moments you resisted, all those times you said no.”
He hesitated to elaborate further on the unspoken subject even though she would more than welcome the debate. “You were lucky no one was ever killed in your insane crusade for autonomy.”
“I wasn’t the lucky one. They were.”
More amused than concerned, Leil didn’t try and stop her retreat this time. He only made a simple observation as she too fled from the scene. “There are more than three of us on the Forge who can tolerate you enough to be considered your friend, Mevasi. You should try and remember that.”
“True enough.” She rounded the scarred-up table and strode ever faster for the freedom of the open hatchway. “But for someone to be considered my friend Leil, such tolerance must be mutual.”
