A BROKEN SWORD HELD HIGH
L.J. Hachmeister
Generations have passed since the colonists on Terra Pax severed their connection to Earth and the wider universe. Though dragons stalk the wilderness, all violence—even when done in defense—is forbidden by holy law. But when the only guarantee of peace is surrender, Kira must learn not to lay down arms, but to hold the sword high....
My father does not draw his sword, even as the Red Dragon circles around in the darkened sky for another attack.
“Kira!” he shouts at me as thunder booms overhead. “Run!”
But I can’t. The flying beast spreads its wings, casting a great shadow upon the gathering party. As the other men flee from the riverside to the cover of the forest, I stand transfixed by its glowing crimson scales and fire-born eyes.
“Kira!”
My father runs to me as lightning cracks open the congested gray sky. As it dives for me, a bolt strikes its tail. Blue fire erupts across its spine and ignites its eyes.
I reach out, heart thumping in my chest, even as it bares its jagged silver teeth and—
A large body slams into me, knocking the breath from my lungs. I can’t tell dirt from sky as I tumble down the grassy slope into the river. The shock of the cold water drives me to panic and I flail, gulping and snorting in the turbulence.
“Get her out of here!”
Strong arms scoop me out of the water and toss me to the grassy bank on the opposite side of the river. Ezra, the leader of our colony, lifts me up and helps me toward the safety forest as I cough and stagger.
Father—
I dig in my heels and turn around to see the Red lunging at my father, swiping at him with its armored forelegs. Draw your sword!
My father dives back into the icy waters as the dragon swoops down, slicing into the river with its spiked belly.
Ezra yanks on my arm, but I twist free and run back to my father. Behind me, our leader shouts to the men in the forest: “Deploy countermeasures!”
The beast roars and snaps its armored tail, twisting around for another attack. I reach my father as he throws an arm onto the bank, digging his fingers into the mud and grasses to pull himself up. Grabbing one of his sleeves, I try to help he gasps for breath. Blood gushes from the cut along his forehead.
“Kira,” he wheezes, losing his grip on one side. He doesn’t finish his reprimand as I lose my grip on his sleeve, and he slips back into the rushing river.
But not before I grasp the hilt of his sword.
I meant to grab his baldric, as if I, a thirteen-year-old, gangly kid could somehow haul a full-grown man out of a raging river. Instead, I stumble back with sword in hand, struggling to lift and aim it at the incoming dragon.
“Kira, no!” my father shouts, clinging to a tree root jutting out of the mud. “Put down the sword!”
I hear him but can’t comprehend the command. Not as the beast swoops in, bellowing, teeth and talons bared. I swing the sword from left to right in wild, uncoordinated movements, and it jerks back at the last second. The sheer mass of its body cutting through the air strikes me down, but I scramble back and use both hands to hold the sword up.
“Don’t fight it!” Ezra screams from the cover of the forest.
Thunders boom across the valley, lightning splashes across the sky. Though my hair is tied back, the loose strands stand up, as do the hairs on my arm. The beast attracts the lightning, feeds off it, as if the storm and the predator of the skies are one. Even if the Red doesn’t eat me on this next pass, I’m holding a 110-centimeter lightning rod.
Fireworks blaze up to the sky and explode in a sparkling burst of orange, yellow, and green. The beast shrieks and shoots up to the clouds, disoriented by the dazzling colors.
The smell of gunpowder hits my nose with the stunning reality of what I’ve done, and the rules I’ve broken. I drop the sword in the grass and return to my father, but Ezra’s there with two other men, lifting my father out of the river.
Lightning zigzags through the tortured clouds. The beast electrifies, radiating blue, writhing. Its scream harkens my blood and chills my bone, making me feel more alive than ever.
And yet, I know the punishment that is coming.
What have I done?
The men deploy smoke grenades to hide our position as we flee to the sanctuary of the trees. I try to catch up to my father, but even injured and exhausted, he is faster than me. When we reach the white cliffs, he and the others pause long enough at the rope bridge for me to catch up.
One of the men hands the sword back to my father, and he accepts the burden with the penitence expected of all Terrans.
“Our youngest has strayed,” Ezra says, nursing his injured shoulder. “This is a troubling sign.”
My father looks back at me, face bloodied, blue eyes racked with guilt and disappointment. “Forgive me, Ezra. I misjudged my daughter’s readiness. Please, may she live to see the morrow.”
Ezra looks at me, eyes narrowing, as the beast roars in the distance. “You’re lucky she’s just a girl.”
Just a girl.
Ezra’s scorn burns hotter than the fever that sets in that evening. My mom tends to me as I toss and turn in bed, whispering forbidden words in her ancestral language as she reapplies the healing brown paste of mashed-up flowers and roots to my forehead and neck.
“Be strong, Kira,” she says, switching to our common tongue so I can understand her through the fog. “This will pass.”
“She fell into the river, probably caught a chill,” my father explains, limping into my bedroom. I can only make out his silhouette in the flickering candlelight. I hate the pity in his voice. “Maybe she didn’t take to this world.”
My mother presses the back of her hand against my cheek. “She’s stronger than you think.”
Sweat drips down my body, soaking through the plant-fiber bedsheets. I can’t stand the way my father sees me, shivering and shaking, weak.
“I—I’m ready to go g—gathering again.”
My mom tries to keep me from rising, but I throw over the blankets and get to my feet. My father’s gaze hardens as I stand there, covered in brown paste, a wisp of a creature compared to his looming presence.
“Always a fight in you,” my father says, stepping into the candlelight so I can see his face. My mother’s stitched up the gash quite nicely. It will fade like the rest of his scars. “But you’re not nearly as powerful as you think.”
I notice his Sword of Burden is once again strapped to his back. With whatever he did to his leg, I’m sure the extra weight of the weapon isn’t good for healing, but he would never spare himself. Nor will my mother, until death—or worse.
“Wash up,” my father commands.
He and my mother exchange glances as I shuffle to the bathroom.
I lean against the sink as I scrub off the paste, letting the cool water run down my neck and chest. I scrutinize myself in the mirror, knowing that if I leave a single dirty spot, my father will just send me back in.
I sigh at the reflection in the mirror. I look thinner and bonier than usual, my black hair barely contained in a ponytail. Most northern colonists have honey-brown irises, but I was born with eyes the color of a gray winter sky. My mom says they’re beautiful. Ezra convinced my father that the unusual color, along with my stillborn twin brother, was an omen. Right now, they just look drained, much like how I feel.
“Kira?”
I drag myself back out to my bedroom. My mother is standing by my father, head bowed. She lost an argument, but her reddened cheeks say she’s got more to say when they step out.
“You unsheathed my sword in the valley,” my father states.
“I’m sorry, Father,” I say, sensing this lecture was coming. Swords of Burden are a reminder of our violent past, of why our terraforming forefathers left Earth, and never to be used for violence. Only those deemed worthy to carry the heavy sword are allowed to speak in community circles and weigh in on colony matters. I could argue it was a mistake, that I meant to grab his baldric, but as much as I want to believe that, it isn’t entirely true. If it were, I would have never used it to defend against the Red.
“Violence is never the answer,” my father says, baritone voice rising. His meaty hands curl into fists that could knock out a stone pillar. “We are never to draw our swords, even if it means our life. Violence only begets violence.”
“Even in defense?” I say, staggering forward. I catch myself, eyes closing for just a second to keep the mud bricks and thatch roof from swirling together. “I saved your life!”
My father guffaws. “And what’s next? Defense turns to aggression, aggression to bloodlust, bloodlust to war. A path of the Sword Mage. If you were a boy, I’d offer your hide to Ezra.”
I grind my teeth together to keep from shouting. My twin brother and I were born premature under the feared hundred-year cycle of the fifth “blood” moon. Legend says that the blood moon awakens the violent spirits, creating the Sword Mage, a being who can effect storms and draw out the Red Dragons.
But that’s the mystical side of things, and it confounds me. How can the descendants of star travelers and terraformers believe in such things? If the colonists had allowed themselves to keep all the technology that brought them from Earth to Terra Pax, I’m sure there would be another explanation. My mom says to be thankful they let us keep indoor plumbing.
If it were Rorin in my place, I think, conjuring the imaginary image of my dead brother, he’d have been killed on the spot.
A strange hypocrisy in the Peacekeeper tenets, but my father claims that Sword Mages are dangerous enough to warrant such extremism.
A wave of nausea washes over me. I eye the bed, wanting to lie back down, but don’t want him to take that as a sign.
“How can defense be wrong?” I say, tears forming in my eyes. I swear it’s the fever, not my anger. “I couldn’t just stand there and watch you die.”
My father wrinkles his nose, his forehead knotting, as if caught between a cry and a shout. Instead, he rummages through his gray-and-green tunic and tosses me a weathered baldric.
“You are not ready for your Burden, but you need to understand the consequences of violence.”
He limps out of the room and comes back with another sword in hand. From my limited angle, it looks just like the ones my parents carry, forged from unique Terra Pax metals into a blend of Dao and Spartan design. The sharp blade glints in the candlelight. My heart thuds in my chest as he approaches me, hilt first, only to reveal the ugly truth at the very last second.
The broken sword. The one that was to be given to Rorin when he came of age. The one my father shattered against the mountainside when my brother would not wake.
“Peace is the only thing that matters,” he says, tossing it at my feet. It clatters on the clay tiles. “We are nothing with violence.”
Sweat dripping off my forehead, I bend down and pick up the sword. Even broken in half, the weight is onerous. I hold the ruined sword in both hands, wobbling. Feverish heat creeps up my neck, but I will myself to keep upright.
“I won’t let you down, Father,” I say, eyes drooping.
“No, you won’t,” he says, breaking apart my mother’s clasped hands. She glances at me, brown eyes lit by internal fires as they place their fists over their hearts. “Or you’ll soon join your brother.”
Snippets of reality drift through my fever dreams: My mother, weeping at my bedside. The crackling fire in the hearth. Birdsong drifting in through open windows, and the smell of rain from the afternoon showers. But anything real is tainted by the Reds, scoring my nightmares with their sharp talons and electrifying screams. Calling them dragons is a misnomer, especially with their reptilian bodies and feline faces, but the early colonists didn’t have a better name for the native beasts.
“Stay away!” I shout in my dreams as they fly toward me. Their eyes light up like torches, lightning shooting from their mouths.
“Kira, raise your sword.”
I jerk awake to Ezra’s heavy bootsteps resounding in the entryway.
“Of course, she’s fine,” my father laughs.
I lay back down and pretend to sleep, but keep my eyes cracked. I can’t see much, only the fireplace and the edge of the dining table. Ezra’s come in, but doesn’t seem interested in making himself comfortable.
“Has she shown any manifestations of a Mage?”
Pans knock over. My mother shuffles out of the kitchen. I see her gray skirt twirl just outside my bedroom.
“No, no,” my father bumbles. “Besides, she’s a girl, Ezra. There’s nothing to worry about.”
Ezra sighs. “The Red appearing this close to town is a concern, Dragen. Is she still sick? It could be a sign—”
“She’s got the flu,” my mom states, sounding more firm than usual. “And you two better mind the situation. Take it outside, gentlemen.”
The front door creaks open, and their gruff conversation fades in the distance. I strain to listen, but my mom glides inside my bedroom with a steaming cup.
“I know you’re awake,” she says, pulling up a stool to sit by my bedside. “It’s time for your medicine.”
I scoot up on my elbow and wrinkle my nose. Whatever murky concoction my mother’s offering me smells like swamp water with a dash of cinnamon.
“Yes, you’re drinking it,” she says, bringing it to my lips before I can even refuse.
It’s better not to argue with her. My mom’s a lithe woman with a pioneer’s fortitude. I’ve never heard her complain about anything, even when the Peacekeepers impose another one of their ridiculous rules like segregating the colonies or destroying another relic of our ancestors’ technology. Women aren’t required to shoulder the same burden as a man, but she chose her father’s sword as an homage to her family’s struggles to survive on the alien world.
“Blech,” I say, wiping off my lips. The inside of my mouth tastes like pond scum. “That doesn’t taste like your flu recipe.”
My mom sucks in her lips and touches the folds of her uniform top, something she’s taken to doing when she’s about to say something difficult to me. “You promised me you’d stay out of trouble if I let you go gathering with the others.”
I lean against the cool bricks, not wanting to fight with her, too. “I did...until the Red showed up.”
She purses her lips and takes back the teacup. “I’m sure Ezra will meet with the other Peacekeepers about this. There will be more rules.”
I bunch up the bedsheets in my hand and mutter, “What now? More praying? Burn down the Spires?”
Tears brim my mother’s eyes, but she wipes them away before I process the gravity of her reaction. “Let’s hope not,” she whispers.
I tilt my head, unsure if she means the Spires, the last remaining evidence of our ancestors’ terraforming efforts and technology, or the praying.
She smooths out my bedsheets, pulling them from my clenched fists. “Your father is more supportive of Ezra’s peacekeeping measures, but I remember a different time—one where technology wasn’t feared. We even kept up the communications systems, just in case.”
“Just in case?”
My mom lowers her voice. “In case we ever heard from Earth.”
I gasp. From the stories Ezra and the other Peacekeepers tell, our forefathers left Earth to avoid the brewing world war after overpopulation, political unrest, and climate change devastated the few remaining resources of the planet. The last transmission from Earth was received not long after their starship cleared the solar system. There were only three letters: SOS. After that, our ancestors vowed to create a better world.
“Nobody knows Earth’s fate,” my mom says.
“But there weren’t any more transmissions. Ezra says humans destroyed themselves in the Last Great War and—”
“Ezra and the others believe in peace at all cost,” she says, resting her hand on my arm. “Even if it means imposing laws that keeps our colonies apart—and truly harmonizing with nature.”
“Harmonizing with nature? You mean ‘harmonic restoration’?” I ask, referring to the fancy term for how the Peacekeepers handle dissidents. The last person to speak out was Traci Kitahama, a scientist of the old ways, who pushed for the reintegration of technology into our minimalist culture when her husband died from an accident five years ago. She claimed he could have been healed if the Peacekeepers let her use one of the old surgical suites aboard the original starship. Instead, Ezra had her tossed into the middle of the forest, naked and toolless, in the name of “harmonic restoration,” so she could learn to love nature and appreciate her place in the world.
She hasn’t been seen since.
My mother shakes her head, her eyes flitting to the doorway, then back to me. “No. That’s Ezra’s idea of harmony. I’m talking about becoming one with nature.”
I hear my father laugh through the window, a deep baritone rumble that makes us pause. My mom resumes, her voice quieter, secretive: “Nature is violent. All living things fight to survive, from plants to animals to insects. Violence should be avoided, but there is a place and time to fight.”
“Mom...” I whisper, scared of what she’s implying. “That sounds a lot like...the preachings of a Sword Mage.”
She nods, confirming my fears. “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the last Sword Mage, Reznor. He struck down the emerald anaconda that killed my brother and tried to eat me.”
“He killed it?”
“Yes.”
I shudder. The emerald anacondas—though not really a snake but named as such because of its slithering body and serpentine mouth—are native predators to Terra Pax. With our terraforming efforts, they grew from small nuisances to twenty-meter-long killers with a taste for human blood. The Peacekeepers set up shields over the colonies, one of the few relics from the past we’re allowed to use, but thousand-year-old technology isn’t fail-safe. Still, to kill something, even out of self-defense, is forbidden, even if it meant a life of the colonist—or the colony itself.
“One day you will understand, Kira, how peace is different from penitence, just as fighting does not mean brutality. And when you do, I believe you’ll be the one to bring true peace to all Terrans.”
“Me? Why?” I exclaim, glancing down at my sunken belly under my sweaty T-shirt.
The front door creaks open. My father proclaims the traditional Peacekeeper mantras as Ezra’s heavy footsteps sound just outside my bedroom. “Peace, my friend! Tomorrow will be our day of reconciliation.”
Ezra pauses outside my window as my mother takes my hand, eyes glistening. “Because not all legends are true.”
The next day, my mother’s satisfied enough with my improvement—or through with my whining—so she allows me to gather the medicinal lavendera flower close by the house. Our colony, one of five, focuses on gathering food and medicine from the forests, and every four months, we trade with the other colonies for tools, clothing, electrical pods, and other resources. It’s the only time we get to see any of the other colonists, and seeing the red, blue, gray, green, and yellow uniforms mixing makes me happy. Ezra and the Peacekeepers from the other colonies monitor our interactions, and if there’s any dispute, it’s quickly snuffed with threats of harmonic restoration.
But while the Peacekeepers worry about even the slightest provocation, my attention goes to Noz, a boy from the “blue” colony of clothing makers who reside near the Unreachable Mountains. They weave plant fibers and genetically modified spider silk to make our weather-resistant clothing. Other girls think he’s weird because he’s quiet and usually has a prickly spider tucked away in his front pocket. I like that he’s oddly handsome and pays about as much attention to Ezra’s prayers to subdue the human heart as I do.
I think he likes me too. He once brought me a shell of a Dire seed, a rare specimen that grows only at the oxygen-starved, unreachable tops of the Unreachable Mountains. The hardened seeds are relics of the world before terraforming, a place no human could survive. Noz didn’t say a thing, blushing as he handed me the seed, then running away. I’m pretty sure it was a marriage proposal, but I won’t get too ahead of myself.
I’ll see him in two days, I think, running my hand over huge, gnarled tree roots and tall grasses in search of the purple flower. As long as I don’t get sick again...
I don’t know why I’ve come down with high fevers in the last few months. My father thinks it’s because I’m weak, that I’m one of the unlucky ones that can’t handle the genetic modifications made by the first colonists to survive the new planet. My mother just insists I keep drinking her awful teas.
Gripping my new baldric, I shift the weight of the broken sword on my back. I’m not weak.
As I walk along the dirt path, the tight canopy of trees breaks up the sun’s rays into long shafts that turn the grasses from yellow to gold. Even though my great-great-great-grandparents’ generation finalized the terraforming for human habitation, everything feels young and fresh. Schoolteachers tell of a cold desert planet with low oxygen levels and hardy plant and animal life. But I can’t imagine Terra Pax as such a hardscrabble place with the humidity that hangs in the warm air, iridescent butterflies that dance through the sunlight, or the sparkling lake a hundred meters down the rolling hill.
I love it here, I think, my fingertips finding the textured leaf of the purple flower amongst a ring of button-top mushrooms. A horned mouse, reputed for their shyness, scampers up to me. I extend my fingers and allow him to sniff my hand. His whiskers tickle my fingers. This is home.
An old song, one that my mother sung to me in her forbidden ancestral tongue, grazes my mind. I’ve never understood the words, but she translated them to me on one summer day, making me promise to never tell my father:
“Brilliant sapphire, open my eyes.
May my veins become the tree roots and rushing rivers.
May my pulse be by the beat of dragon wings
And my blood bear their fires.
May shining stars and sighing winds whisper their secrets
And doleful howl of the lion-wolf makes my heart ache.
May my lungs fill with the scent of heavy rains and blooming flowers
May I one day find my home.”
As I pluck the soft lavendera, something rumbles overhead. I look to the cloudless blue sky, confused by the thunderous sound.
Boom. The ground shakes as the blast tears through the forest. Birds screech and fly out of the trees. I freeze, and the forest hushes.
Not thunder. An explosion—
But not like a misfired firework or an overheated electrical pod.
I place my hand on the ground, feeling, listening. In the distance, shouts and cries come from the colony.
Mother, Father. Dropping the lavendera, I run as fast as I can toward the smell of smoke—and the rising gray plumes from my house.
“Mother!” I scream, coming to a halt at the wall of heat. Roaring flames shoot out of the wreckage of my bombed-out house. Black ash and burning leaves rain down from above. Everything inside the blast radius of shattered trees is broken and on fire. “Father!”
I shield my eyes and try to find a way into the house, boots crunching over glass shards. The sky rumbles. A black starship streaks across the sky and the shock wave knocks me off my feet. In the tumble, I take in a mouthful of dirt and grass, and my head smacks against a tree.
Ears ringing, head throbbing, I crawl on my hands and knees. I struggle between breathing and coughing out dirt. I can’t find a way through the smoke.
Mom—?
Shouting in the distance morphs into an inhuman shriek as the sky cracks open with thunder.
Mom—
A flaming tree limb breaks off and crashes next to me, embers singeing my face and left hand. Fire surrounds me on all sides. I unsheathe my sword and hack and slash at the limb, trying to cut a path through the inferno, but another branch lands behind it, reinforcing the fiery barrier.
Recoiling back, I hold my sword out in front of me in vain. “Help me!”
Lightning, white and hot, streaks down from above. It pierces the tip of the sword, shooting down my arms and igniting my body.
I’m dead, I think, but my body dissolves into infinitesimal points of light that rush to the sky. Whatever is left of me spins and flips, then slams back down.
I snap back together, breathing in sharply as if I’d held my breath for ages. The air is clean and aromatic with fresh flowers. Instead of embers and dirt, I find myself lying atop a feather bush surrounded by giant redwood trees, still clutching my sword. My entire body tingles as if blood is rushing back in.
Though sluggish, I’m back on my feet and brushing the leaves out of my hair. My boots—
I’m barefoot. My boots, blackened and smoldering, are lying meters apart from me and each other, like they’ve been blasted off my body.
What happened? My clothing is also singed, exposing patches of skin on my arms, stomach, and legs. Even stranger, my sword—and the arm holding the sword—is vibrating, as if supercharged by an electrical current.
But I’m alive.
And still close to the colony. The smoke in the air is subtle, but the booming noises persist to the west.
I shelve my concerns and do my best with a broken sword to hack my way through the dense foliage toward the colony. The slope guides me to a reflective white building overgrown with vines and mosses, and DO NOT ENTER painted on the exterior panels. It’s a forbidden place, a reminder—and connection—to our unspeakable past. But when I spot a dozen colonists running into the building, I forget the rules.
“Father!” I yelp, seeing him carrying my mother. Her face is covered in black soot and—
Blood.
I sheath my sword and bound through the bush. When he sees me, I don’t understand his surprise. “You’re alive? I saw the branches fall—I thought you’d been killed. I barely got your mother out...”
“I’m okay,” I say, unsure if he’s angry or disappointed.
A black starship, trailed by two fighters, scuds across the sky toward the colony.
“Help me with your mother.”
I follow him and the other colonists inside. The Communications and Surveillance Center, built decades ago, was meant to develop new tech to contact Earth, or at least get answers about her demise. Ezra’s grandfather, Sahad, the first Peacekeeper, shut it down, preaching we shouldn’t try to reconnect with our fallen brethren. The metal beams look intact, but the dust on the machinery and the plant roots breaking through the walls lend doubt that anything works.
I just hope it protects us from whatever is falling from the sky.
“Who are they?” one of the colony men shouts as my father and I lay my mother down away from the windows, on the tile floor by some shelving. Everyone who isn’t wounded crowds around Ezra as he stares at the relay station. Thunder—bombs—continue to strike.
“You have to open a channel!” someone else shouts.
My focus is on my mom. Her breathing is ragged, gasping. I don’t know what’s worse—the burns around her face or the puncture wound to her chest.
“Apply pressure here,” my father directs as he ransacks the office for supplies.
I press my hands over the wound. Warm blood squishes between my fingers and my mother moans.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, tears sliding from my eyes.
The other colonists continue to shout.
“Someone turn on the generator—”
“It’s too old.”
“Dragen!” Ezra yells over the commotion. “Didn’t your father teach you advanced mechanics?”
My father stops his search in the shelves and looks to me, cheeks reddening. “Y-yes. He did. But this place has no power—it’s been shut down for decades.”
Ezra’s jaw tightens. “There have been a few caretakers.”
The colonists gasp and talk amongst themselves in hushed tones. The forbidden communications post wasn’t disassembled like Sahad vowed?
My father mumbles to himself, then runs over and barks orders at the other colonists. He sends two people to the power station, and another to check the wiring in the ansibles. A few minutes later, after another blast rocks the building, lights and computer monitors flicker to life.
Sweat lines my father’s brow, and he looks to Ezra nervously, his hands poised over the keyboard. “Are you sure, Ezra? This is against—”
Ezra raises a hand. “It’s okay, Dragen. We just need to know what they want. Peace may be possible.”
A thousand questions try to leap off my tongue, but my mother’s hand touches mine. “Soon, Kira...”
Confused, I smooth back her hair and squeeze her hand back. “It’ll be okay, Mom. Ezra will find peace.”
Eyes half-open, she stares at me, a smile creeping around her mouth. “Your eyes are so beautiful...”
What? I look up, eager to find my reflection in one of the smooth white surfaces of the office, but find none.
All chatter in the room dies as a man in a hardened exoskeleton appears in a holographic projection over the relay. His face is human, but his voice is not. “...Do not resist...” he says with an insect hiss. “Our worlds will be one.”
“Who are they?” one of the colonists whispers. “Where are they from?”
All eyes turn to Ezra. He inhales sharply as distant sirens wail: “Earth.”
The soldiers come next, spilling out of the dropships decked out in scaly black armor and bearing lighted plasma guns.
“Everyone, stay calm!” Ezra shouts, pushing down my father, and several other colonists, to take cover. “I’ll handle this.”
With what?! I want to scream. We have no weapons, no means of self-defense—except for some weighted swords that pain our backs.
My mother grasps my hand and holds me close. “Play dead,” she whispers, smearing some of her blood on my face.
“But—”
She brings my head down to her chest, next to the wound. Warm blood trickles across my face and I squirm, but she pinches my arm as the soldiers blast down the front door, guns blazing with plasma charges.
“Please, you do not need to attack,” Ezra says, holding up his hands and stepping out from behind the communications relay. “We are a peaceful people.”
But they’re not, I think, peeking one eye open.
“May we not discuss your intent?” Ezra continues, still vying for a conversation. A soldier fires at one of the colonists creeping toward a broken window, vaporizing him into a crackling red mist.
“Val!” his wife screams, going into hysterics. Two soldiers silence her with cuffs and a shock collar.
A soldier bearing a gold stripe across his helmet analyzes our pitiful group. “Drop your weapons.”
“These are artifacts of a different era,” Ezra tries to explain, removing his sword and signaling for the others to do the same. “We do not use them for violence.”
Everyone surrenders, tossing their burdens to the floor and raising their hands.
Seeing no other option, I close my eyes and lie as still as a corpse, hoping my mother’s blood hides my reddened cheeks.
“Single file,” the soldier shouts.
Instead of calling for us to resist—to flee—Ezra softens his voice for prayer. “As the sun shall rise to meet the night, so will we bring peace to troubled hearts—”
Colonists scream as plasma discharges flash behind my closed eyelids. I don’t move, not when a body falls on top of my leg and burnt flesh singes my nose. I remain still, even after all the footsteps, and the roaring engines of the dropships, have faded.
“Kira...” my mother rasps.
I don’t want to move now, fearing what I’ll see. She rests her hand on my head and rustles my hair. “Look at me.”
I rise, tears spilling over my cheeks as I take in her pale face. “Run as fast as you can,” she says, pulling out an envelope, stained with her blood, from the folds of her uniform top.
“What’s this?”
Her eyes lose focus, drifting off to the side, then refocus back on me as I kick my way out from underneath the fallen colonist. “Answers.”
I rip open the envelope to find a faded sketch of an area of land not too far from here. There are notes in my mother’s secret language, and a circled location.
“Ezra isn’t wrong,” my mom says, her voice just above a whisper. “Peace is important—but to live in accordance with nature, we must be in active cooperation with the world and with fate, which means knowing when to submit and when to fight. That is the wisdom of a Sword Mage, something you must draw from within yourself.”
“What?” I say, shaking her shoulders to keep her awake. “I don’t understand.”
She coughs, then inhales sharply to gather the strength for her voice: “You are more powerful than you know.”
“This is what I am,” I say, unsheathing my broken sword and staring at the useless weapon.
My mother smiles, something I didn’t expect. “When the time comes, hold it high.”
I scoff. “And what? Make everyone laugh?”
As the light in her eyes fade, she whispers: “Make them see.”
I know the area circled on the map. The Reds reclaimed it about a century ago, circling high above the deep valley like sentries. Even if the sapphire flower grew there in bushels, nobody would ever dare venture there.
Numb and fueled by adrenaline, I sprint through the forest, my broken sword bouncing on my back, sketch in hand. I should wash the dried blood from my face or slow down through the thicket, but I don’t want to stop. Not when I can still feel my mother’s hand lose its grip on mine.
A Red shrieks in the skies as I break through a bush and come to a halt.
A starship?
Not like the ones I just saw streaking across the skies. This one is sheltered in a huge, modified cavern, surrounded by old terraforming equipment. A lighted generator whirs behind a support column, and the wavy distortion at the mouth of the cave indicates an activated shield. When I step out from the bush, my feet touch down on a hard gray-and-black surface.
A launch pad—
The pieces click in place. A terraforming station!
One of the early staging points.
I look up to the sky as the Reds circle in the gathering clouds. They probably feed off all the geomatter, I think, remembering my early lessons in terraforming. The stations housed protomatter and weather manipulators, and the organic by-products nourished the nascent Reds to become the behemoths they are today. The stations were eventually abandoned for the more advanced Spires, but the Reds remained.
And someone else.
Somebody hiding inside a yellow biosuit, pointing an ancient rifle in my direction. “Stop right there.”
I skid to a stop and hold up my hands. I forget about the map until it’s too late. When I try to hide it, the suited person yells, “What’s that?”
I consider lying, but a Red breaks off from the swarm and swoops lower to inspect our interaction. As lightning dances across the sky, I shout, “A map from my mom!”
The suited person cocks their head to the side and takes a step back inside the shelter of the cavern, out of the line of sight of the Red. “Who’s your mom?”
“Laela Northfall.”
The Red screeches and dives down, heading straight for me. Other Reds, hearing its cry, rear around in the skies, joining the plunge.
“Come on!” the person shouts, shutting off the shield and waving me inside. I run as fast as I can, the wind howling as the incoming beast closes in.
I won’t make it—
Lightning strikes at my feet. I propel forward, past the cavern of the mouth, and smack into one of the tail cones of the ancient starship.
As I lie dazed and confused on the concrete, the shield zaps back on. The Reds roar and snap their tails but can’t penetrate the protective field. As the biosuited person helps me up, the Reds launch back up into the storm.
The person in the biosuit takes off the translucent helmet, revealing a beautiful woman about my mom’s age, with silver-streaked black hair and warm brown eyes. “Are you alright, Kira?”
I rub the back of my head, already feeling a lump forming. “You know me?”
“Yes. I’ve been friends with your mom for a long time.” She holds out a gloved hand. “Dr. Traci Kitahama.”
I don’t hide my shock. “The Peacekeepers said you died!”
She laughs and gestures to the starship. “It’s better that they believed that than the fact I’ve been restoring the Venture and running experiments on the flora and fauna.”
As I follow her onto the ship, she inspects my map. “Your mom really loved writing and speaking Armenian, even if it risked banishment.”
“Armenian?”
“Yes, it’s one of the many languages from Earth, before the Peacekeepers forced us to speak only one. I bet she sang you ‘The Mage’s Song’ in Armenian, right? It’s the one that starts, ‘Brilliant Sapphire, open my eyes’?”
“Yeah...” I whisper, unsure of how to feel.
Dr. Kitahama chuckles. “Her conviction is inspiring.”
The starship panels and floor markings light up as we walk the hallways. I don’t have time to inspect the living quarters behind each door, the empty mess hall, or the darkened classrooms.
This was one of the original transports! I realize.
Dr. Kitahama stops at a locked door and scans her retinas at the panel. A beep and click later and we’re stepping inside a white-walled lab unlike anything I’ve seen in books. Bulky overhead scanners project readouts of recent diagnostics. Hundreds of plant and seed samples sit in transparent stasis cylinders across from a vast collection of animal claws, bones, skins.
“I saw the warships,” Dr. Kitahama says, waving her hands over a console to bring up the holographic images of the alien vessels attacking the colony. With a flick of her wrist, she shows me other images of the other colonies under attack, bombing the buildings first, then rounding up the survivors onto dropships. “Did anyone else survive?”
“They got my mom.” My shoulders tense and I can’t keep the quaver from my voice. “They took everyone else.”
“I’m so sorry, Kira. She was very brave—and so are you.”
“She said I’d find answers here.”
“Yes,” Dr. Kitahama says, pulling up other images alongside the warships. “To protect each other, your mother and I would communicate once a year. It was too dangerous otherwise; Ezra watched her very closely. The last time was a few weeks ago. I warned her that when I fixed the communications network on the Venture, I’d picked up signals from Earth. I worried that something—someone—was headed our way.”
“Who are they?” I ask, touching the projection of the warship. The hologram responds, zooming in on the writing on the hull. I recognize the letters, but not the language.
“Humans from Earth. There were survivors of the Last Great War, but during the recovery, there was an invasion.”
Dr. Kitahama brings up an image of a sickened human with pale skin and sunken eyes. She then extracts a second image, one of an arthropod with a multi-jointed tail and an undulating maw. “I don’t know where these things came from, but they occupy human hosts.”
I wince. “Are there any humans left?”
“Someone sent distress signals to all the starships that fled Earth, including the Venture, decades ago calling for help against ‘the bugs.’”
“Wait—decades?”
“Yes, around the time Ezra’s grandfather, Sahad, started the Peacekeepers and restricted our tech. Eventually, they eliminated everything they considered a threat, which meant executing the Sword Mages. Do you see the connection?”
My jaw tightens. Why would the Peacekeepers want to control our tech and keep our colonies apart? Why would they keep us constantly burdened with our swords?
A voice deeper inside me answers: Because they were afraid of reconnecting with Earth.
“I think so...But why kill the Sword Mages?”
“Sword Mages are masters of nature. They can unleash her powers, both violent and healing, to keep balance in the world. And the last Sword Mage, Reznor, wasn’t afraid of a fight. He advocated for reestablishing a link to Earth to restore our connection with our brothers and sisters—but Sahad and the other Peacekeepers knew what that meant.”
“War,” I whisper.
“Exactly.”
“We should help them,” I whisper, touching the image of the occupied human.
Traci smiles. “I think you can.”
“Me?!”
“Yes. You were born under the blood moon. You are a Sword Mage.”
“Impossible,” I say, stuffing my hands under my armpits. “I’m a girl.”
Traci chuckles. “Science says otherwise,” she says, calling up a hologram of an ancient Red.
“Much of it has to do with how we changed the planet,” she explains, showing the rapid rate of evolution for the species. “The draco panthera—the Reds—adapted to all the lightning storms in the early stages of terraforming, developing the ability to change biomatter into electrical current and vice versa.”
I stare at the rotating images of Reds disappearing and reappearing in lightning strikes. “They travel in and out of lightning.”
“Yes. It allowed them to expand their territory and grow at exponential rates. Most importantly, it allowed them to aid in the life cycle of the sapphire flower.”
She pulls up a diagram that expands into several smaller pictures. “Reds prey on birds and animals that eat the Dire seed in the Unreachable Mountains. The Reds can’t digest the pits, and when they travel in lightning, it alters the distribution of charged molecules across its membranes—”
Glancing at my knotted brow, she says, “Basically, it creates an electrical linkage that amplifies consciousness and connectivity to all living things. When the seeds are deposited into the lower valleys, the soil and the added light of the fifth moon cause them to blossom.”
“Noz once gave me a Dire seed shell,” I think out loud.
“Ah,” the doctor says. “Noz’s father is aligned with your mother’s beliefs. It was probably a token of faith.”
“Faith? Wait—I don’t understand how any of this makes me a Sword Mage.”
“If an expecting mother eats the sapphire petals, she risks fetal toxicity, especially in the presence of female hormones. However, in your case, having a twin meant greater distribution . . .”
I shrivel inside myself. Rorin.
Thinking I’m still confused, she explains: “By eating that petal, your mother connected you to all the flora and fauna on Terra Pax.”
“Flora and fauna...” I repeat. I think of how I transported out of the ring of fire in a flash of lightning. Like a Red?
Like a Sword Mage.
“But...I should have shown signs earlier.”
“You can thank your mother’s terrible teas for that. She suppressed your abilities with herbs until you’d come of age to make your choice.”
My fevers, I realize.
I regard my hands—the dirty nails, the rough calluses. I’m not special, and I don’t look like I could shoot lightning across the skies or call upon a legion of Reds.
Anger reddens my cheeks. Why did she do this to me?
Dr. Kitahama places a hand on my shoulder. “There are a few of us who believe like your mother. We desire balance, not suppression. Ezra and the Peacekeepers fear dominating nature because that led to the destruction of Earth, so they keep us burdened. But there is another way to live. Mages are connected to this world in the most intimate ways. They can guide us to become one with the world as stewards and caretakers, while continuing to evolve our knowledge of the universe. We need you, Kira, to guide us into a new era.”
An explosion thunders through the ship. The doctor and I lurch, falling into the display. Lights flicker, then dim.
“Stay here,” Dr. Kitahama says, inputting commands into the ship console. “I’m going to reinforce the hangar shield.”
As she takes off toward the ramp, I hold a hand and arm over my ringing ears and brace the display.
I can’t be a Sword Mage.
(“Brilliant sapphire, open my eyes.”)
I’m not strong enough.
(“May my veins become the tree roots and rushing rivers.”)
I look at the collection of seeds on the wall and grit my teeth.
I’m not connected to anything.
(“May my lungs fill with the scent of heavy rains and blooming flowers.”)
Another explosion, this one closer to the hangar, sends me careening into a display of terrestrial plants. Seeds, dirt, and other organic material fling across the white interior of a starship.
(“May I one day find my home.”)
I run out of the ship, to the hangar. Rocks and debris rain down from the cavern ceiling. Through the dust, there is no mirage from the shield, only harsh, saffron lights and the stink of engine exhaust.
I scramble up to the entrance, finding Dr. Kitahama buried under bits of rock and dust machinery. “Doctor!”
As a dropship’s ramp crashes down just meters ahead, I dig out Dr. Kitahama and remove her shattered helmet. Blood trickles down her forehead and her chest is still. “Doctor!” I shout, shaking her shoulders. “Wake up—they’re here—we have to go—”
Her eyes crack open. She holds the same confident gaze as my mother. “No. It’s time to fight.”
I give her arm a tug, but she pulls back with a wince.
Too hard to move her—
The whine of charging guns and shouts of soldiers rise over the crashing thunder.
No time to run.
I walk out of the cavern and plumes of dust, into the searching blue sightlines. Storm wind and the dropship engines whip my hair up into a frenzy. Lightning flashes in rapid succession as the Reds howl and shriek.
“Hold right there!” one of the soldiers shouts. Sightlines converge to my heart. Another group breaks off, firing above us at the agitated Reds. The giant beasts flash in and out of the lightning, igniting the skies in a blur of red and white furry.
(“May my pulse be by the beat of dragon wings.”)
“Drop your weapons and put your hands up!”
(“And my blood bear their fires.”)
I unsheathe my sword and crouch down, laying it on the platform. The ground quakes with gunfire, but I sense beyond that; down into the plant roots, through the lengths of grasses, up into the tree branches that touch the skies. To the world interconnected by life, by the pulse of all living things.
(“May I one day find my home.”)
In the broken sword I see my reflection. My dull gray eyes liven in the color of the blood moon.
“Put your hands up!”
I won’t let you down, Father.
I grab the hilt of the broken sword and hold it high, to the electric skies. Lightning from all reaches converges and strikes down, through my sword, through me. The beat of a thousand wings shakes me to the bone, but I hold fast.
“Fall back!”
Reds blast through me, knocking over soldiers. Gunfire sprays the side of the dropship, taking out an engine. Sirens wail. Still, I hold strong, pointing my glowing sword at the ship as it takes off. Lightning charges out of me, zapping the secondary engine. The dropship crashes into the trees, lights sputtering.
“Retreat!”
I disregard the fleeing attackers. The Reds, supercharged and radiant, corral around me as I approach the dropship. Colonists in all color of uniform, dazed and shaken, emerge from the wreckage.
“Kira...”
My father shoulders his way to the front of the prisoners. Tears in his eyes, he regards me, then my luminescent, broken sword, and the Reds at my side.
“They’ll be back, Father,” I say as the main warship takes off near the Unreachable Mountains, followed by a legion of dropships.
A hand rests on my shoulder. Dr. Kitahama, clutching her side, smiles at me. “All of humanity is at risk, Kira. Our brothers and sisters back home need our help.”
I look back at the old starship, then to my reflection in my sword. My eyes, and the sword, are gray and dull again. “I can’t do this alone.”
Kitahama quirks an eyebrow. “You’ve got my science.”
My father is the only one standing as the rest of the colonists take a knee, singing “The Mage’s Song” in ancestral tongues. He approaches me, lips quivering, as all the Reds fly back up to the skies. “And you’ve got my sword.”