1. The Sandstorm
The sands of the Greater Amamake desert howled outside the titanium-shelled bar at the base of the Twin Mounts of Amake’Son. Luci’s Bar was never much of a spot for traders or pirates of any race, let alone the Matari and Amarr who lived in the system.
But tonight there were a dozen of each filling the small room.
“Bah, what do the Matari know of ghosts?!”
Ensign Serfh said, bolting back some Amarr brew. “I mean, real ghosts! Not the spook stories told by their fat, ugly women!”
Dour stares from the Matari deep-space traders at other tables ended the laughter from the assembled group of Amarrians seated around the table with Ensign Serfh.
Rather sinister looking spacers seated along the wall seemed to be keeping to themselves, Angels by the look of ‘em, but they were listening too it even if they did not show it.
“I’m talking about real specters” Serfh continued.
“Like the terrorist Matari clans. I heard there was another bombing run on a belt operation just last week. Blew up a bunch of soft-skinned miners. Maybe they got Ensign Castor too, ya think?”
No laughter ensued from that latest remark. This group of Amarrians had been waiting for the Ensign for over six hours, having heard nothing from him since the early morning. They couldn’t leave without him, and any more time spent here would surely corrupt even the most pious Amarrian.
“There are the Paratwa . . .” said d another Amarr, his voice lowering as that last word spilled across his lips. The wind howled, which was not particularly different on this night except that the whole of Luci’s Bar had gone silent, heightening the words.
“Yeah, there’s them,” Serfh added. He turned to the bartender, bellowing out for more brew. “And there’s the other ones too, I heard of them. The Cast-off.”
The bartender stumbled when Serfh spoke of the Cast-off, nearly spilling the brew onto the Ensign’s ragged, but yet finely decorated uniform.
“Watch it!”
“My apologies, Sir . . . but, we . . . we don’t mention them here . . ."
Serfh laughed, smashing his glass down on the table even as the bartender tried to retrieve it.
“Them? The Cast-off? Yeah, I heard of them. Loners and crazies they say!”
Serfh stood, throwing his arms up and dancing in a small circle, laughing.
“The Cast-off,” he bellowed, causing all to turn at the loudness of his voice and derision in his tone. “They were once Paratwa, now just shells of Matari with no home. How sad!
With that, he threw his glass against the far wall, past the bar where it clattered wildly against the shelves filled with alcohol. He continued to laugh at the bartender until he noticed that no one was paying attention to him at all. He turned to see the door of the Bar had opened, the howling wind barely a whisper across his ears. How had he missed the wind dying down?
A woman perhaps, Matari for sure, dressed in typical sand-wear, entered the bar and took the short path through the crowd of tables to sit at the center of the bar.
Her gear was the color of sand, and only her shape could be seen beneath the layers of leather and fabric. She even smelled of sand and earth, and the hairs on the backs of the heads those she sat next to rose as if she were charged with the electrical current that accompanies all sandstorms.
Not one to be ignored, Serfh pulled the bartender’s shoulder round from the woman who had entered, leering into the man’s somber face. “What say you, Matari? What say you of the Cast-off? Are they as fearsome as they say?”
The bartender closed the small space between them, staring eye for eye, whispering, “We do not tarry too long in the darkness, Amarri. That is where the Rona Paratwa live.”
Serfh turned to his mates and pointed to the bartender, laughing. “There you have it! A wives’ tale, and a bad brew to boot.”
The door of the bar startled everyone as it banged against the wall, the latch having failed. Beyond, the wind had returned to its ceaseless howling, but even the thickness of the dust billowing into the bar, and the intense sound did not keep the patrons from staring as the woman simply walked back out into the storm.
The door banged madly, and the chaos had set the bar’s lights to swinging, lighting one side of the room, then the next.
A deep-spacer sitting next to where the woman had stationed herself, held up a small bag.
“Hey . . . she forgot this.”
Serfh watched as the bag slid open at the bottom, and an object dropped to the floor.
People scattered, pushing up against the walls. When it did not immediately explode, Serfh pushed away a table and kicked the object. The swinging lights made it difficult to see what the thing was, but he had no doubts.
He stared into the eyes of Ensign Castor, the Amarr’s head only lightly covered in blood. A small crescent shaped mark on the forehead glistened under the swinging lights, really just the skull underneath where the skin had been cut away.
The door continued its hectic banging as the sandstorm blew out across the desert and between the Twin Mounts of Amake’Son, the place where the Cast-off were said to slumber.
**
Sister RageChild skirted the pillars of the temple as the Paratwa gathered. Determination and sadness and unadulterated anger filled her as the assembly of bodies milled about smartly – determination to carry out her plan, sadness at leaving the Sect and anger at the leader – careless, retributive anger but controlled simply through her will.
Wherein could she find that original spark of faith that had led her to the doors of the Paratwa? The knowledge that she was Paratwa, that her creator, Cizin, had imbued her body with the soul of the elite warriors filled her with strength, but truly the euphoria had ended quickly. The battles won, the engagements done, wherein was her faith? She saw it sometimes like the seventh moon skirting the horizon, just out of reach, but for her and her alone, she felt disjointed.
Her counterpart, her tway surely must be out there, in the broad universe. Perhaps it was Gaelbhan Wulf herself? She was not sure, but such thoughts did not need to be aired here, at the assembly, for only her determination had time today.
Sister RageChild walked steadily out of the temple even as the Faith of Cizin began in along droning monotone from within. The bright morning air energized her legs, and soon the rifter lifted off, spraying soil and plants in every direction. The afterburner kicked in as the rifter flew over the temple, shooting RageChild into the tropopause, and surely drowning out the ceaseless worship happening below.
Cuddled inside the ship’s gel, she settled in for the journey to Amamake, beginning her meditation. Her thoughts intruded, wildly at first then more orderly. Where would she find her tway? What ancient memories lay dormant within her and her tway? To speak of the Paratwa was to speak of genetic manipulation from even the earliest days of humanity before the gate. In those days, cience dictated and religion followed. Her mouth lifted from intensity to a smile.
The science of that age did not believe in Cizin, but Cizin believed in them. The Transitional One, Lord of the Deep Spaces, God of Fire and Ice, he had given the scientists the knowledge to create genetic warriors. As these bodies matured in their tanks, ready for awakening, Cizin filled the body cavity, that Space-Between, with a soul. The soul of a Paratwa.
It was the discovery of the joined mind that brought the Paratwa into the view of the world’s leaders both secular and religious, that the cloned bodies were actually joined in pairs, tways. These tways maintained their own bodies, but shared the same mind. Wars ensued as leaders attempted to destroy these atrocities, instead falling to the shared-mind assassins. Chaos and near world destruction were imminent, but suddenly the Paratwa vanished. As millennia of history unfolded, standard cloning became more common. Cizin no longer needed to cultivate the scientists. He could imbue the soul of the Paratwa into bodies across the universe, as needed, to help rebalance the universe’s energies. Balance was the mission of the Paratwa, but not always in the way many envisioned.
RageChild calmed her thoughts as they became less orderly, letting her training take over. The ship’s gel informed her, via her neural interface, the status of the ship and her mind became the ship in meditation. Her sister-of-faith, Gaelbhan Wulf, had felt Cizin called her onto a different path than that preached by those in the Sect of the Ra. RageChild felt similarly, images and emotions that swayed her from remaining in the Sect. Instead, she now sought something beyond that, renouncing her ties with the Sect.
All questions and thoughts finally ceased in the meditation as the rifter piloted effortlessly through the Ortner constellation into Hed. She is now ronin. Many had followed before her, cast out by the Sect of the Ra or leaving of their own will, but these Paratwa did not assemble. They did not join into massive bands of free roaming warriors, instead finding their way through the Will of Cizin to continue the struggle of balance. Despite this, she sought her sister-of-faith. She would find no sympathy or help from the Sect, indeed it was almost anathema to speak of the Cast-off in the presence of the Sect brethren. She had one thing to seek from her sister, Gaelbhan Wulf, and from there?
Perhaps she might find faith from the faithless.
Luci’s Bar had been empty for weeks after the death of that Amarr ensign. Zayard, the bartender and owner, had been there when the ronin delivered the head of the Amarr back to his waiting friends. Hell, he had been there every day for twenty years serving alcohol to the locals, pirates and other space-lane visitors, but he had never seen such a thing as occurred that night. The sandstorms were an almost constant thing here, but the one many weeks ago was a downright gale.
Tonight was a slow night again, and he busied himself with sweeping for the thousandth time. He swept the sand into a pile where the head of the Amarr had dropped, hoping the sand might just generally suck up any lasting residue – there had been almost none anyway, bloodless as it was. It just made Zayard feel better to think the sandstorm that spawned that night’s horrors would keep its memory from returning too.
“The sand?” A voice whispered in his ear. He jumped back, knocking tables and chairs about. Zayard looked at the face of anger, a Matari woman with blazing red hair. The door was wide open, the sandstorm still raging – how had he missed her entering? How could he have missed the cacophony of sound as the storm threatened to tear the bar from its foundation now that the door was wide open?
“I . . . I, the sand?” Was all he could muster.
“You were thinking of the sand, and about the Amarr,” she said. Standing in the center of the bar, she imposed herself in the path of three Angels who seemed to just want to leave now as she continued to speak. “But then, no doubt you can think of nothing else in a place such as this.”
“I . . . I, yeah,” he muttered, again the only thing he was able to muster.
The woman closed the distance between them, their tattoos practically merging as she pulled close into his ear. Zayard nodded as she whispered into his ear, then slowly raised his finger to point north – north to the Twin Mounts of Amake’Son.
He stumbled down to one knee as she left, her presence and closeness having supported him. Through the door he watched as the woman with the red hair became as the sandstorm – he thought she would surely be stripped to bones, but he laughed. No, that was foolishness. How does the sand treat it’s own kind?