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The Language of Poetry
RIV
H e woke with a sudden gasp of breath.
To the cold feel of hardened steel under the thin pallet his body lay on.
For a moment, he floundered, wondering where he was.
With a groan, it all came flooding back.
élisa.
Fokk.
He must have fallen asleep after she’d left.
Gassed, he suspected, given the noxious scent lingering in the air.
She’d knocked him out.
Clever. Effective.
‘Twas an ingenious way to keep him in control.
He accessed his neural node and did some rooting around.
The anesthetic she’d pumped into the vents of the storage area was designed to knock out an average human for 24 hours or more.
However, his noids must have scrubbed his blood, reducing the effect to eight.
He had to pretend to be unconscious if she returned in the next few hours. He hoped she’d bought hook, line, and sinker into his Galician ruse.
To kill time, he studied the layout of the small repository, probing for weak points or vulnerabilities, trying to find any way to gain an advantage and make his getaway.
He spied a chute, leading no doubt to an escape pod.
The energy barrier would be simple to breach, and he smirked, knowing if push came to shove, he’d have a way out.
He reached out for a connection.
Mirage?
Right here.
The instantaneous response had him slumping back onto the pallet in relief. Where the fokk am I?
Can’t you tell?
Nada, he clapped back with some impatience. Would I be asking if I did?
Mirage didn’t react to his triteness. Your location puts you forty klicks away from me in the Galaxy skiff that was shadowing us.
Riv shook his head in disbelief. I was kidnapped. I bet you won’t believe by whom.
Mirage didn’t have eyes inside the vessel he was in, so Riv flicked over an image over their link of the woman who’d just left the compartment.
A moment of silence fell before Mirage spoke. You’re confident this is no joke or entrapment scam, Riv?
Nada. It is her.
She was the one following you. The dark-robed kinai?
Riv nodded in the gloominess. Naam.
Any idea why?
She wants Glimmer for a long-range run. To Eden knows where.
Mirage paused for a beat. How do you feel?
He scoffed under his breath. Like my entire world has turned upside down. élisa, of course, has yet to learn who I am. I have to know more about where she’s taking me and why before I reveal myself.
Mirage commiserated with him. I hear you. Please don’t worry. You’re tethered to me via our neural network, and I won’t let anything happen to you. Might I add, I am delighted you have found the one person you’ve been searching for all these years.
Sable’s A.I. sounded almost too merry for the situation at hand.
Riv shook his head, still shaking in shock. I must speak with Kainan. We’re too far off for node contact. Please dispatch a relay drone so I can bounce my signal to it and reach the Sable Riders.
Mirage clucked in dissent. Riv, the turbulence around Neron N13 makes initiating live streams or holo calls to the other side of the System hard. But I’ll hunt down a solution. Perhaps we can leave a beacon here, letting them know where we might be headed, and they can follow us.
Naam, look into it.
As you’d like. Settle in. I’ll be in touch.
Sante. One more thing, Mirage, discover everything you can about one Noab Hakim. He’s an operator in the Badlands—a spy for hire and not the good kind. Find out what he’s been up to and what contracts he’s been working on. Go back a few years, maybe even to when élisa disappeared. Perhaps he was after her back then.
On it.
‘Hey!’
It had been some time since his beguiling and sexy captor checked in on him.
He kept calling every so often to attract her attention.
Hours passed before the steel door to the outer door opened, and élisa appeared.
His heart lurched as she strolled to the energy shield and stared down at him. ‘What say you? Will you take me where I need to go?’
He gave her a long look, appearing to mull her words. In reality, his mind, soul, and body were still rocked by the realization that she was here, with him, breathing the same air.
‘Hey!’
Impatience flashed in her eyes at his hesitance, but he saw a vulnerability lurking in her eyes that brute-forced him into the present.
‘Will I be compensated for my efforts?’
She inclined her head. ‘You’ll be a lot richer for it.’
Some of her silver hair was loose from her ponytail and feathered around her face, giving it an ethereal glow that set his desire ratcheting.
‘And if I refuse?’ As if he’d ever endeavor to.
Her shoulders lifted in a blasé shrug. ‘I’ll find someone else.’
Never. Not when he’d come so far to locate her.
He appeared to concede. ‘I’ll do it. For a few million schills and your intel on the man I seek and where I can encounter him.’
She crossed her arms on her chest, her expression shifting to relief. This journey, wherever it ended, meant much to her. ‘You’ll receive enough gold to overload your coffers. Plus, the exact location of this man you seek.’
He served her a mock salute. ‘We have a deal.’
Her gaze drifted to the door like she was impatient to leave. ‘Does your cruiser have an A.I.? Can you contact it?’
‘I can use my wrist comm if you raise the comms block you’ve placed on me.’ He didn’t want to deny that he was already in neural contact with Mirage. Or that she’d blitzed past élisa’s ship’s firewalls with relative ease.
She leaned in, her voice lowering into urgency. ‘Please ask it to come here and tractor my boat into your bay. I believe it’s large enough to host my small skiff.’
‘Why?’
Fear tightened her face for the first time since he’d laid eyes on her. ‘Devils come after me.’
He made a few deductions based on what he learned on Neron N13. ‘Would they happen to be tall, beaked creatures?’
Her eyes widened, and she leaned forward, a fierce angst lacing her husky cry. ‘You know of the khōra ? Do you work for them or Noab?’
He lifted her hands to slow her roll of vitriol. ‘Woman, I know nothing of who or what you speak of. I only spotted them roaming the markets of the asteroid.’
She stared for a few minutes, chest heaving with emotion, flicking her eyes over his face, searching for the truth. ‘I sense you’re not lying. Those beasts are my worst enemy. And your ship is my best chance of evading them.’
A wave of concern rolled over him. ‘Are you in danger from them?’
‘What do you think?’ she shot back, then lifted a hand in apology. ‘Sorry, stranger. My problems are not your own.’
But they are my love. They always were, he thought, infused with a violent urge to exterminate her pursuers right there and then, if only to see her smile once more.
‘I can help you. But I first ought to know where we are going.’
She hesitated. ‘I’ll provide you with coordinates in due time. In the meantime, I need your vessel to cloak mine so my stalkers do not know my intended destination. This is imperative.’
A wild desperation ricocheted in her lilac eyes, and he wondered how terrifying the khōra were.
He spoke fast, keen to minimize her distress. ‘I can ask my A.I. to approach your vessel, and we can tractor you into our hold, using our stealth cloak to conceal movement. My A.I. can also play with Neron N13’s station feed and use your holo image to replace the real thing. Which will fool your pursuers, making them think you’re still at your parked position when, in fact, you’ll be thousands of klicks away.’
Her eyes lit up. ‘I’ll appreciate that.’
‘You’ll need to free me to pilot us.’
That’s when she gave a low laugh. ‘I’m not a fool, you know. What if you overpower me the second you’re out of that holding cell? Nada , the deal is that you summon your A.I. and have them track in my craft. So I can move from here onto your bridge unseen and pilot us to where I need us to go.’
He raised a brow. ‘You drive a hard bargain.’
‘I need to survive, Galician. Will you play?’
He shared a long, cold glare, masking his need for her and the answers he longed for. ‘Fine. I’ll comm my A.I. and give them your instructions.’
‘Also, let them know that I’ll need to take over and pilot your ship when we reach a challenging section of our excursion.’
He bucked. ‘What in the actual?’
‘ Naam . We have a nebula to traverse, which is a nary hop. We need to force through it. I barely make it myself in a toothless old aircraft with a sketchy model 0.2 hyperdrive that makes it a certified clunker. Without my piloting, you will fry like an egg or impact with the thousands of skeletons inside it.’
‘You jest?’
‘I jest not. It’s either my way or the highway.’
In the end, Riv capitulated. He had no choice.
élisa was adamant, and he was desperate for the truth and dead set on never letting her out of his sight again.
He gave Mirage a breakdown of élisa’s demands. ‘Do as she says,’ he stated into his wrist comm while his alluring captor watched on.
He switched to the Riders’ neural network.
Be careful. Watch her with care and only give her basic-level access to the piloting chair and controls.
Of course, the A.I. intoned.
She can’t know who we are, let alone my real identity.
Sawa.
She also can’t know about yours, so change your name and voice.
This is fun, the Sable AI returned. Will any moniker do?
Naam. Could you pick one and tell me? Now, please, as she’s waiting for an answer.
Mirage chuckled. I know. Sasha. It’s my alter ego.
Fokk, you have an alter ego?
Sure do. I use it when going incognito around other A.I.s.
Riv suppressed the sudden desire to suck his teeth and shake his head. Fine by me.
He looked up at the woman he’d yearned for over two decades. ‘My A.I. is called Sasha, and they’re now across what you require. Wait for them to fly my craft to us and enact your plan.’
élisa inclined her head once more. ‘I appreciate your cooperation. I’ll be back soon.’
She nodded and tracked out of the storage area.
Not before slapping a magnetized camera to the wall, flicking it on as she aimed it at him, and vanishing from sight.
He slumped onto the pallet, closed his eyes, and focused on his intent to reacquaint himself with this new version of his silver angel.
Riv flew off his feet and fell to the cell floor.
‘Freakin’ hell!’
Their flight was getting bumpy.
The turbulence threw Riv across his tiny prison, and he cursed at being unable to tap into his noids to stabilize himself.
His disguised boots had the best-inbuilt sensors in all of Pegasi, but he couldn’t use them, as they’d give him away.
His bounty hunter persona wouldn’t have access to Sable-level tech. So, he had to make do with downplaying his prowess.
Aware she was watching him on camera, Riv played the part of a nervous bondsman to a T, flailing with the chaos and pasting an outraged expression on his now-weathered face.
Further confirmation of her surveillance came when élisa’s voice emanated through the ship’s intercom. ‘Hold on, Galician. I see you’re struggling. It’s going to improve after we traverse this storm-filled nebula.’
He grimaced as his noids sensed the release of massive amounts of energy. Bracing himself against one of the cell’s walls, he reached out to his unseen companion.
How’s it going, Mirage?
It took a few moments before Riv got a response. The radiation and charged particles from the entity are wreaking havoc on Glimmer’s systems. I’m working overtime to compensate. My shields are at maximum, but we’re up for a beating.
Riv swore. élisa had no experience with a Sable-designed ship and was likely using more energy than needed to keep it under control . Can’t you take over the helm?
Mirage gave a mirthless chuckle. I would, but your woman is adamant about remaining behind the wheel. She seems to know what she’s doing, as right now I’d be flying blind.
I see. Do you have any insight as to our destination? Where élisa is piloting us?
The A.I. paused for a beat, and Riv imagined Glimmer traversing a problematic aspect of the madness roaring outside.
Still waiting, came the eventual response . Somewhere within that nebula, and at this stage, I can’t seem to see beyond this massive storm front. I can’t even send through a drone. Due to the immense tidal impacts of the event and weird relativistic effects like frame dragging, which may even affect the flow of time and energy in the region.
Riv pushed for more. The pursuers she mentioned? Any sighting of them?
Nada. They’ve no idea she got the Osprey away.
He cut in. The who?
Osprey 1102.1 is the name registered to the ship you’re on—the one in Glimmer’s bay.
Riv couldn’t rip the thought of her stalkers from his mind. Right. Anything further on what I tasked you with?
It’d been a few hours since they’d last spoken, and Riv hoped Mirage unearthed something he could work with.
The A.I. did. I have more on Noab Hakim.
Tell me everything. I need to stay occupied to stave off the nausea of this friggin heave machine.
Mirage made obligatory sounds of sympathy. He’s Falasian. When he was eight years old, Katánian marauders kidnapped him during a sudden ambush on his village.
Riv tilted his head, intrigued. The Katánē? Aren’t they some obscure apocalyptic conquest-drunk race?
Naam, the A.I. replied. They keep their marauding now to the outer badlands. But they’re a nasty, aggressive race with nothing to lose. War, raids, and attacks are their way of life, and they exist on the oppression of other weaker communities and planets. I believe the Sable Riders’ existence is one of the deterrents to their spread across Pegasi.
What more of Hakim?
After his kidnapping, his community embarked on a search for the boy. A meeting was arranged between the Falasians and a representative of the Katánians. The latter killed the Falasian envoy and took the rest of Hakim’s family, disappearing with them beyond the badlands. Raised as a Katánian, Hakim was finally retrieved years later when Falasian ships came across a marauding Katánian cruiser with a dozen half-dead soldiers. All were afflicted with a mysterious disease, except Hakim, because he was not of the same race.
Riv whistled under his breath. Fokkin’ tragic.
Mirage continued. Freed and returned to his home planet, Hakim became a famous scout working with the Falasian army.
Riv’s mouth dropped. He’s military-sanctioned?
Naam, Mirage confirmed. But it’s believed he still had links to Katánē and harbored the pillagers on Falasia while they undertook raids in the region. It’s thought he conducts secret missions on their behalf. Otherwise, he and his crew work with their scouts, called the khōra.
Riv jerked. Those are the same people élisa is evading if I’m to accept her word. They’re also the same kinais I encountered at the station.
Indeed. Hakim’s gang consists of outlaws infamous for their bloodthirst and their penchant for robbing or killing at will with cruelty. An M.O. he could have only learned from the Katánians. The out-take is that he’s dangerous, sketchy, quick-tempered, and brutal to the point of depravity.
Stunned, Riv scrubbed both his hands over his face. Sounds like quite the charmer. And the link to élisa?
I found proof of an existing contract over twenty years ago, showing he has been working with the Katánian khōra to search for her since then.
What for? Riv asked, urgency and worry lacing his thoughts.
Pole. I haven’t located anything more yet.
Has anyone seen a Katánian’s full features so we can ID them? I only caught glimpses at the station; most of their bodies were hidden under their cloaks.
Very little is found in all the databases I can access. I can’t find a thing. They’re phantoms and apparitions, unseen in the light of Alphetraz.
Sante, keep digging. What else is happening with the nebula?
During their silent conversation, Glimmer lurched through a roller-coaster of piloting moves.
élisa is a kickass helms-woman. She’s taken over Glimmer’s controls and is manually navigating through this crazy gale like she’s going on a summer flight, past multiple incapacitated ships.
Mirage sent an image of its A.I. view to Riv’s nodes, and his eyes widened when he saw giant ghost crafts loom in the shadows, illuminated by the lightning.
She’s fighting to skirt the wrecks, but the storm is taking its toll, and she’s having to dodge floating debris scorched beyond recognition.
Despite élisa’s caution, the distinct sound of rubble crashing into Glimmer’s sides reverberated through the vessel.
I understand why her ship is so damaged now, if she makes this trip every so often, Mirage noted. She has almost zero inertia dampers left, multiple breaches to the hull, and her external guns have sheared away over the years. She’s limping, a wreck that most pilots would avoid. Which means élisa is a badass fly girl.
An unexpected surge of pride overcame him. That’s my woman.
Except that she didn’t know it.
The thought sobered him up, and he fell into a long silence, giving in to brooding. A luxury he’d tried to avoid in recent years.
Existing so close to élisa was messing with his head.
He still had no clue why she’d jilted him. He also hadn’t said goodbye when she’d disappeared so long ago.
Instead, Riv’s world shattered when she ripped away from him with no warning, the cruel hand of fate blasting laser wounds through his heart that had never healed.
It’d been like élisa perished, and he’d become a walking wounded apparition, undead yet still breathing.
The pain, even to this day, was crippling.
For months after she’d gone, Riv thought it would kill him.
He’d often excuse himself from his fellow Riders to sob in private in the tunnels under Eden II anytime something reminded him of her.
Those fragments of memories still took his breath away and gave him palpitations.
It took years not to feel like he would vomit and fall apart every day.
Worse still, romance for him had been out of the question.
élisa had been such a massive part of his life, and after the angst he’d been through, Riv became terrified of ever falling in love again. He in no way wanted to be that broken again.
From time to time, he spiraled into depression and used alcohol to try to relieve the pain.
But he’d always wake up the next day after a vivid dream of élisa, yearning for her even more.
Riv missed her voice, laughter, and touch for years. Most of all, he longed for her love. He hadn’t seen a purpose in life anymore, and nothing brought him joy.
Riv spent hours raging at the gods for letting her get away. Over the years, he’d tortured himself, wondering if he could have done more to prevent her disappearance and to find her sooner.
He’d only found refuge in his work with the Riders and his friends’ support.
Their missions and unrelenting enterprise helped keep his mind busy, but only til the dark of night enveloped him.
The ache never left him.
One dawn, he had an epiphany. His soul would never be at peace until he located her and discovered why she’d gone.
So he set forth to scour the System for her.
Now, with her so close yet so far, he sat back against the heaving bulkhead, flush with a deep sadness.
Why élisa? Why?
Silence reigned, and he sighed. What a fokkin’ waste of years spent apart.
Hours later, after rocking through the never-ending space phenomenon, Riv sensed the vessel settle into a smoother flight.
‘We’re out of it.’
élisa’s announcement sounded tired, laced with exhaustion from fighting at the controls for a long time.
A measure of pity flooded Riv, mingled with a renewed regard for her.
The guessing game started again in his mind. Where was she taking him? And why?
He soon heard the loud squeal of the steel door opening into the storage deck.
His silver angel walked in, the light behind her obscuring her features.
She pressed a series of buttons, and the energized cell shield dropped.
Heart thumping in anticipation, he sat against the bulkhead, one knee bent and the other leg flat to the ground.
When she came closer, he looked up at élisa with what he hoped was a combination of disgust and fear, none of which he felt. ‘I hope you’re happy with yourself! I almost died in here. It was like rolling around in an empty tin can.’
Her mouth fell into a thin slash. ‘I didn’t make any promises about the luxury of your travel situation.’
Nothing was soft or endearing about her at that moment. She was a universe away from the woman he once cherished. Weary, beaten down, and, while still beautiful, more jaded than he’d remembered.
Oh my angel, where did your gentle soul disappear to?
She must have sensed his despair because her face softened. ‘Are you hurt in any way?’ easing off her hard edge.
There it was, his spirit cried out as Riv stared into her lilac eyes filled with a glimmer of genuine concern.
Unable to speak, he shook his head.
Her lips turned up at the ends. ‘Just your ego then.’
Riv found his voice once more. ‘In a manner of speaking. How does a bounty hunter like me let a wisp of a creature like you catch me?’
‘How indeed?’
His shock at seeing her had lent power to his fainting spell, but she’d also used a potent knock-out laser weapon on him. One still strapped to her hip.
He planned to ask her about it later.
She thrust a bulb of water and a food pack at him. ‘Eat. We’ll be landing soon, and we’ve got a hard trek ahead when we get boots on the ground.’
‘Where to?’
She only smirked and retreated, turning back on the cell shield before swinging away, her hips moving with such sway his cock twitched in his suit.
Fokk. She still had it.
Placing the rations beside him, he settled back on the pallet, settling into the discomfort he’d become familiar with.
He hadn’t eaten a meal since Neron N13 but wasn’t starving.
The nerves and fever of being so close to élisa were enough to whip away all appetite.
Sleeping was also out of the question.
But the toll of the last few days was beginning to wear on him, and it was harder now to stay awake.
Yet he refused to give in to weariness and exhaustion. Sleep could come later after discovering where élisa was taking him.
Once, while hunting down a target in Trevino in Galicia, where artists and maestros abounded, Riv chanced upon a book restorer.
The man, an Iccythrian master of the pages, showed him how to bring his small, rare leather-bound poetry volume back to life from its tattered, worn state.
The Rider spent many happy hours learning to separate the cover from the text block. He’d wielded a book-repair knife to remove old glue and debris found on the end paper.
He’d soaked the sheets in hot water and used a micro spatula to help separate them.
He’d then taught himself to touch up the leather-bound cover using an archival pen and sheets of thin gold to repair the gilt embossing.
He’d lovingly treated the tears on the folio with thin Japanese tissue and an archival rice-starch paste. Before gluing together the individual leaves, mull, hinges, and the decorative end sheet, back together.
He’d added antique end leaves and colored in the edges of his revitalized treasure. Adding another few hundred years of life to the words within.
Now, Riv sat up on the pallet and pulled the small brown and gold leather book out of his back pocket.
Opening the sweet and pungent-smelling pages, he lost himself in an epic poem by an old Earth poet.
‘THE DAY is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of night
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.
I see the lights of the village
Gleam through the rain and the mist
And a feeling of sadness comes o’er me
That my soul cannot resist:
A feeling of sadness and longing
That is not akin to pain
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.’
He forgot all about time and his surroundings, losing himself in expressions of semi-rhythmic long-suffering.
‘What are you doing?’
The words crashed into his prose-driven reverie.
He looked up to see élisa looming over him from the other side of the magnetized barrier.
His heart kicked, but he maintained calm as he met her cold, accusatory gaze.
‘Reading.’
She did, given the twist to her lips. ‘What exactly?’
‘Poetry.’
Her irises dilated. Sharing eloquent passages about love and life had been one of the passions they’d enjoyed all those many years ago.
Her eyes flicked around as she tried to process how she felt about his confession.
‘You’re familiar with balladry?’ he rasped, needling her. ‘Sonnets derived from the human condition and its wellspring of emotion?’
She tossed her head. ‘I fokkin ’ know what ballads are.’
‘You just don’t know how to feel about them.’
Her voice was an arctic clip. ‘Stranger, I don’t feel anything about your reading. I came by with your meal, and seeing an old-fashioned book in your possession, I was curious.’
Damn, she was so bewitching, even when outraged.
He nodded, conceding the point. ‘They are rare in Pegasi.’
She narrowed her eyes at the volume that looked tiny in his oversized Ribau paws. ‘Where did you find that one?’
He was confident she would not recognize it as the same one he’d read to her years ago. Its cover was new, and the pages were ivory-colored from age instead of their former white.
‘A book master on Galicia restored it.’ He fudged his meaning, hoping she’d let its provenance go.
‘Would you like me to share a passage?’ he chanced, raising the book toward her while keeping his face innocent.
An even colder expression fell on her features, her eyes darting around as if a memory had been triggered. ‘No, stranger. Keep your words to yourself.’
She touched the control panel on the side of his cell, which led to a small opening in the barrier.
She placed a tray of food through it, gave him yet another enigmatic look, straightened, and left.
Her hip-rolling exit, although rushed, was ever more sensuous to Riv.
He guessed why she’d fled, and he smiled, for the language of poetry was one indefensible weapon.
Perhaps it’d form the basis for a salvo over the bow to get through to her.