[ Watashi ]

[ Tomodachi ]

[ Saint Seiya ]

[ Clamp ]

[ Fanfiction ]

As my dabbling in SF had felt rather satisfying the last time, I decided to pull another such stunt this year. This is again a Saint Seiya fic, and again a completely weird thing out of every timeline Masami Kurumada ever intended.

This story is placed very far into the future, in a time when humanity has found a way to cheat and defeat the absolute barrier of lightspeed. Inspiration, amusingly enough, came from my watching Gasaraki, but the elements that will most likely be recognizable do not come from that title. Rather, those who are familiar with C.J. Cherryh will find bits and pieces of her Merchanters' universe, or of Chanur, and perhaps less obvious, there's a B5 influence there somewhere as well.

And of course, none of the characters of this fic are present in the original manga or TV series of Saint Seiya, even if I may have hinted at the series at some point or other. I don't think you need to be familiar with Saint Seiya to follow this fic, except for one thing that I'll put on a note at the end of the chapter.

That said, I hope you'll enjoy the reading! ^^

Fuu-chan.

On the grey, featureless wall, a light was flashing green. For the time of a heartbeat, I stared at it, then I braced myself and parted the Curtain.

Gust of wind.

Unreal.

Currents enfolding me.

Pushing from all sides.

Absolute void.

Eddies of rippling black.

Dripping pain.

Overflowing with anger, cold and suffocating.

Hatred that tore at me--that consumed life everywhere around me.

Muffled heartbeats faltering, and then coming to a stop.

Crawling death, that only I could hear--feel.

Through clenched teeth, I hissed out a sigh as I completed the small step required to go through the Curtain. I was shaking, deep inside, and I clutched at my left arm with a hand in a reflexive gesture. A mistake, that, but there was no denying the effect of crossing over from the small human sector of Shore to its true heart.

Alien.

Late. A grimace twisted my mouth when the ethereal whisper glided through my mind.

"I'm not," I retorted in as pleasant a voice as I could master--aloud, even though the words held no meaning for the ones I had come to meet. Aloud, just to spite them and also to win a few precious seconds in order to fully regain my wits. They'd perceive my thoughts just as well. "This is the time we'd agreed upon the last time."

Late, the other insisted. The tide is waning, and the currents are being lulled into quiescence. You should know, it added. I gave a shrug. At times, the Dwellers stopped making sense altogether, and trying to understand them was a waste of time. It was hard enough not to be spooked by the apparently empty room I was presently standing in.

Shore was well named. Hovering at the nadir edge of human space, it belonged to the Dwellers. As a concession to the limitations of human minds and ships, they had allowed the building of a small additional section on the station, one that was firmly anchored into the four-dimensional universe human being were bound to--in part, at least. The border between that and the Dwellers' place was a flickering Curtain that few people could cross. It would have been easier to handle negotiations and bargains with them if the Dwellers allowed meetings to take place while sailing the Deep--but they didn't. And so I was stuck here, in a room where I talked to walls that rippled and changed with the Deep's smaller under-currents, and where everything was illusion--a trick of the Dwellers as well as one of the human mind to shy away from perceptions it couldn't absorb, not even when it was a seasoned lead pilot's mind.

Unbalanced, it murmured all of a sudden, and I froze. With an effort of will, I made my hand let go of the arm I had been clutching until now, and summoned a smile to my lips.

"Holding the Deep and the human universe together is difficult for my mind, yes," I told it, before adding with a regretful sigh, "If only we could meet elsewhere--"

There is no elsewhere. Something twirled in the room, that might have been the equivalent of the Dwellers' laughter. Here is everywhere and nowhere. Place is irrelevant. Time is irrelevant. Mistaken concepts.

I waved the crazy thoughts aside. "Once we're done unloading, do you have cargo you wish us to carry across to Edge? We're bound there next with goods to transport for the Nyah, and there's still some space left in Fi's ship."

No. The answer had come at once, which was unusual, then: Unbalanced. I blinked. The tide is waning, the currents are changing, but you do not feel it. Biting my lower lip, I wished for a chair--as well as a drink of something with alcohol in it--but of course, nothing happened.

When the Dwellers felt mischievous enough, or when the whim came upon them, they granted the random wishes of people, the all but unconscious garbage chatter that fills the human brain twenty-four hours a day. It was all a mirage, of course, but it could be nice to see one's wishes materialize like that. This time, though, they chose not to humor me. So I simply nodded at the empty air in front of me. "Well, if you have no cargo for us, then we'll be on our way as soon--"

There is cargo.

I fought the urge to laugh at that. It was a bad time for games and alien weirdness. It had been a very long Dive from Achernar, and I wasn't up to follow the Dwellers' labyrinthine logic. "Do you want us to carry it elsewhere, then?" I asked nonetheless.

You do not listen. The currents lead you, lead us, and they have changed. The cargo waits.

All right then, if that was the way they wanted it, that was the way it would be. With a small bow, I took my leave and went back through the Curtain, where Fi and our two ships were waiting.

The quotation of the Azure Traverse share had gone through the ceiling during the last session of Proxima Seven's stock exchange. Again. It looked like it was the latest trend to invest in Shamira Goldstein's so-called transport company in the wretched market people's schizophrenic minds. Azure Traverse had broken its own record of ascending rates at least six times in the last three months, but that wasn't all, unfortunately. It was far more than that; Brennan didn't need to check records or archives to know that.

To feel that.

Azure Traverse's star was rising, and it was a deep, strong rise. Once again, the outer colonies all exclusively depended upon them for carrying their people and their goods. They had signed contracts and bound themselves, damn the fools--but then Brennan had expected nothing else from the chosen's descendants. It was in their blood and in their genes--in the weirdness of the old space-faring clans' lines. Miners, Merchanters and station dwellers, the lot of them, people who had been born in the alienness of space for generations, people who didn't know Earth and felt no yearning for it--people who were no longer fully human in Brennan's eyes.

Fools who had betrayed their home, betrayed the land to follow a murderous monster, a bit more than two centuries ago.

Brennan remembered.

He hadn't expected their descendants to turn their hearts away from the Sea that had held their mothers and fathers in thrall, but he had expected a minimum of sense and reason. When Daniel Solo's insane design had been thwarted and the link between the then fragile human colonies severed, Brennan had thought they'd be forced to come back to Earth, cut out from resources, alone and estranged as they had become. He would have accepted them, even helped them to find the way they had lost.

But they had endured.

And time had passed, day after day. Years had grown into decades and centuries. Stranded in eternal darkness, the space-faring clans had somehow managed to survive and even prosper without begging for Earth's help. On this side, people had forgotten everything of the tens of thousands of deaths that had marked humankind's first true bid for the stars--the war.

Oh, nobody had ever known of it, could ever be allowed to know of it and how Daniel Solo would have destroyed everything and eradicated humanity from the face of the Earth if he hadn't been stopped.

If they hadn't risen from the Sanctuary in Cloths of glittering Gold.

If Brennan's companions hadn't laid down their lives to prevent the most horrible of crimes--genocide. They had won, but the cost of that victory had been a terrible one: countless deaths among that first generation of colonists, and the escape of those among them who had managed to survive. The blood was all on Daniel Solo's hands, on the hands of the vengeful, alien soul that he had allowed to control his life--that he had accepted as a part of himself in the worst act of betrayal there could be. The blood was all on the cursed Solo line.

A line Brennan had broken for good.

But despite all that, despite everything, the space-faring clans had endured and grown. Azure Traverse had refused to die and disperse into ashes. Generation after generation, the likes of Shamira Goldstein--all heirs to the hidden name of Sorento--had appeared and protected them. They had patiently rebuilt Daniel Solo's empire, always dissembling their true selves, dissembled in the normality of a powerful transporter company's CEO. Azure Traverse was their figurehead and worse, it was their way of recreating the army Brennan had fought all those years ago. He had watched Azure Traverse grow, knowing it for what it was almost at once. He had waited, but when it had become clear that the company wouldn't disappear, wouldn't go bankrupt, that it would thrive in spite of his using all the considerable might of the Graad Foundation to push it down the abyss--when Azure Traverse had expressed its contempt for the Pilots' Guild's ways and the jumpgate technology the Guild used, when Azure Traverse had announced its first success at again reaching the all but lost Outer Colonies, everything had changed.

They had disrupted the normal traffic lines, established their own schedules and restored trade between Earth and the once banned Outer Colonies. Azure Traverse was chaos let loose; its pilots knew neither rules nor boundaries, they jumped in and out of hyperspace without the slightest care for established trade routes, or even for safety.

Information had started to flow again along Azure Traverse's random, crazy lines--voices and faces of people humanity had thought to be the stuff of legend, words of men and women who only knew the darkness of space, the barren moons they mined and the metallic structures of the stations they lived in. That alone had been bad, but then, sixty-two years ago, Azure Traverse's pilots had made contact with aliens, and somehow they had managed to survive the experience.

They had sealed ties with forms of life so different that any sane person would have fled from them upon getting a single glimpse of their shadows. Trade agreements had followed, and fame. Azure Traverse had made the headline news.

And people's gazes had once more turned outward.

Still, Brennan had waited, and watched while humanity started fantasizing over space again--dangerous, forbidden dreams. That way lied war and their own end, but they didn't, couldn't remember. It could all have been the trend of a few years and then passed, but it hadn't been so. The trade with aliens had grown, and Brennan had been forced to allow the Pilots' Guild to expand their reach as well, to build jumpgates in remote places where they were neither welcome nor truly useful--but at least it had allowed them to regain a semblance of control over the Inner Colonies and to divert people's admiration of Azure Traverse toward the Graad Foundation's accomplishments. The move had also prevented Azure Traverse from keeping a monopoly in transport that would have given it much too strong a leverage on Earth economics--as well as on its very existence.

Earth had come to depend on alien trade.

Brennan hadn't been able to prevent that from happening, bound as he was by ancient law. And humankind's gaze had shifted outward, toward space and away from Earth.

Away from the Land that had nurtured it since the time of its beginning.

It could have gone on, if one day Brennan hadn't gotten wind of Shamira Goldstein having people smuggled toward Earth on a small shuttle coming from the moon and before that, from stations so deep in the Outer Colonies Earth had no name for them--in the utmost secrecy.

The last of the Solo line, that she was sworn to protect.

That had forced Brennan's decision. That threat had been taken care of and eradicated, once and for all. Ended. Then he had waited to see Shamira Goldstein's empire crumble into dust. It hadn't happened. She had gone on leading Azure Traverse and protecting it, even though it had become meaningless for her to do so. Brennan had tried to understand the woman, in vain. She was as loyal to the Solo line as he was to his Goddess, but loyalty couldn't explain her continued fighting for a thing that no longer served any purpose. For years, he had wondered if Shamira Goldstein had gone mad.

Now it didn't matter anymore.

Since she refused to let Azure Traverse quietly die as it should have, he'd force the issue and put an end to the chaos it represented--its pilots represented.

Madmen and madwomen piloting jumpships alone.

Jumpships, not ships--jumpships that didn't use the gates to shift into hyperspace but simply rippled in and out of reality where they pleased.

Pilots who scorned the most basic of safety regulations.

Drugged men and women whose bodies were pushed beyond human limits thanks to the chemicals filling their bloodstream, altered so they could pilot the jumpships and not die or go mad from it on the spot--who drew upon an unholy combination of technology and of the raw, untamed Fire in their hearts to fade in and out of the universe.

Crazy. Crazy, the lot of them.

Human beings didn't belong in hyperspace. They couldn't bear the alienness of it, much less control a ship or direct it through chaos. Only those who could touch the stars, feel them and harness their Incandescence could whistand the experience. Brennan knew. Azure Traverse's pilots were anomalies, hazards, and they had to be dealt with. They should be dead; by rights all of them should have been lost in their first jump. They weren't many, those in the Inner Colonies who'd regret the arrogant, obnoxious bastards, on the contrary. All the reports Brennan had received from the Graad Foundation's funded stations confirmed it: the pilots of Azure Traverse had become an object of mistrust, dislike and even fear in the six decades during which the Pilots' Guild had patiently strengthened its sphere of influence. They were lawless bullies, and the trade routes would be much safer without them.

In the valley at Brennan's feet, the wind howled, carrying small clouds of dust his way. Standing up from his squatting position, he stared at the funeral stone set before him. "I know," he whispered even as what could have been a smile touched his lips. "It seems I only come here to share thoughts of war and death with you." Heaving out a sigh, he closed his hands into fists at his sides. "But it was the last time, Eleni, I promise. It's ending now." On impulse, Brennan again knelt before the stone and reached out to it without quite touching it. "It's ending," he repeated softly. Then he straightened, and turned away from the tomb of Aquila Eleni, the woman he had once loved, and loved still.

The woman who had died fighting at his side two centuries ago.

As he exited the Sanctuary's cemetery, Brennan walked past many other tombs, all identical except for the names carved upon them: Ran, his and Eleni's daughter, a foolish child who had stolen aboard a ship to follow her parents into war--and paid the price--Randolf, Brennan's dearest friend and the Taurus Gold Saint, Karan, who had rushed at Daniel Solo, rushed to his death but won them the infinitely precious seconds that had decided their final victory in the war, Thomas.... The smile frozen on Brennan's lips faltered, and abruptly he willed himself away from the place--and into the heart of the garden set behind the House of Pisces.

"You have decided." Greeted by the calm voice, Brennan looked to his right to see Pisces Siel caress the petals of one of his black roses with the back of his left forefinger, and stand up. "You're going," Siel added, his gaze set on Brennan.

Brennan gave a shot nod. Siel's insight into people's hearts and minds was unnerving, but he was steady and loyal. The current Pisces Saint was an oddity when compared to his predecessors: like them he was beautiful, as beautiful as he was deadly, but that was about the only thing they had in common. The tall, lean man was a withdrawn figure. He kept much to himself, and rarely walked the lower levels of the Sanctuary, except to teach the two potential heirs to his name. Brennan was very much aware of this: the Pisces Saint's long, glossy black hair and his clear blue eyes turned many a heart each time he was spotted by the younger apprentices--male and female both--and such a sighting always found its way to Brennan's ears...not that he was interested in Siel's comings and goings.

Siel knew his duty, and knew where his priorities lied, even when he disagreed with the head of his order. The man thought too much for his own good, but he was reliable. Siel had proven himself time and again, no matter how difficult a task he was given. Looking back into those hawklike eyes, Brennan noted the disapproval there, and nodded. "Yes, and you're coming with me."

The Pisces Saint bobbed his head in ascent. "I suppose it's wiser for me to accompany you, in case she tried something." A bitter smile curled up the corners of Siel's mouth. "She doesn't have the means, you know."

"I know." Brennan smiled back. There was more that Siel would have said, but they both knew it was useless. Siel disagreed, but he'd obey and follow Brennan. That was one thing settled. That left only one unpleasant matter to take care of: to talk to Shane. The Aries apprentice--Brennan's apprentice--wouldn't show Siel's restraint. He'd argue, or try to anyway. Shane would ask question upon question, pursuing the matter like a bloodhound.

"You may be going too far this time," Siel said all of a sudden. When the words hit, Brennan froze. "You walk a thin line, much thinner than you seem to realize," the Pisces Saint went on, his voice soft. "Ours is a fragile balance. I only hope you won't break it."

For an awkward moment, both men stared at each other, then Brennan waved Siel's comment aside. "I need to talk to Shane. Meet me at the northern border of the Sanctuary in one hour." That wouldn't be enough to convince the stubborn apprentice, but it would have to do. With that, Brennan turned his back on Siel and left the garden of roses.

Behind him, the echo of the Pisces Saint's words lingered, a dissonance in the afternoon breeze that had risen to send shivers through the flowers at Brennan's feet.

"Loki." Before me, the main viewer's screen shifted to show me a young woman's face, short-cropped light brown hair and hazel eyes.

"Yeah, what?" I absentmindedly replied, focused on the Deep's wild flow. Now wasn't the best time for a chat, and besides I wasn't in the mood for conversation.

"Damn you," she sighed, "stop rushing headlong into the strongest currents when we're facing imminent Out Fall. I need you to stick to the quieter ones, or I can't synch with you properly. You know that," she finished in a low voice--too low. Redirecting a part of my attention on her, I noted what I should have picked up at once: the strain in the lines of her angular face, the way her jaw was set and her gaze shone--as if she was suffering from a slight fever. The feeling of her--

"Shit!" The muffled curse escaped me even as I reached out to her and to the great metallic arrow that was Pegasus--Fi's jumpship. Giuseppina Baldini was struggling to keep up with Griffin, and she was right: I was rushing toward our destination without even sparing a thought for my dearest friend, for my sister in everything but blood--my companion in sailing. "There," I whispered, focusing on the Deep's flow and gliding toward a more peaceful current, eyes closed. "Sorry, Fi," I added, head bowed.

"Pfeh." I looked up to see her face light with a weary smile. She shifted in her seat, leaning back, and I rested my head back against my own seat, releasing a deep breath as I watched the tension ebbing out of her. "It's okay now," she shrugged. Then she gave me a look, and I felt her stretching through the Deep, reaching out to me. "Are you still that pissed?" she pursed her lips with a comical frown on her brow.

"Pissed?" I laughed. "Heavens forbid!" Abruptly I pivoted away from the monitor.

There.

That eddy troubling the Deep, where a bright star's gravity well was reaching out from the border of the universe. Close, I grinned to myself. Very close, and the heart of it was clear, the course an easy one to follow. "Fi," I called to her from behind my left shoulder, "link up to me, I making for that eddy's core. We're Out Falling, now."

"The core?" Fi's words were rushed, as if she thought she could still make me change my mind and our two jumpships' course. "Loki that will put us well beyond the fringe, deep inside the system itself. This isn't Shore, it's the Capella system!"

Yes, the Capella system, deep in human space and uncomfortably close to the insignificant star and world that were the heart of all humankind, or so people believed. "I know," I told Fi with a nod as I faced her again. "Brace yourself, we're going in."

Into the hole tearing at the waves.

Disrupting the tides.

Just as Griffin dived into the eddy's very center, I felt the familiar sting at the base of my neck and the adrenaline rush that followed as the jumpship's bio-monitoring system delivered into my body the boost every pilot needed to cope with--

Falling.

Tearing oneself away from the Deep.

Falling into a still universe.

Lifeless.

Hell.

Blackness that only bleak lights dared disturb.

And I had to focus on one such light, on the weak fire it gave out and on the flames that reached out to embrace a cortege of dull, tiny beads that gathered around it like famished moths.

"You're still pissed, all right." Static accompanied Fi's sarcastic comment, and an unbalance that was twin of my own. Yes, I was pissed--pissed at finding myself so deep into human space where neither Fi nor I belonged, pissed at Shamira's sudden request that we cancel our Edge run to get to Carré as fast as the Deep's currents would allow. And finally, I was pissed at the Dwellers, who must have gotten wind of that ahead of us and had withdrawn the information, content with playing cryptic and mysterious, telling me their cargo would wait.

Shamira's request had been just that: a request, but I couldn't deny her, which she knew full well. Besides, for her to ask a team of her jumpships to disregard any current trade that was pending and even decline fulfilling agreements previously sealed with such as the Dwellers--it meant that she really needed us. So we were going, with all the considerable speed good pilots could invoke from their jumpships, including in the wake of an Out Fall as sharp and precise as ours just had been.

Dropping us directly in the vicinity of Capella station itself, deep into that star's small system.

Hurling down.

Diving.

Cleaving the darkness.

Faster.

Faster.

At least a dozen lights had started flashing on the various boards set before me when the comm system at last came alive. "Carré to incoming ships, slow down!" The voice seemed to come from very far away, distorted by our speed as we plunged through the waves emitted by the Graad Foundation-owned station. "Your approach vector is too steep! Pull on your engines, damn you! Decelerate!" The frantic worry that had filled the words summoned a smirk to my face.

Fools.

Fools who didn't understand what sailing was--what it meant.

Fools who shied away from the Deep.

Fools who clang to their colorless, lifeless four dimensions.

"Loki," a small window popped up on the monitor, and I chuckled when I saw Fi scowling at me. "You're high on Tyrosine. Again."

"Nope," I grinned at her after checking with a glance the small control pad embedded in the left wrist of my jumpsuit. Dopamine levels were a bit high, that was true, but it was normal in the aftermath of Out Fall. Serotonin levels were dropping, fast, and I knew that my body would soon need a release of endorphins--hardly possible with the weak light of Capella, or with the way the people living here were most likely disposed toward us. I needed the Deep, just as Fi did, and the sooner we'd get to Carré and out of the wretched place again, the better. If we broke some station regulations in the process, well--casualties of war.

"Carré to incoming ships! Slow down, damn you! Slow down or you'll get into a collision course!" There was now more than a bit of hysteria in the voice. Serves them right, I thought with a thin smile, for having done whatever it was that had forced Shamira to call us here.

Shamira knew, she understood how it hurt, how it tore at the spirit to Out Fall and dock at an Inner Colonies' station. With a sigh, I opened the comm channel and replied lazily, "Negative, Carré. We're on a correct approach vector, and we'll shed some v only when we need to, not a nanosecond before."

"Fuck you, madman!" Ah, there was anger now, swirling along with fear. It tainted the waves and sent them flickering as Pegasus and Griffin continued their dive toward Capella. "If you insist on being a navigational hazard, we won't let you endanger the other ships. There's traffic--"

Damn the moron, couldn't he even read his monitor? Had they become so ignorant in this place so close to Earth that the man in ops didn't know what it was that was now approaching his station? "This is the *jumpship* Griffin and the *jumpship* Pegasus, Carré. Azure Traverse has an alpha priority license, and it goes for docking and undocking as well as approach vectors. We are no danger to traffic, as long as you clear two outward berths for us. So stop fretting and frightening the wits out of all the Merchanters and Miners in the system. Their proximity alert beacons won't even so much as blink. If you shut up and do your job properly, we'll be station-bound in a few minutes, and you can go back to the nap we interrupted," I finished with a grin.

Far behind us, at the edge of the Capella system, the Graad Foundation's lockgate came alive to let one of their sluggish ships out of the Deep. Clutching at my seat's armrests, I closed my eyes for a second, and shifted my perceptions away from there, from the lockgate and the vague feeling of nausea it was sending through my stomach. Focusing instead on the fast approaching planet in front of us and on the glint of the station orbiting it, I decided to take pity on Carré's ops, and dropped velocity--slowed, in harmony with Capella's weak currents.

Just as Fi and I materialized in a now wholly relativity -free environment, my viewscreen came alive with a myriad of dots showing al the small ships in the vicinity. Watching the very much crowded display, I whistled between my teeth. There were a lot of them, and a good number were diplomatic ships, official representatives, some of whom knew what a jumpship was, recognized us and sent greetings our way--delegates from the Outer Colonies, Threshold, Edge, Alure and of course Achernar among them. The others--well, station ops got to them before they could panic and do something really stupid like altering their course and veering away from us with ships lacking a jumpship's maneuverability. We were ready for that, too, but it was just as well someone in Carré's ops had regained their wits and gone back to regulating traffic as they should.

"You're cleared for berths Sigma and Tau on the outermost coil, Griffin," came a much calmer voice through the comm channel. "Complains are coming in from the diplomatic ships Herakles and Ajax--Earth registered ships. You'd better have an army of lawyers ready when you come station-side."

Oh, yeah. Politicians who should never have so much as set a foot away from good old Earth. People full of themselves and their importance, who had no idea how things went, how their withering world survived--thanks to whom it survived. "Sure," I shrugged at the monitor, "let them complain all they want, and we'll show them Azure Traverse's charter, that Carré signed like all the stations in human space. Then they can take their complains and shove them up their pompous asses."

That shut the man up. In the small window on the upper left corner of my monitor, Fi burst out laughing.

"My, are we out for blood tonight!" Fi exclaimed by way of greeting as I exited Griffin's airlock and set foot in Carré proper. There were flames dancing in the hazel eyes as she reached out to the one thick, shoulder-length lock of hair I kept braided before my left ear, and as she gave a light tap on the tear-shaped emerald hanging there from a golden thread woven with the hair. There was a faint pang when her fingernail hit the small jewel, and I stuck out my tongue at her.

"I could return the compliment," I told her, making a show of eyeing her up and down. She was impressive in her ankle-long, sleeveless black dress. "You look perfect." She cocked her head to the side at that, which caused the tiny sapphire earring she was wearing on the left ear to dangle from its golden chain. For a moment she pursed her lips, as if considering my words, then she let out a dramatic sigh.

"Alas, Muir is nowhere where I can lay my hands on him, so all I can do is drink myself into a stupor while watching you commit unspeakable acts of debauchery." She shook her head and concluded, "Life is unfair, indeed."

"Aw," I mocked her, taking her left arm and locking it with my right, "come on, Fi!"

Snorting, she rolled her eyes heavenward. "How many innocent souls do you intend to corrupt this time?"

With a shrug, I smiled at her my most guileless smile. "As many as it takes to last me through the station's night shift. Now," I said as I drew her along toward the lights in front of us, "let's go, Fi!" I stumbled and almost fell to the ground when she didn't even try to resist, having anticipated the movement and being the wily vixen that she was. It made her laugh, of course, and I let her have that small victory. As she had said, Muir was far away, beyond the remotest Outer Colonies' worlds, in Nyah space beyond the Cygnus Arm, and the next hours wouldn't be pleasant for her.

There were stares as we walked through Carré's business and entertainment sections, a lot of them. People even stopped in their steps to turn and watch as we passed them by. Thoughts and emotions dripped from the flow of life surrounding us, and whispers. "Look! Drifters!" some would murmur breathlessly as if Fi and I were some kind of aliens. My jaw set, I drew Fi along, ignoring it all. Fi was smiling, a cold, cold smile that never touched her eyes. Likely it was the jewels, the telltale sign that we were Azure Traverse pilots--a rare sight in a Graad Foundation owned station.

Taking a glance at our reflection in a shop's window, I wondered for the thousandth time how people could display such an uncanny talent for sniffing our difference out of thin air. True, the jewels were there, but neither Fi's dress nor my own pants, shirt and jacket were anything out of the ordinary. Her short-cropped hair and mine, except for that one long lock of hair were also common. Certainly it couldn't be the reddish hue of my hair or the green of my eyes: there were far more exotic colors among Carré's own residents. No, there was nothing to distinguish us from the crowd, nothing but the jewels.

At last, we stopped in front of a café. "Aegean," read the sign set above the building's main door, and beside that, the diminutive replica of a trident's head.

"Not a moment too soon," Fi released her breath in a hiss on my right. "I thought we'd never find it--that those Graad Foundation fools had forbidden it here." Because Carré was home to the Union's parliament and House of Representatives, that was what Fi meant. Because we, Azure Traverse pilots--drifters as they called us--cast shame on the places we touched with our alienness.

"They wouldn't dare!" I laughed at Fi's fears, wanting to spook the ghosts I could see haunting her gaze. "Imagine us left to our own devices, forced to enter one of their own establishments--oh no, they wouldn't dare!" Without waiting for an answer, I pushed the door open and went inside, pulling her with me.

The soothing notes of a piano were flowing in the air, in harmony with the currents of light and shadow in the taproom. There were few patrons seated at the tables, which didn't exactly come as a surprise. In a place such as Carré, only drop-outs or eccentric people would dare be here when Azure Traverse jumpships were docked at the station's berths. It didn't matter; all that did was that we had reached a safe haven before the full backlash of our recent Out Fall could hit. Aiming for the bar, I made my way through a shadowy maze of chairs and tables.

Fi tugged at my right sleeve just as I was about to order drinks for the both of us. I turned toward her, and she indicated a point on the far edge of the room, lifting her chin up in that direction. "Looks like you're in luck. That guy totally cruised you."

The guy in question was a tall, lean silhouette with long, flowing hair that looked ebony black in the café's dim lights. The man sat down in a fluid motion, and then leaned back against his chair, his gaze set on me.

Blue, as clear as the waves in the Deep's rising tides.

So.

There was no fear in those eyes. There was no revulsion or disgust, no awe or morbid curiosity. There was just frank admiration and desire. No pretense. No false shyness. "My, my," I whispered at Fi, "you just might be right. If I may..." I let my voice trail off into silence, and she gave a friendly push on my right shoulder.

"Of course, stupid!" she murmured in my ear as I stepped past her. "See you tomorrow."

It was a wild stroke of luck to stumble upon someone who seemed to at least have an idea of what we were in this place. The man watched me come to his table, never once taking his gaze away from me. "Something wrong with the third eye on my brow?" I asked him conversationally while pushing his table back and sitting astride his thighs.

Looking him right in the eye.

Now was his last chance to realize his mistake and pull away, but instead of recoiling, he brought his left arm around my waist and pulled me further into his lap. "No," he chuckled in a deep, pleasant voice. "No, that third eye looks just perfect to me."

"Fine then," I sighed as the hand in my back started slow, circling motions, its thumb, forefinger and middle finger gently kneading the taut muscles along my spine and coaxing them into relaxing. Gods, it was good--good. Wrapping my arms around his neck, I leaned toward him. "Let's go upstairs if you don't mind," I grinned at him. "I like to do my fucking in private whenever possible." That startled him somewhat, judging from the shift in his shoulders and the tension that went briefly through him.

"All right," he breathed in my ear, standing up and drawing me along with him. From the corner of an eye, I saw Fi give me a thumbs-up, and then refocused on my companion, a heartbeat away from letting it all go and allowing the rising wave of insanity to sweep me away.

In the café's main room, the piano's melody echoed on, its notes enfolding the people present and shaping the currents linking them together.

The "day" wouldn't be long in coming. I could see it in the grey light filtered through the bedroom's shutters. The shape of the walls around me was absurd, as absurd as the sharp sensation of the bed sheets upon my skin. Focusing on the fabric of the pillow against my right cheek, I managed to stifle the laughter rising up my throat--hurting it. Fi had wondered how many people I'd seduce during the station's night shift. It had taken only one for the Out Fall backlash to come over me--to take me away and for me to find the strength to free myself from it--just one before exhaustion had claimed me.

The deep, dreamless slumber that always followed the Out Fall backlash had only released its hold on me upon the coming of the station's fake dawn. The light creeping into the room was a lie; the stubborn, ludicrous human conceit that there should be a night and a day in a place where that had no meaning was laughable--and it hurt. I wanted to reach out to it, like I reached out to the Deep's tides, but I knew better than to even try. There wouldn't be anything for me to grasp, just emptiness.

Horrible.

Beneath me, the mattress sank and then lifted up, even as fingertips brushed against my left hand and as a smooth, tear-shaped stone was deposited in my palm. The jewel--the jewel woven in my hair with a golden thread, which must have slipped away when the braid had come undone and--I opened my eyes wide, realizing.

"You're still here," I whispered at the walls and the shutters and the false dawn. Soft laughter answered me.

"I'm a shadow," he said, "and shadows can only be banished by sunlight."

If that was so, than he could stay--forever. There was no sun here, no light and no life, only the illusion of it. Nothing was real, nothing but the relentless pull of the Deep upon my soul that never let me rest, except for sweet, brief moments of oblivion such as the ones the man at my side had just offered me--but he didn't know that, he didn't understand. I bit my lower lip, and didn't tell him. We had both given, touched and then withdrawn, like the Deep's tides. It was enough, and even if it wasn't, it was all there could be. In silence, I waited even though tradition dictated otherwise--in silence, until I heard the faint creak of a door being pulled open and then closed.

"Thank you." The two words won through my lips in a slightly shaking breath, too late for him to hear them--thus breaching of a custom he didn't know anything about--and I stared at the wall in front of me. For the time of a heartbeat, something brushed against me, like the last notes of a piano or the ghost of the Deep's waves. I blinked, and it was gone, like the nameless stranger who had shared infinitely precious tidbits of time with me.

A sheath for my soul, no matter how ephemeral.

For a few seconds, I closed my eyes tightly shut, then opened them again pushed myself up from the bed and stood. It was past time for me to get out of this small shelter and get down--find Fi and see how she was coping with this wretched piece of metal they called a space station.

"Come back here, Loki." Fi snapped her fingers before my eyes, and I blinked. "Where were you just now?" she shook her head with a small sigh. "Shamira needs you to have your wits about you, not you mooning over a one night lover." I froze in my steps, and whirled around to face her.

"Oh please, Fi!" I snorted.

She raised a hand to her lips. "No, I don't believe this!" she burst out laughing. "You've fallen in love for real this time!" She bowed her head, shoulders shaking with restrained laughter. Numbly I watched her, then all of a sudden she embraced me. "I'm sorry, Loki--sorry." She dragged in a shuddering breath.

"It's all right," I managed, holding her tight. She was trembling, sobs and laughter warring inside her. It was the wildness. "I always fall in love for real," I told her, and summoned a smile to my lips. "I love each and every one of them, and then I let them go." It was the wildness that made her say those things, the madness of Out Fall--nothing else.

"I'm sorry, Loki," she repeated with the slightest of slurs in her voice, and again I hugged her, wishing that Muir were here, that I could reach out to the Deep and somehow will him here and now. Fi was bound to him, she needed him. No other would do. It was a strange curse that befell those of us who were unlucky enough to fall for another pilot. I wasn't Muir, and all I could do was to hold Fi through the last of the backlash. She must have drunk a lot during the night shift in the hopes of drowning it altogether, but that never worked.

Around us, the narrow street was almost empty, which was just as well. The few passers-by had other things on their minds so early in the day shift than to gawk at an embracing couple standing just a few steps away from a place whose sign marked it as a synonym of a brothel in the minds of ignorant people. Willing away a sudden, violent burst of anger that had almost managed to overwhelm me, I stroked Fi's hair, and waited. Eventually the tremors of her body subsided, and she sniffed.

"Well, that was bad." A wan smile had come back to her face. "I must be a mess."

I gave her a long, appraising glance, and then released her. "You do have red eyes, but other than that you look fine."

"It'll have to do," Fi sniffed again. "Anyway, I'm sure it won't matter much. Shamira must only need you, certainly she wouldn't call for me with Muir out of reach. She's smarter than that."

Yes. I nodded at Fi, and we started in our way again. Yes, Shamira knew better, and she wouldn't have made that kind of mistake, not when requesting our presence during a parliamentary session of the Union's ruling body.

"This way, quickly!" The woman's faint whisper echoed through the dimly lit corridor, even as she ushered Loki and Fi inside the Union's house of representatives. Taking a swift glance on her surroundings, Fi mused to herself that this was indeed a backdoor into a building that was supposed to be open to each and every Union citizen. And for Loki and she to have to be smuggled inside like this despite valid IDs and accreditation badges--well.

"Lady Goldstein said that she'd try and get Griffin and Pegasus to be here in time," the aging man on Loki's left suddenly said, "but we dared not hope--" he took a moment to regain his breath, obviously unused to having to half-run, half-walk in this place as if he'd been a simple burglar. Fi knew the man, as Loki did: he was Takeda Hajime--Sir Takeda Hajime--clan head of the powerful Takeda family which ruled over the worlds of the Achernar system, and duly elected representative of those much remote human colonies. "But when we heard that two jumpships had appeared in the immediate vicinity, wreaking havoc through station traffic," a smile curled up Takeda Hajime's lips and revealed his teeth, "and when ops requisitioned two berths for Griffin and Pegasus, then we knew we'd stand a chance."

"A chance of what?" Fi chortled, unable to help herself. "Of falling even further out of grace with the Inner Colonies' authorities?" On her right, Loki glanced at her from above his shoulder, and a shadow left the green eyes. Fi was back to herself, and Loki had picked it up. It was good. She nodded at him, then focused on following the two representatives of the Outer Colonies to wherever they were leading them to.

"Of averting disaster," Takeda Hajime was saying, breathless now, "I'm not at liberty to say more."

That didn't matter. Fi didn't care much for politics; she knew that Shamira had called them her because of Loki--not her. What Fi cared about was Loki, and Muir, and making bad mistakes like the one she had made when the last of the Out Fall backlash had come upon her. Bad as it had been--as it always was at stations deep inside human space--she had no business saying the things she had said.

Loki was the lead pilot and she was the center, the steadying half of their team. She felt him through the Deep, gliding with the currents as if he had been born among them, one with the tides and the great rolling waves of glittering dark. Proud and arrogant, sharp, unforgiving and prone to nasty pranks, there was nothing the redhead liked better than to spawn chaos among Earth-registered ships and giving rise to small eddies when Out Falling from the Deep, sending crazy waves that disturbed the Graad Foundation's lockgates. In short, Loki Morgenstern was one hell of an insufferable bastard.

Wild sails with an ethereal hole rending their heart.

"One might wonder at that," Loki told their companions in a deceptively pleasant voice, "just as one might wonder at the necessity of stealing inside the holy house of representatives like conspirators," he snickered.

"There would be delays," the woman retorted. Fi didn't know her, but her long, fragile legs and the sluggish rhythm of her gait that indicated she was used to lighter gravity environments marked her as Outer Colony born as well. "Security checkpoints and long justifications--searches even," the woman's mouth was drawn in a thin line, and the light in her grey eyes was a hard, hard one. "By the time you'd be allowed to reach the main room, the session would have been opened and the debates started. By law, you'd have to wait until the end before entering, and it'd be over."

"Oooh, petty tricks," Loki drolled, green eyes glinting with pleasure. "So petty for the self-proclaimed greatest democracy of all times. How low the Graad Foundation and their Inner Colonies' dogs have fallen these days!"

Neither the man nor the woman volunteered another comment, and the group made the rest of its way in silence. Fortunately it took them less than five minutes to reach their destination: by the look of him, Takeda Hajime couldn't have sustained the rhythm for much longer. A wooden door--made of real, genuine wood, that neither Loki nor Fi had ever seen, much less touched, was opened to let them inside a small, private office...but not before childish, whimsical Loki could reach out to it and pat the wood with a comical pout on his lips.

"There you are!" a deep, rich female voice greeted them. "Be welcome, Fi, Loki, be very welcome indeed." Fi pivoted and bowed, just a fraction of a second before Loki, saluting the woman who led Azure Traverse--who was Azure Traverse.

Shamira Goldstein looked regal--regal and young, in spite of the grey streaking her dark brown hair. Nobody knew exactly how old she was, or even who she was--or just how she had come to lead the great empire that stood behind Azure Traverse. Fi had always known her the way she was now. Pilots rarely saw her, even though it was said she loved diving through the Deep. Impossible though it was, preposterous though it was, it was rumored she could pilot--alone. She wasn't part of any team. She stayed behind, a prisoner of Earth and of the innermost sections of human space, where one had to be in order to defend one's interests in a Union whose centers of powers were exclusively located in areas under Earth's direct influence.

"You're okay," Shamira had come to them in quick, brisk strides. Laying her hands upon Loki's shoulders, she looked him in the eye for a long time before nodding. "Still a bit spooked, but you've flushed the Out Fall out of your system. Good," she let out a little sigh of relief.

"Yeah, well," Loki replied, wholly focused on her, "since you called us here, where only quality folks are allowed on station, we figured it'd be nice to come early so we could be on our best behavior--even though our entry into Capella system may have ruined our reputation with station ops for the next millenium or so," he finished, flashing a smile Shamira's way, radiating innocence when the previous day shift's prank had been nothing more than Loki venting off his frustration at having to dock at a station less than a hundred lightyears away from Earth.

Shamira chuckled at that, not fooled in the least, then she turned toward Fi. "I'm sorry, Giuseppina," she said, which made Fi wince inwardly. She wasn't exactly fond of her given name.

"There was no help for it," Fi shrugged, unconcerned. Out Fall was part of a pilot's life, they all knew and accepted that. Besides, the sheer pleasure of sailing the Deep, of feeling the flow course through one's body far outweighed the strain and pain of Out Fall. Moreover, there was Muir. What Fi had with him couldn't be described in words. It was a fullness, a completeness of the heart and soul, of the body and spirit that went beyond bliss and happiness, and what the poor, limited words of human languages could express. The Dwellers had a thought-concept for it, but it didn't translate.

Balance.

It sounded ridiculous in human terms, but they--well, the Dwellers were the Dwellers: mysteries that drew Loki to them and frightened Fi as much as they attracted her. Before Fi, Shamira bowed. "My thanks." Fi smiled. It was unnecessary to thank her: where Loki went, she followed. It was the way of things, and of the strange alchemy that shaped and sealed a sailing team. Still, Shamira's thanks meant respect and an acknowledgement that soothed nerves rubbed raw by the alien feeling of Carré--the Graad Foundation's outermost stronghold.

"So," Loki had turned to face Shamira, and he asked her in a quiet voice, "Are you going to tell us what was worth canceling our Edge run and refusing the Dwellers' cargo, thus unsealing the deal we had striven to strike with them?" He was still pissed, and badly so. With an effort of will, Fi stifled the laughter bubbling up her throat.

"The Graad Foundation is after our head," Shamira replied calmly, "and they'll move during the coming session of the house. I'll need you to defend Azure Traverse, Loki." Her charcoal eyes searched his face, and again she reached out to him. "I'll need you to keep your head, no matter what happens, no matter what gets said once we step beyond that door." Her hands clasped Loki's shoulders and squeezed, hard enough for Shamira's knuckles to turn white. Loki didn't flinch, he kept staring at Shamira Goldstein, intent. "They'll try to unmake us, they'll lie and defile all that you are, but you mustn't follow where they lead. I need your mind, Loki. I need the sharp clarity you somehow manage to reach when you plunge down the Deep."

"Shamira," Loki rolled his eyes heavenward and shook his head. "What do you think I am? Some freak for you to display to those esteemed ladies and gentlemen?" he smirked. "Don't worry, we'll kick the Graad Foundation's sorry ass all the way back to Earth, and we'll bury them there." There was a wolfish grin splitting Loki's face.

"I wish!" Shamira gave a faint snort, then she paused for a few seconds, listening at whatever the small ear-feed all representatives wore inside the house was telling her. "They've started filling the great hall. All right," she drew in a deep breath. "We're going in. Follow me; with the commotion, nobody will be able to single you out and dispute the session's start." With that, she stepped over to the other door at the far end of her office, trailed by the other two representatives. Fi gave Loki a look, but he merely shrugged and they both fell into step with their companions.

Senseless chatter, as annoying as a buzz, filled the office as soon as Shamira opened the door, and Fi stood on her tiptoes to steal a glance of the fabled great hall where the Union's policy was made and the destiny of all humankind woven.

"Shit!" The sharp hiss escaped Fi before she could master it. There was no time to think or ponder choices. Reaching out, Fi grasped Loki's left arm and pulled him back. "There!" she whispered in his ear, pointing toward a seat in the first row, on the hall's right edge. In a slow motion, Loki pivoted to follow the direction she had indicated, where a man in his early thirties at the most was sitting, waiting with a smile on his lips, clear blue eyes set on Shamira as she stepped inside the hall--hawklike eyes. He had gathered his beautiful black hair in a long, thick braid that reached his lower back, Fi noted distantly even as she felt Loki come to an abrupt stop beside her.

A shadow flickered in the emerald gaze, unreadable, and then was gone. Tense, Fi thought as she squeezed the arm she had grasped, so awfully tense. "What do you make of him?" he asked at last, a thin, thin smile on his lips, so cold it sent shivers through Fi.

"Pilots' Guild," she replied softly, "and not their juniormost, by the look of him." Pilots' Guild, the mighty arm of the Graad Foundation. They wielded the lockgates and guided the Earth ships through the Deep, never ever flowing with the currents or riding the tides. Blinded by their senseless fears and prejudices. Pilots' Guild, indeed. It was in the way he bore himself, and in the rich fabric of his clothes--in the small, diminutive owl embroidered in his left sleeve with threads of gold. How both Loki and she had missed it during the previous night shift, Fi couldn't say. Not even the randomness of Out Fall could explain such a lapse on their part.

"High ranking bastard, to be sure," Loki nodded, his gaze set on the man, and the same frightening smile still frozen on his lips.

It explained much. Yes, it explained how a single man had been enough to last Loki through the night shift, had been enough to absorb the shock of Out Fall. It explained why the man hadn't shied away when even in Outer Colonies like Deneb or Achernar, only the most adventurous sons and daughters of the old space-faring clans dared be present in a trident-marked café when Azure Traverse jumpships were docked. It also explained the weirdness Fi had felt in Loki when he had come down from his room at the Aegean.

Instead of finding a sated predator, Fi had greeted down the stairs a Loki whose troubled green eyes had betrayed a hunger their owner could neither put into words, nor understand--but that Fi knew all too well. "Damn the bastard!" she snarled between clenched teeth.

"Nah." Loki bowed his head, and for the time of a heartbeat his single long lock of hair hid his gaze from Fi. "He was pleasing enough in bed," he added, laughter in his voice--dissonant. Then he let out a shaking breath, and looked up.

"I'm here," Fi told him gently, meaning it with all her heart. Loki was a trickster, a bully and a liar, but he was also the other half of their team--Fi's other half, the one she knew she could trust absolutely and follow through the Deep's lethal storms, through Hell and back again. Loki was the one who guided her, and always brought her back to Muir, unerringly finding his way through the wildest currents that no other pilot dared touch.

Loki's right hand covered Fi's on his arm. "I know," he said. His fingers pressed hers, sending small waves of pain up her arm, and in the same time the tension that had poisoned him until now vanished, as if winked out by a sudden breeze. "It'll be all right," he added even as he stepped inside the great hall. Fi followed after him, with a small nod to herself.

The emerald eyes had regained their haughty clarity. The bright, youthful fire that was Loki had recaptured its strength. Arrogant and beautiful, the redhead strutted upon the floor of the Union's center of power as if he owned the place. On his left, Fi released her breath in an inaudible sigh, and pitied those poor representatives seated before them, who had no idea what kind of demon had just been let loose in their midst.

End of Chapter 1.

Notes

Brennan really is more than 200 years old. Brennan being the Aries Gold Saint, he's a descendant from the people of Mu, and so not exactmy human. One of the things that mark him as a descendant of Mu beyond his natural psychic powers is his very long life-span. The one thing he keeps hinting at when he uses the name "Solo" is the forever war between Athena and Poseidon. The god Poseidon always chooses a member of the Solo family to incarnate himself.

The "i" in Fi is to be pronounced the same way as the "i" in Loki.

The Dwellers being really _alien_ beings, what they say is weird, in content as well as in pure form. Any weirdness in their grammar or their use of verb tenses is their own, and not the result of a mistake on my part. *grin*

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