Prologue
A continuation of the story of Chelo Lee, dated September 17, Year 222, Fremont Standard, as brought to the academy of new world historians.…
War leaves fear and loss worse than bitterlace in the hearts of everyone associated with it. There are no winners. Only scars, and for the lucky, the time to heal them. We were not lucky.
This is my third tale for you. I already related how I separated from my brother, Joseph, and three of the other six people that made up my heart. Then I told you of our time apart, and of how Joseph came back and saved my life and the life of my world, the colony planet Fremont.
Joseph almost died. My children almost died. Some parts of me died.
Now I’ll tell you about war, for my life is built on its bones.
Patience.
It’s an old memory, and I’m going to creep up on it so I can tell it fresh.
I was born during the first war of my life. That happened on Fremont, a planet big enough and empty enough that everyone involved could have lived there in peace. My parents came to take it, but found themselves driven off by settlers they hadn’t even known were there. But who could blame them? They were, after all, on Fremont first. They went there to escape people like my parents. They lived through paw-cats and yellow snakes and earthquakes and meteors rather than face a world of shifting genetics.
At the end of the war, my parents’ people had to leave seven of us behind: six children and an injured adult. The colony raised us, but they made us pay for being different.
So you see, even before the Star Mercenaries came, I learned the sharp pain of war. And then my own father sent mercenaries from Islas to kill everyone on Fremont. I cannot feel guilty for that, since he and I were separated when I was six. I didn’t even know he lived until the day he died. But I feel tainted anyway. How could I not? You see, my decisions helped further the war he started. I chose the first deaths. That’s a story I’ve already told, and it hurts to think about it.
So on to the sundering.
We were leaving so much behind.
Akashi, Sasha, Mayah, Sky. The hot breath of my riding animal, the hebra named Stripes. The dead: Nava and Stile and Eric and a few hundred more. They might as well all be dead now, at least to me. I would not see any of them again.
Fremont was warm, wet, and wild. The space ship, Creator, was cold, dry, and followed my brother’s commands like a well-trained house-dog. Far more metal than life filled the hull.
I hated it.
Kayleen and her mother, Paloma, watched over our children in our new, tiny home—a section of sleeping compartments with a small common room that included four ugly benches that could each be turned into the tortuous beds that Joseph called acceleration chairs.
Liam and I had been strapped in a different set of rooms. We were close enough that I felt his warmth as we watched the single city, Artistos, shrink in the screen until the view included the cliffs and the Grass Plains and the Lace River and the High Road and then even the volcano Blaze. The force of flight kept me from turning my head, so surely Liam didn’t see that a tear fell unbidden down my cheek. Even though the people of Fremont hated us, how could they live without us to help them? Who would stop the paw-cats and tend the electronics?
I didn’t move until Fremont was only a speck around a sun. Eventually the thrust fell off enough for Liam and I to turn and gaze at each other’s shocked faces. He was beautiful, with honey-colored hair that fell around his broad shoulders, and his face, in profile now, showing his high cheekbones. “Is it safe?” I asked.
“To get up? Let’s try.”
My brother had told us we could move around when we were no longer forced down by acceleration. He also warned me about feeling too light. Even so, I clutched Liam for balance, and he pulled near too easily, as if I were drawing a child to my chest. A reminder a ship is not a planet. Liam still smelled like himself, and still, faintly, of the Grass Plains and of hebra. For that smell, I clutched him to me, breathing deeply while I massaged the stiff muscles in the small of his back. He leaned down and kissed me, and then we stared at each other for a long time, as if breaking away would cement the loss of our home.
But of course, we eventually slid from each other’s arms. There were no words for our loss. It was as great as the gulf between us and home, widening into forever.
Thirst and hunger drove us to the nearby galley for bread and goat’s milk cheese and water. After, I returned to the viewing room and Liam went to check on the others. By the time I sat back down and focused on the screen, we must have turned or gone farther than I thought, and I couldn’t find Fremont in the vast starfield. Just darkness and points of light that were whole suns.
So many stars. It made Fremont so small. Me so small.
Joseph had warned me of the vastness of space and how Creator would be a small speck of dust traveling between grains of sand on a beach of stars.
I had been made to find the positive, to see opportunity in difficulty, to lead through hope. And what better place to feel the hope of worlds than the incredible beauty of space? I had expected to live and die on a single grain of sand. And now, now I was going off to a new future in a faraway place.
This is the sundering that frames this part of our story: leaving everything we knew behind, and moving through the vastness of space with our tiny, fragile family. Under the awe that filled my very bones, I knew there would be humans in space and, thus, there would be war. I didn’t yet know we flew toward beings more beautiful and complicated than I’d ever imagined.
I swallowed and saluted the viewscreen, then got up and went to find my family. Among humans, there would be love to sweeten the war. This moment was for love.