[ Watashi ]

[ Tomodachi ]

[ Saint Seiya ]

[ Clamp ]

[ Fanfiction ]

Well, you know the drill. I'm back from Greece, which means I did spend my days writing, yada yada yada...

So, hello and welcome to yet another weird Saint Seiya fic from yours truly.
For some reason, I can’t seem to stop exploring the possibilities of what the future might hold for the Saints of Athena. Please, address all complains to the void inside my brain, but I fear it’ll be slow in responding, and I’m not sure it’ll ever consider mending its unseemly ways!

Enjoy the ride!

Fuu-chan.

The low hum of quiet conversations was being interrupted by louder exclamations from time to time, but that wasn’t what had drawn my attention away from the reports I was busy browsing through. No, what had disturbed me had been an abrupt shift in the shoulders of the young man sitting on my left. With a small sigh, I scanned the huge conference room, following my companion’s gaze, and quickly found the source of his sudden interest.

There.

A middle-aged woman was making her way through one of the foremost rows of seats, a strange, almost imperceptible wobble in her gait. Her shoulder-length brown hair, streaked with grey, looked like she didn’t deem it worth her time to spend long minutes in front of a mirror with comb and hair spray every morning. There was nothing in her clothes or face which could have captured the attention of an eighteen years old adolescent, nothing in her dark brown eyes or the angular lines of her jaw and nose. It was the overall feeling of unbalance the sight of the woman gave rise to in the mind of the Earth-born, bred and bound apprentice by my side. It was the impossible length of her legs, the thinness of her limbs and body that gave off the eerie sensation that the woman wasn’t real--a ghost haunting the hall.

“Stop gawking,” I murmured in an absentminded voice. As I made to refocus on the documents Aquila Ezio had handed me just this morning, the faintest of snorts reached my ears. From the corner of an eye, I caught the almost imperceptible motion of a shoulder lifting in what was bound to be a shrug. My lips curled up in a smile, I blinked and *hit*. Not too hard, of course, but still the foolish boy on my left drew a sharp intake of breath and clutched at his stomach with the right hand. “Behave, Theirn,” I tried very hard to stifle the laughter bubbling up my throat when I saw heat rush to his cheeks, “you know better.” And he did. Being apprenticed to a Gold Saint was the highest honor of all for most of those who lived in the Sanctuary, but none other than those few chosen ones knew the truth behind that apparent glory: that Gold Saints were merciless masters, harsh and unforgiving, and that there was no disregarding the smallest of their words, no getting away with anything they frowned upon or ordered. I was no exception to those rules.

Still, boys had to be boys. They had to do pranks, to disobey and misbehave, even though they knew they’d get caught and disciplined. It was expected and natural. It was human. We all were, in spite of the myths and legends cloaking us. It was likely Theirn couldn’t envision this, but I had been an unruly teen too, an insufferable brat who had caused master Nominoë far more trouble than he had me. Leaning back against my chair, I turned to the left and met a pair of dark blue eyes. He would know, eventually. When his time came and Aries embraced him, Theirn would know. How precious he was to me, how I loved him--how all Gold Saints loved the heirs to their name. But right now, all he was feeling was utter surprise and frustration. His lips started shaping the word “how”, then he exhaled a deep breath of air, and nodded.

“What is she?” he asked me. Anger had washed away from his gaze to be replaced with bright curiosity. Earth-born that he was, bound that he had been--but no longer. Setting my eyes on the weirdly shaped woman once more, I watched her take her seat in slow, careful motions, folding her immense legs under her. “She’s like a grasshopper,” Theirn mused beside me.

A chuckle escaped me at those words, undeniable. It was true enough, what he had said. The woman’s motions had something of the insect to them. Still, human she was, like the both of us. “She comes from one of the low gravity worlds,” I explained. “After so many generations, bones thinned and bodies lengthened to adapt to the environment...with a little help from gene-therapists, of course.” Pivoting to face the screen on my right, I touched the spot representing the seat she had taken, and nodded to myself. “Lydia Darchamp,” I read aloud, “head of the astrophysics research department in the ministry of Science on Aviary.” Turning back to Theirn, I added, “Gravity on that world is approximately seven times lower than on Earth.”

Aviary was a small planet orbiting an old star far out in the Gemini octant, close to the nadir edge of the Milky Way. A tiny place so remote from Earth, that they had no representative in the old United Federation of Planets organization--like too many of the Halo Side worlds. Earth’s governance allowed this, allowed colonies to drift away; it refused to review and radically change its sluggish, heavy management machinery to include all the places humanity had swarmed to. A terrible mistake, that, but the immense power of the Sanctuary ended on its borders, and on the doorstep on the Graad Foundation. I suspected that the Marinas of Poseidon weren’t as tightly bound as we were, but still they had been unable to prevent the slow estrangement of the Halo Side worlds from Earth to grow with the years. It had been almost two centuries since humankind had taken to the stars, eight generations of men and women, and more than forty generations of politicians. People’s memories were so small--

“How come she can even walk in here, then?” There was incredulity in Theirn’s voice, and I snapped out of my silly reverie to refocus on him. “She should be crawling in the hall, crushed by Confluence’s gravity.”

“True,” I smiled at my apprentice, “but get a look at what she’s wearing at her belt.” In the same time, I touched an option on the monitor set before us, requesting a camera zoom on the woman. “That,” I pointed toward a small disk that could have been mistaken for a buckle, but for the green light flashing at regular intervals from a tiny diode in the middle of it, “is an IGA. An individual gravity adjuster. People from low gravity worlds always carry them when they travel coreward.”

“Carry?” Theirn blinked. “You mean that Confluence has no facilities, nothing to accommodate people who come from lower gravity planets?”

My smiled twisted into a grimace, and I shrugged one shoulder. “Confluence is the main science station of the Aries octant. It orbits the fifth planet of Alpha Pavonis, a great yellow star at the inner edge of the galaxy’s Orion arm. This place,” I added, my mouth drawn in a thin line, “is as Core Side as you can get. Everything is viewed through that filter here. Everything is Earth-centered. Earth, and Alpha Pavonis’ position within the galactic disk, even closer to the galactic core than Earth is. When your neighboring stars are stark whites and bright giant blues, why would you even consider the existence of cold, old and dying systems rotting at the Fringe?”

“It seems an unfair thing to do.” Uncertainty was shadowing Theirn’s gaze, and incomprehension.

“You’re not using the right frame of reference,” I retorted. Softly I went on, “It’s the correct economic thing to do. Think, Theirn. How much stellar wind does a star like Sirius spawn, compared to a Betelgeuse-type sun? How many more solar farms can you set up here compared to what you could do in the Aviary system?”

The young man’s eyes narrowed. “Many,” he heaved out a sigh, “many more. Why must it always be about profit?” There was the smallest hint of a whine in the question. That wouldn’t do.

“Short-term profit,” I corrected him. “And,” I added, reaching out to him and closing the fingers of my left hand over his wrist, “because they’re human. Because we’re all of us human. They, you, me,” I squeezed his wrist, not ungently, “we’re all flesh and blood--light and dark.”

Theirn bowed his head. “I know. It’s just that--” Young. He was young, and at an age at which one could entertain fancy ideas of utopia and be a naive idealist. It was a luxury most in the Sanctuary couldn’t afford. Idealism, if allowed to take roots too deep, led to disillusion, resentment and eventually contempt, even dislike for humanity as a whole.

“They’re who and what they are,” I interrupted him, “not what your heart and mind would like them to be. Just like,” I gave his right shoulder a pat, “you’re not the absolutely perfect apprentice I once fantasized I’d get,” I finished with a grin. That sparked a small flame in the blue eyes, and I let him get away with the snort that escaped him. “Now,” I nodded toward the front rows of the great hall, “be silent and listen.” Before us, the annual Astrophysics and Quantum Mechanics Convention of Confluence station was starting its closing session.

Scientists from all eight galactic octants came to attend this series of conferences, representatives from all major governments and envoys from the almighty multi-stellar companies, as well as groups of badly under-funded people from the Halo Side worlds. It was a gathering of bright, beautiful minds, one of the rare events which could still bring Core Side and Halo Side citizens together. The answer I had given Theirn hadn’t been complete: it wasn’t just short-term profit which drew the eyes of the planetary authorities on Earth and any world set closer to the galactic core. There was another, powerful motive for their blindness to the colder, redder stars of the galactic halo: humanity’s ever growing need for energy supplies, ores and resources. The flamboyant blue and white stars strewing the Sagittarius arm and beyond, toward the Milky Way’s heart, were the main reliable energy source for most of the human-inhabited worlds and stations. They were perceived as the lifeblood of humanity, and so naturally all the attention of many authorities was focused on them.

It suited us fine.

It suited Poseidon’s Marinas fine.

Let them not look outward.

Let them set their gaze inward, toward the blinding light of the cradle of stars that was the galactic core.

Away from the dark.

But night wouldn’t be forgotten. As it had in all times, it beckoned, mysterious and frightening. Alluring. Even the best thought-out plan could backfire. So I was reminded, when the impossibly long-limbed woman from Aviary stood up and took her turn at the mike. When one averted one’s gaze from places where people lived, when those people ceased to be variables in one’s equation, and one let them fend for themselves, they didn’t just curl up and die. They endured, they looked for solutions and survived, no matter what.

So Aviary and all the Halo Side worlds were doing.

“Impossible!” came a sudden shout from one of the back rows. A loud rumor traversed the crowd of attendees, like a great wind washing over the rows of people and bowing them as if they’d been mere reeds. “What about your cosmological constant?” someone called from the front seats.

“There is no known observation to back up your claim, Lydia.” A woman had stood up at the left end of the second row, and she had activated her own link to the conference room’s sound system. “We’ve been witnessing the death of the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy for centuries. There should be disturbances in the flow of its star clusters raining down on our own Milky Way while it’s busy ingesting its tiny sister. And yet,” the woman spread her arms wide. “Nothing. Everything adds up. The gravitational field forecasts are a perfect match for all the data we’ve been receiving. If dark matter was to be found in huge chunks beyond the galactic halo, we’d have gotten something from those readings.”

“Just how do you know that nothing’s happening?” Lydia Darchamp shot back, her eyes bright with conviction and a wide smile uncovering her teeth. “Remind me, Maya, how old are the telescope arrays beyond Pluto, you know, the few ones Earth has set to look Rimward instead of coreward?

“Well,” the woman named Maya faltered, “I--”

“One hundred and eighty three years old, two months and five days to be exact,” Lydia Darchamp cut her off, the same light shining in her eyes. “During that time, many improvements were made to research instruments aimed coreward, and Rimward--nothing. And yet, you claim the data you get from those obsolete telescope arrays is flawless and perfectly accurate?”

“No.” This time, an old man from the back rows had stood up. “But theories without any way to prove them or disprove them, with no possible observations to back them up are just that: theories with no fruitful results in sight, and we have more important things to focus our energies upon.”

“Who said there were no observations available?” Lydia Darchamp retorted, honey dripping from her voice. In the stunned silence that followed her words, she went on, “Our new spyglass lens is only a few months old, and we still need to gather more data before any official publication is scheduled, but the preliminary results do match the theory. Here,” she waved toward a man as awkwardly long-limbed and thin as she, “let me show you. Daniel, will you upload the data on Confluence’s internal network?” With a nod, the man plugged a console-like device into the conference hall’s network, and almost at once chaos erupted among the attendees.

“All they do is argue and fight among themselves,” Theirn spat beside me, contempt and dislike plain in the set of his shoulders. In front of us, some scientists were actually studying the data they’d just been given, while others were considering the possibility of this dramatic and unexpected development being nothing other than a clever fabrication. Two or three others had even angrily called Lydia Darchamp a fraud. The great hall looked a mess, and yet--

“You’re wrong,” I replied softly and smiled, unable to help myself when I saw people get up from their seats and gather in small groups, bending over monitors.

Pointing here and there.

Arguing in low voices.

Talking.

Focused.

The same light inflaming their gazes.

Time seemed to slow down to a crawl, as if it had stopped ticking to watch this unexpected fork in the many paths of destiny.

Eventually it grew bored, and released its spell on the convention room. “All right,” the woman who had first confronted Lydia Darchamp cleared her throat, and silence reclaimed the hall. Maya Carolingian was her name, and she was also Confluence station’s top scientist, and this gathering’s host. “We won’t make a full analysis of those data over a few minutes. Not even over a few hours,” she blew air through her nostrils. “Quite a few of us have ships outbound before the end of this day-cycle, and jumpgate schedules cannot be changed so easily. So here’s what we’ll do: in an Earth year, we’ll have our next meeting, and our next budget discussion. Until then, we’ll evenly split the governmental and industrial financing between Core and Halo Side science stations.” Low growls met this sentence, but Maya Carolingian wasn’t so easily intimidated. Bowing as if in thanks to the few disgruntled scientists on her right, the petite woman continued, “In a year, we’ll have analyzed these data, and you’ll have more for us to check out. Both theories will keep being explored. Whether dark matter and dark energy are hiding beyond the galactic halo or are the stuff of the black holes haunting the Milky Way’s heart, we will soon find out. And no matter what we find, we will step forward.” Taking a breath, she pivoted to face the whole room, and then lifted up her left hand. “Give me a vote on this. All in favor, hands up in the air!”

For a moment, her words hung in silence. Nobody moved. Than a hand went up. And another. And another. Within a few minutes, a forest of hands had risen in the hall.

“Thank you,” Maya Carolingian nodded. “The annual Astrophysics and Quantum Mechanics convention of Confluence is now closed. See you again next year. Lydia!” she waved to the long-limbed woman, “expect to see me at your doorstep on Aviary before the month is out!”

“I’ll be waiting for you,” the other replied, then she bent down to retrieve her computer pad, and walked away. Before us, all the groups that had gathered to gape at the data so unceremoniously dumped upon their certitudes dissolved, and the crowd made to exit the convention center.

“I don’t believe this,” came Theirn’s hushed voice beside me.

“You only heard their voices”, I told him gently. He was an apprentice, and as such he was forbidden from using his power, his cosmo to touch any normal human being. All he had had at his disposal had been the five senses all men and women possessed. “You stopped there, when you should have noticed the light in their eyes. In spite of personal ambitions, of pride and futile quests for glory, these are scientists. They’re one, a true community. And when people gather as they do, and give all their hearts and minds to achieve the same thing, nothing can stand in their way. Nothing can stop them. Differences of opinions, fights or disagreements are nothing.”

No, nothing could stop them.

Not too low government financing.

Not careful lobbying of companies controlled by the Graad Foundation or the Solo family.

Not even us.

The golden liquid slid upon my tongue and then down my throat. For a moment, I closed my eyes. “Too sweet.” I wrinkled my nose.

“Ah.” On the opposite side of the table I was sitting at, Aquila Ezio gave a deep bow, all but touching his brow to the table’s surface. “Please accept my humblest apologies, Lady Aries.” I stared at the fair head bowed before me, its blonde hair gathered in a pony tail, and rested my chin upon the palms of my hands, elbows leaning on the table.

“Ezio, cut the crap right now, will you?” I said, my voice pleasant and calm. The green eyes of my reflection in the mirror behind him were alight with mirth. Staring at those, I blinked, but the smile splitting my face just wouldn’t go away. For the time of a heartbeat, I took in the pitiful sight of my short-cropped dark red hair, and thought for the thousandth time that I made a truly mediocre Gold Saint.

Gold Saints were the stuff of legends, haughty and strikingly beautiful figures. I was neither beautiful, nor striking. Average was what described me best, be it in size or in terms of prettiness. Crowds would never part in wonder and awe before me: my nose wasn’t small enough, and my chin was just a tad too angular. My shoulders, too wide and my waist simply nowhere near bone-thin. Not to mention that I wasn’t over six feet tall.

Fine. You stop finding fault with yourself first. The thought cleaved the air between us, sharp as a knife’s blade. Ezio was staring at me steadily, a knowing light in his grey eyes.

Silver, and strong.

Perceptive--and unafraid of me.

“Pfeh.” I drank another, long swallow of the Muscat wine, and grimaced again. “White suns are too hot; their light is too strong to allow for good wine-making.” It came from the planet Confluence was orbiting, and no matter how much money went into investment in ultra-violet filters and temperature dampeners, it’d never come close to rivaling with an Earth-made wine.

“For your Earth-born palate, maybe,” Ezio shrugged, “but it suits Confluence citizens fine. And when you’re stationed here, you’d better adapt or you’ll be in for a very unhappy two years.” He was referring to the cycle all Silver and Bronze Saints were subject to: spending two years on a station to man the local jumpgate and monitor human activities, and then being moved to another place, alternating between industrial and agricultural worlds.

“I’m sorry,” I offered him. I was. It was a harsh life they all led, always moving, never allowed to grow roots, until one day they found someone to replace them, someone born under the same constellation as they, and who could be taught to harness the power of the stars within.

They should be. They. Not you. the thought was again incredibly clear, and at the surface of Ezio’s mind, open for me to read. You come to us, Fi. You traverse hyperspace and you touch us, you see us--feel us. You link us all together. You anchor us. Gratitude flooded me, tied to the thoughts, and the deep love of true friendship--and, deep beneath layers of emotions, the sullen red of anger, mixed with the tile grey of weariness.

Theirn was focused on Ezio, a line barring his brow. There was no spark of cosmo emanating from him, but still he knew that something was amiss with the Aquila Saint. Nothing, I sent the quiet thought his way. Nothing you or I can do. It’s Ezio’s, and he can take care of himself. Our presence here is enough for him. Let it rest, Theirn. A flick of his eyes, and an imperceptible nod answered me.

“And what did you think of Confluence’s grand scientific convention?” Ezio asked all of a sudden, his blue gaze set on Theirn’s. The apprentice’s eyes widened, and I stifled a chuckle by drinking another sip from my glass.

“Nothing,” the young man grumbled. Then, facing me he added, “Why were we even there watching these people?”

For a while, I allowed silence to reclaim the spacious recreation area of the local Graad Foundation office. The room was empty but for us and Graad Foundation personnel, and it was also one of the too rare places outside of the Sanctuary where we could drop masks, feel safe and let go--just a bit. Uncertainty flashed in Theirn’s eyes, and at last I granted him mercy. “Why don’t you tell me, Theirn, Aries Apprentice?” I asked him gently. Softly.

Use your mind, Theirn.

Think.

There’s no rest for the heir of a Gold Saint.

No time-out.

No end to training.

The adolescent drew in a deep breath, and I saw him turn his gaze inward. “We witnessed the clash of two popular theories on dark matter and dark energy,” he said slowly, feeling his way into this day’s events. “We saw the Halo Side scientists oppose their Core Side peers, and in the end come to a compromise--split financing in equal halves. That means Halo Side worlds will be able to fund true research for the first time in more than ten years. To prove their theories valid, they’ll aim their new observation device outward, toward the galactic halo and beyond....” Theirn’s voice halted, and he blinked. “This was about Thomas’ obsession with the Rim!”

“Lord Gemini to you, kid!” Ezio burst out laughing. His first run away from Earth? he glanced my way.

Indeed. I lifted my glass. It’s high time he learnt that humanity is not Earth, that it’s so rich and diverse one can’t pretend to watch over it while sitting one’s ass in one’s temple at the heart of the Sanctuary.

Ezio rolled his eyes ceilingward. I didn’t know Gold Saints were allowed to curse or use slang.

I’m the shame of the order, I smiled at my friend.

“Whatever!” Theirn spat in answer to Ezio’s earlier words, smoldering resentment plain in his tone and in the shadow swirling in his gaze.

I bruised his pride, I think. Ezio hid a smile behind the palm of his right hand.

Let him be, he’ll survive.

Do you remember us being so young as that? Wistfulness was almost palpable in the air.

“No longer than an Earth year ago,” I said aloud, “you challenged me to read your thoughts and break your mental block--and lost your bet miserably,” I grinned at him.

He scoffed at that. “Not so long ago, then. Maybe there’s still hope left for us.” We were both twenty-seven, born less than a month apart, and almost children in the eyes of anyone not belonging to the Sanctuary.

Powers in a universe humanity didn’t know anything about.

Decision makers who could fling fate aside with the strength of their will.

Watchers.

And the burden set on our shoulders weighed heavier than a cluster of stars.

In front of me, Ezio stood up and walked over to the bar. “Want something else? he called from above his right shoulder.

“Coffee?” Theirn’s voice was tentatively hopeful.

Laughter danced in Ezio’s eyes. “Not exactly. Botanists are still to find any caffeine-rich plant on Confluence. But we have the whole artificial range, even Arabica if you wish.”

With a sharp wave of the left hand, Theirn declined the offer, and added in a plaintive tone, “Why can’t any of these worlds produce coffee beans? You’d think they’d import seeds from Earth and grow the damn thing!”

“No can do,” I shook my head, then looked at Ezio. “Herbal infusion. Whatever local leaf you have that’ll ease tension.”

“I’ll have the same then,” Theirn heaved out a sigh beside me. “Why not?” he turned toward me, a stubborn light in his gaze.

“Xeno-biology basics, such as they apply to a world whose name appears on the fragile eco-systems’ list,” Ezio replied in my stead while heating a kettle. “When a world’s ecosystem is too weak to adapt to alien elements, you can’t disturb it. You’d trigger reactions if you did, whose consequences could be terrible. You could eradicate whole indigenous species just to satisfy the human craving for caffeine.”

“The Goddess knows why, but a huge majority of the Core Side worlds fall into that category,” I supplied. This meant that genuine coffee or tea were luxury items only the high ranking managers or politicians could afford once away from Earth and Core Side--which suited Earth Companies and Merchanter clans fine, of course.

“Inconvenient,” Theirn pursed his lips then, cocking his head to the side, he went on, “and also highly unlikely. The odds that among hundreds of worlds we couldn’t find a single one that’s home to a caffeine-producing plant must be rather amusing to compute.”

“Who said that two hundred and fifty-six planets make for a valid statistical sample? Ours is a vast galaxy.” Ezio gave a shrug while coming back to our table bearing a plate on which a tea pot and three cups were set.

Spark.

Just as the plate’s balance shifted, I snapped the fingers of my right hand and held the tea pot with my mind, forbidding it to spill its contents. Beside the pot, the cups seemed to wobble, and then stabilized. Ezio didn’t so much as blink, and calmly set his burden on our table as if nothing untoward had ever happened. Then he sat down, and proceeded to fill our cups in silence. At once, steam went up in the air, bearing with it the scent of alien fruits and herbs. For a moment, I closed my eyes, and breathed it in. “Sorry.” In slow, lazy motions, Ezio and I turned toward Theirn. “I’m sorry,” he repeated, biting his lower lip.

He hadn’t bowed his head.

He was looking straight at us, unflinching.

“Don’t be,” Ezio smiled with deceptive gentleness, “Fi was there to prevent the tea pot from toppling, and I knew she’d do so. No harm was done. Had she not been there,” my friend’s smile revealed his teeth as he said, “I’d have had you clean up every single glass shard from the floor and the table empty-handed, before having you clean the whole room and wash all the dishes of the station personnel’s next meal.”

Theirn’s blue eyes never wavered. Clear and true, they confronted Ezio’s steady gaze. “Of course,” my apprentice nodded at last, “you would have moved away and avoided getting anything spilled on you, instead of attempting to catch everything and prevent the fall from happening.” Hissing air out of his lungs, the adolescent added, “And chances are you even felt the spark of my cosmo.”

Laughter met that last sentence, and Theirn did look away this time. “Scant chance of my telling you whether I did or not, *boy*.” Theirn’s cheeks flushed crimson when he heard the mocking emphasis Ezio had put on the word “boy”. I must really be growing old, the thought flashed at the surface of my friend’s mind, to allow myself to be annoyed by mere pranks and the angry reactions of an apprentice.

Reaching for my cup, I brought it to my lips and took a careful sip from it. “Hmm, good,” I purred. It’s the end of a long day that tested all our patience. I hear you had ten convoys to guide through the jumpgate, and Theirn hated the conference from beginning to end. Let him make mistakes and learn from them. It’s good for him. I sent the thought his way with the equivalent of a mental shrug.

“Next time,” the adolescent had found the strength to face Ezio once again, “I won’t underestimate you, and I’ll make sure my master is nowhere near to thwart my intent,” he finished with a defiant smile.

As those words resounded in the room, Ezio’s eyes widened, then he tilted his head backward and laughed--a true, genuine burst of laughter that was a release from the day’s weariness and eased the Silver Saint’s taut inner balance. “We’ll see,” Ezio grinned and he added, looking at me askance, “if you can win over the insufferable arrogance and self-assurance that make all Gold Saints real pains to deal with--the worst among them being the stupid brat who can find glory in being associated with a dumb ram.”

A loud sigh escaped me. “And am I supposed to humor you, little Aquila?” I asked in an idle voice, before drinking another sip from my cup. In the same time, Ezio’s chair disappeared from under him, to materialize less then two steps away. The Silver Saint dropped to the floor in an unceremonious heap. “That infusion,” looking down at him, I lifted my cup as it to drink to his health, “is too good to waste on the likes of you. See,” I pivoted toward Theirn, “this is how you put Silver Saints back in their proper place.”

Theirn’s eyes switched from Ezio to me, and he whistled through his teeth. “I didn’t feel anything at all,” he admitted quietly.

“No,” I sat back against my chair, “and neither did he. Up, you!” I waved toward Ezio. “Get yourself from the floor and drink with us, why don’t you?”

Bully. I snorted as I picked up the sour thought, and Ezio did stand up, got his chair back and sat down in front of me. For a while there was silence, calm and companionable. Soothing, even. Then Ezio dragged in a breath and said, setting his empty cup on the table, “Anything of note during the convention?”

A joyless smile touched my lips. He had to ask, of course, but I resented the necessity for him to do so--which didn’t allow him to discard duty for more than a few minutes of peace. It was not fair that this burden be placed on Silver and Bronze’s shoulders. Not fair at all. “How about you?” I countered, “Have you noticed anything in the last Earth year?”

Silence.

Silence, motionless. Not even a shake of the head or the half-shrug of a shoulder. Uncertainty had darkened Ezio’s gaze, and exhaustion. A slow unraveling of the soul which grew each time his crew and he opened and closed the local jumpgate, and stretched themselves to guide ships through, pulling them out of the immensely powerful streams of hyperspace to bring them safely ashore. Machinery alone couldn’t do it, no matter how sophisticated. Human science had undergone fantastic breakthroughs, it had produced jumpgates and spaceships, but it had never managed to tame or even understand the savage ocean of hyperspace--the calm, calm waters which could rise in lethal storms within the time of a heartbeat and crush whole fleets of ships like ants.

Hyperspace was chaos and illusion. Beautiful and appealing, and deadly. Human beings were intruders there. Their puny scanners and probes couldn’t read it or predict its abrupt mood swings.

We could.

We, the Saints of Athena and the Marinas of Poseidon.

Why this was so, nobody could fathom. In all times, we had been bound to Earth and to the Oceans, in the service of the gods and goddesses of old. Protectors of humanity. We were land and water, not sky. Never sky. And yet, when we had been left with no other choice than to allow humankind’s bid for the stars and follow them into the dark, we had found--

Kinship, alien and frightening.

Horribly strong streams of energy that linked all the stars in our galaxy and bound them together in pathways we could see, could feel, and walk if we dared.

Voices, like the winds and storms.

Music, wild and enthralling.

Hyperspace beckoned, it called to us, it sang to the marrow in our bones and to the essence of our beings. It was a terrifying, wonderful thing to feel. And to keep one’s head, to resist the ceaseless call and master it-- At first, we had shied away from it, but when spaceships had started challenging it, had dived through jumpgates never to return, their crews forever lost, we had done what we must.

We had shielded them.

We had guided them--we were guiding them still.

Because they had no choice but to reach the stars that shone in the Earth’s night sky, to find other worlds and other resources. Space and energy, food, if humanity was to survive and find a balance one day. It had grown too fast in the century that had followed the entry into the third millennium. There had been wars. Millions and millions had died. And we had been forced to watch while they slaughtered each other, until they had finally looked up to the stars.

Until the Sanctuary had had no other alternative than to avert its gaze and allow the blindfold carefully set upon human eyes to come off. And it was Bronze and Silver who paid the price. Not Gold. Not precious Gold, who sat their priceless asses comfortably in the Sanctuary and spent their days lazing around under Greece’s sun, or agonizing over dusty legends and dark forebodings whispered in the winds over Cape Sounio. We should be the ones doing this. We should be the ones to keep the hyperspace routes stable and hold the wild streams in check. We, the Gold Saints. But Thomas hated space, and Shui, and Orion. Bigots, the lot of them.

Sending my anger away with a snort, I refocused on Ezio, and broke the eerie silence that had shrouded the room. “Tell me,” I murmured. “No matter how insignificant or ridiculous it may seem. Let me be the judge of whether or not it should matter. If warning must be sent, I’ll take care of it.”

In a slow, slow motion, my friend’s shoulders sagged, and tension ebbed out of him even as a smile crept up his lips. “Nothing much happened during the last year. Solar farms’ harvests came on time, but still prices went up.” A shrug accompanied that last sentence, and Ezio paused, drawing in a breath. Then: “the shipments from Core were late. Twice. Oh, not by much, but they were,” he spat out the word, “late.” Irony twisted his smile. “I’m sure it doesn’t mean anything.”

Metal shipments and grain, and fruits, and enriched, extremely pure uranium. And hydrogen.

“You’re right,” I nodded at him, filing away the information for future analysis. There was a pattern there, in those delays that Confluence had experienced--Confluence, Azure, Centerpoint, and Threshold, the giant station orbiting Jupiter, which served as a mandatory entry point in Earth’s solar system for all incoming ships. All had known small delays in the supply chain, which surely were nothing more than glitches in our overly complex system of schedules and routes. Yet-- “Thanks,” I gave Ezio another nod.

“Hold,” he interrupted me, raising his right forefinger to his lips. When he frowned, I realized his ear feed had come live. “No.” He grimaced. “No, it won’t do.” Our night-shift is diminished, we have several operators on leave, and other undergoing medical treatment after being burnt out by stunts like this one.” His jaw set, Ezio shook his head, his gaze set on things only he could see. “No,” he repeated in a tight voice. “I don’t care how much you’re willing to pay in bonus to get your convoy routed to Confluence in priority, sir. I’m not risking a single jumpgate operator to allow you to erase your delay and make a huge profit.”

Give it to me. I gestured toward Ezio, who shot me a dark look. Now. Hissing air through his teeth, he complied.

“This is unacceptable!” I winced as I heard a man yelling in my left ear, in the moment I put the comm gear in place. “And I won’t stand for this! Palm’s shipment of graphite is expected on Earth, and--“

“And you will stop harassing Graad Foundation personnel immediately, whoever you are,” I told the very thin, diminutive mike set before my lips in a sweet, pleasant voice.

“Who’s--?”

“If you do not, I will shut down your jumpgate and forbid all transport to reach or leave Palm until such time as a poor witless fuck like you is removed from office,” I continued, unconcerned and unimpressed by stupid, insignificant human shows of force, be they verbal or otherwise.

“I’ll get your head for this! You--“

“Aries Fiammetta,” I filled in, “pilot and captain of the jumpship Hamal.” Silence followed. Silence, and static through the horribly costly hyperspace comm link set between Confluence’s and Palm’s jumpgates. When it became obvious the man on the other side understood exactly what he was dealing with, and how dangerous his current situation was, I resumed, “If you, or any other like you on any station of the eight octants ever try to do something like this, you’ll live to regret the mistake.” Something like a shuddering breath, hundreds of lightyears and a sea of chaos away. “Jumpgate schedules are absolute. Government heads heed them, multi-stellar corporations heed them, and greedy fools like you also do. Be they stationmasters or leaders of local Merchanter guilds. Now, bugger off.” With that, I terminated the hyperspace link, and handed back the comm gear to Ezio.

“What have you done?” he shook his head.

“What you should have done a long time ago,” I growled at him. “If he tries to bully you again, him or anybody else, you will warn me, and I will shut down their jumpgate.”

“You would, at that,” he said, his voice shaking with what might have been laughter.

“Yeah,” I replied softly, reaching out to Aquila Ezio, who was my friend, and who was exhausted, ceaselessly hounded by hyperspace’s ethereal song and the demands of fools who had no idea what they owed the man sitting before me, and all the others like him. “Never doubt that, moron.” I wrinkled my nose at him, even as I let my cosmo enfold him and steady him. Warm him.

“Right back at you,” he sighed, and closed his eyes.

Theirn flailed his arms wildly when Hamal lurched in its berth. “Whoa!” the young man yelped, catching his balance just in time for the great jumpship to swing the other way. Muffled clangs rang through the main deck, as mooring clamps were automatically released by Confluence’s central navigation management system in ops. In answer, Hamal started a slow, slow dance, as if eager to be unfettered and away from the prison they called a space station.

“Hamal,” intra-station comm came alive, and a girl not much older than Theirn popped into existence on the main view screen. “This is ops reporting. Undocking procedure will take another five minutes to complete. Your path outward will then be clear except for a passenger transport incoming from Delta Pavonis.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I replied with a flick of the right hand, “we’ll stay clear of all standard approach vectors.” The young woman’s eyes were shining, and there was the slightest hint of rush in her words, all signs of exhilaration and evident worship I wanted nothing to do with. “Stay sharp, kid,” I berated her. “Hamal is nothing to gawk over, and certainly no excuse to space out and forget your duties.”

“O--of course,” she blabbered, bobbing her head half in ascent, and half in shame. “Forgive me, Lady Aries.”

“Sure,” I snorted, and then I relented with a sigh. “Thank you for your assistance. The Goddess be with you all,” I bowed at her. “Hamal, out.” With that, I cut off the intra-station comm link, and switched the jumpship’s communication system over to trans-gate carrier waves. Checking the time from the corner of an eye, I arched an eyebrow when I noticed that Theirn was still walking about the deck as if we were still safely immobilized at our berth. Just as I opened my mouth to warn him, Hamal lurched sideways--a strong, powerful lurch as the last docking clamps were released, and the jumpship abruptly found itself free to move about.

Laughter filled the deck, youthful and carefree, proud also, and I couldn’t help chuckling when I saw that Theirn had managed to keep an almost perfect balance through the brutal motion. “Getting your space legs at last?” I asked him.

“Yes!” He nodded, his hands closed into tight fists. It was a victory for him, a hard-won one. Jumpships weren’t designed to accommodate passengers or dampen the effect their motions triggered on deck.

Jumpships were tuned to their pilots, or more correctly to their pilot’s other half, to groups of stars whose names defined the essence of nineteen men and women. Hamal and Aries were bound, and through that bond I could feel the great ship, be at one with it and pilot it. A mysterious blending of human technology and cosmo, of stardust and steel and titanium, of energy fields and sunlight, the jumpships were jewels of magic only a gold Saint or a Marine Shogun could maneuver.

“Moving out of dock now,” I announced softly, turning a fraction of my awareness toward Hamal’s engines. The giant reactors came online and fully alive in less than a moment, and Hamal moved away from dock.

Fast.

Gathering speed as it went, and caught whiffs of the stellar wind emitted by Confluence’s hot, white star. Faster, I willed it, watching Theirn all the while and feeling something dangerously akin to pride surge in my heart when I was forced to realize that, yes, the young man had managed to form his own bond with Hamal.

“Fantastic!” he exclaimed, breathless.

“Yes,” I nodded, veering the great ship zenithward in a steep angle no regular spaceship could have survived at our current velocity. “It is,” I grinned in spite of myself when I caught sight of Theirn going along with the abrupt change in direction and still refusing to lose his balance. “Beware though,” I added in a quiet whisper, “what you feel when you pilot is nothing other than an amplification of your own cosmo. When I push at Hamal, I merely tap into my own power. It’s an intoxicating sensation, and unwary pilots could drain themselves dry--burn out their own light.”

Whirling around to face me, Theirn shook his head. “How could they--” he blinked. “Is there no fail-safe device on board? No fuse-like security system to prevent that from happening?”

“No.” Holding his gaze with mine, I explained, “We’re Gold Saints, Theirn. Our mastery of cosmo is absolute and flawless. If one day some of us drain themselves of life while piloting their jumpships, it will be because they decided it was necessary. No more, and no less,” I finished in a soft, soft voice.

Something flickered in the blue eyes, unreadable, then the young man went to sit in the co-pilot’s seat. For a moment there was silence, and I stared at my apprentice’s straight back, wondering of I had managed to freak him out at last. Just as I was about to reach out to him, he pivoted to face me. “You’d have done it for real,” he told me in a quiet whisper, “closing that jumpgate.”

“Didn’t you hear me say so?” I shrugged.

“But the consequences,” he began.

“Of fools allowed to bully Bronze and Silver Saints into exhaustion and burn-out are too intolerable to contemplate. Without us, their jumpgates would lie dead in space--well, either that or they’d just lose ships, cargoes and crews until they learnt their lesson,” I finished for him. “In its obsessive quest for discretion, the Graad Foundation has shied away from giving sufficient mundane authority to those humanity knows only as jumpgate operators. I care nothing for what the central office on Earth or the Sanctuary think. If destroying a whole system’s economy is what it takes to protect our own as well as all the people dependant upon hyperspace travel, so be it.”

Theirn’s eyes were wide, very wide, and there was a wild light in them. When I saw him suck in a breath, and when I noticed the set in his shoulders, I abruptly realized he had braced, as if in anticipation of a blow. “You were truly angry,” he said in a subdued voice, “you’re angry still.”

I chortled. “You’ve never seen me angry, Theirn. Nobody has, except for master Nominoë, once long ago.” Then, letting out my breath in a sigh, I said in earnest, “Ezio, the girl in Confluence’s ops and all those like them...they’re ours, Theirn. Ours to protect and shield. They go where we Gold do not, and do what we should be doing. They burn their small lights for us. They share their fragile hearts with all of humanity, while we spend our lives locked inside the Sanctuary, frozen by millennia-old customs and threats of warring gods which have long been obsolete. And also, we are stuck,” I spat, “because some of us like to entertain the illusion that if we don’t look at the night sky and don’t travel through space, it will make the reality of humanity’s ascension to the stars go away.”

“Lord Shui and Lady Haizea are fools,” Theirn snorted. There was no mistaking the disdain in his tone.

“Fools, yes,” I smiled, a lopsided curling of my lips, “but not in the way you think.”

Fools, because they allowed themselves to be bound to Earth.

Because they refused to gaze outward.

Because they wouldn’t confront the truth.

Because they wouldn’t withstand the horrible sensation of ice freezing their blood upon hearing ethereal voices in the winds reaching up from the Aegean Sea, and down from the altar atop the Sanctuary--embracing winds whose hollow whispers forever haunted the soul once you had heard them.

“One day,” I bowed my head, “you’ll understand, but not yet. Not just yet.”

“More secrets!” he spat.

“We’re spawns of the Sanctuary,” I willed light humor to my voice, “everything around us is a secret.” Then I stared Theirn right in the eyes. “Space is the key to our fate, and not just because of Sanctuary-kept secrets.”

“So far, I’ve found space to be the key to boredom only,” Theirn pursed his lips. “I understand the need to go out to Silver and Bronze Saints, and to give them an anchor, to sustain them, but still it’s boring. There’s no planet like Earth.”

“Right.” I closed my eyes, and sighed out a breath. “Space is wondrous, Theirn, beyond anything you can imagine, and beyond what words can describe. But its beauty is elusive, and not so easily captured--the more so when you travel coreward.”

“Fi.”

My eyes snapped open, and I sat up in my chair as Ezio’s voice reached my ears. “Yeah,” I replied shortly, only now noticing the red dot flashing on my comm panel. “Go ahead, Confluence.”

There was a few seconds’ delay, time for the message to travel from Hamal to Confluence’s now very distant jumpgate. Then Ezio resumed, “Glad we could catch you before you jumped. We got a high priority request for you, relayed by the Solo headquarters on Pillar itself. Follow-up markers indicate that it originated from the jumpship Ligea. Apparently, Gamma Draconis authorities demanded a mediation from the Halo Side Galactic Navigation and Transport Guild on a dispute they have with a people named the Voyageurs. Sorento Murali sends his humblest apologies for the inconvenience, and it looks like he had the issue somehow transferred to Graad Foundation jurisdiction and to Hamal. I--” static, or perhaps an incredulous laugh followed, then: “I have no idea how the bastard did that, but there it is. I’m sorry, Fi. Data is being uploaded to Hamal via the jumpgate. It should be a few minutes only.”

“No need to apologize.” A wide grin had split the face of my reflection in the monitor in two. “Murali is a bastard straight from hell, and I’ll make him compensate for every single second of the trip. After all, it’s only a single jump away.”

“A single jump?!” came Ezio’s exclamation after a short silence. “We’re talking about a Halo Side system here, and--”

“A single jump, Ezio,” I laughed, “or have you forgotten who and what we are, Hamal and I?”

Gamma Draconis, a small red star out of the galactic disk, a Halo Side system, as Ezio had said. It was just perfect.

“Perhaps I have,” came my friend’s voice, billions of miles away. “Be careful, and may the goddess smile upon you.”

“She will,” I answered,” she does.” Softly. “Upon us all.” With that, I terminated the communication from my end, and turned toward Theirn. “Once we get the data, we jump,” I told him. “It will be one hell of a long haul, but I think that what we’ll find on the other side will interest you.”

“Can I ask what it was all about? Are we doing runs for the Solo family, now?”

“Not exactly.” The stupid grin wouldn’t leave my face, but somehow that was okay with me. “The Gamma Draconis issue is an old border and travel dispute. Usually Murali handles it, since the Marine Shoguns have elected to make the Halo Side worlds their domain. I’m guessing he’s otherwise occupied right now, and knew I’d be sitting bored at a Core Side station with an even more bored apprentice on board. This is his way of helping out.”

The dubious look in Theirn’s eyes made it rather clear what he thought of the capacity and willingness of Marine Shoguns to go out of their way to help Gold Saints. Ours was an old rivalry which dated back to the days of the last wars between Athena and Poseidon, and to the consecutive defeats of the wrathful god, which the Marine Shoguns hadn’t ever quite managed to come to terms with. An old rivalry, but a friendly one now. Our opposite natures had turned out to be an invaluable asset: while all of us were aware of the dark, diffuse threat hanging over space travel, where the Sanctuary had focused all its strength inward, toward the blinding stars of the galactic core, the Marinas of Poseidon had turned their gaze outward.

Toward the unending night beyond the Rim.

Toward the delicate, elusive strands of nebula, and red and yellow stars in the galactic halo.

We had split the Milky Way in two, but their half of it was by far the most appealing--the weirdest and richest.

Stealing a glance toward the comm unit, I nodded. “All right, we have all the data and forwarded credentials. Let’s go.” Sitting back in the pilot’s seat, I focused on Hamal. I willed myself to feel engines and hull as my own body, and opened up to the sensation of space all around us.

No vacuum, contrary to what people thought.

Night strewn with tiny bits of starlight.

Stellar winds embracing us.

Gentle.

Everywhere.

Close and aft, the pull of Confluence’s star, on starboard, the counter-pull of the giant blue that was its neighbor, and--there. I called up too the flames in my heart. In the nexus between the two great forces, a faint, faint song.

Faraway bell chimes.

Eager flames leapt out of my being, and I channeled them to cloak Hamal’s hull and engines, pushing and reaching out--parting the timespace curtain, and

“Brace.”

Barely I realized it was my voice which had broken the silence to warn Theirn. In the same time, the night around Hamal rippled, and the great jumpship slid out of the universe. It fell.

Hurtling down into the savage ocean of hyperspace.

End of Chapter 1.

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