2. Ether in the Gel

~ One Month Earlier ~

In the days that immediately followed Gaelbhan Wulf turning herself over to the Ammatar General Inspector, RageChild and Airgoidh sought answers to the enigma of the Sect of the Warden. The sisters’ Matari contacts would provide any information that came available about Gaelbhan Wulf, but the two sisters agreed that the Sect of the Warden may be another resource, Matar’s Hell, maybe even the answer to retrieving their sister. They had laughed too, for to place so much hope on a dead society was truly only the realm of the faithful or the mad.

Amamake VI had become a ghost planet. Settlers from every region were leaving as more rumors of Amarrian interest became daily gossip. Rumors of ronin and Degraded made the struggles to live here less inviting, and one would have thought that the planet had returned to the state prior to humans traveled through the EVE gate.

RageChild and Airgoidh noticed other changes as they walked the sand dunes to the malinite outcropping. The Twin Mounts of Matar’Son sat as behemoths beneath a scorching sun, but even their mighty hulks seemed changed. The sand did not shift, the wind did not blow. Climatically, Amamake VI seemed to be entering another stage. There hadn’t been a sandstorm in a week.

The two sisters-of-fath had tried to speak to the few remaining Degraded left in the settlement, but received only cold stares in reply. The Degraded were leaving as well, but to where?

The dune’s edge saw the two sisters standing in full view of the field of shredders. On any other day, the humming and flapping of so many shredders would have filled the desert. Today, the wind did not speak to them. Today, the shredders had fallen silent. The women were chilled even in the intense heat. Tens of thousands of the flags were standing like a forest against the wall of malinite, barren of life, many torn by the passing sands, speaking of how long they had been standing.

Do not tarry too long in the darkness, the old Matari wives’ tales began, Only the Rona Paratwa live there. Let the shredder feed the ronin instead.

The malinite network of caves extended back and under the Twin Mounts. The two sisters walked these caves, sometimes seeing Gaelbhan Wulf in a dark corner, only to vanish as the light turned toward her.

“Are you of shared mind sister?” Airgoidh asked.

“We were learning the methods to do that only just recently. I feel her in my mind, as you do, sometimes seeing a bright light that fades in an out like a firefly in the bushes. I think in time I would know her mind . . . our mind from any distance, but that it not today. Today, I cannot hear her.”

Airgoidh said nothing, but wanted to say what her mind was thinking. She wanted to tell RageChild that over the last months, she felt her strongest connection with her sisters while floating in the gel of her ship. The gel even began to materialize her dreams, opening vast expanses of scapes that Airgoidh felt were as real as the here and now. She wanted to tell her sister that she sometimes felt Gaelbhan occupying a space in the gel, rather, saw her as a physical being inhabiting both the ship’s gel with her as well as inside her mind and body. She wanted to tell her sister these things, but older pilots would have told her to seek mental health experts; older pilots knew the gel often played tricks on wild minds, and even had a name for it.

The Ether in the Gel.

Space madness was the other name for it.

The Cave of the Sun Warden had been ransacked, clearly by people in a hurry. The two sisters walked slowly among the stone houses, peering into them but finding nothing or no one. The stone gardens seemed as peaceful as the rest of the underground town, but even from this distance they could see that the Sun Warden panel had been removed. Nothing of its dais remained, broken stone the testament to the looters interest in a fast escape.

The Sun Warden panel had been the one thing the two sisters had hoped might be used to help retrieve their sister, but how it might have accomplished this or why they believed it, they did not know. A simple hope, the only hope they had.

**

Daison walked along the corridors of the MIO Escher, a passenger class cruiser that had been refitted by the Ministry to become a prison ship specific to their branch. Amarrian, he walked with purpose and faith in the Emperor and his own place in the scheme of God’s will. Today, for example, saw the return of a person he thought he might never see again. She was his prisoner now, locked in a cell and today was the first day of her interrogation.

The MIO Escher’s engines thrummed, barely moving in space in one the Amarrian deep system colonies. He felt at home aboard this prison ship, which was luxurious for the crew that served on it, but sadistic to those imprisoned here. The Escher was specifically for political prisoners, heretics and the occasional terrorist. Daison loved this ship. He had planned many missions from here, and learned the art of interrogation from the experts in the field – Ministry of Internal Order agents.

The door to the cell came into view, just past the life pod stations. He thought how terrible the knowledge for a prisoner must be if they knew they were but a dozen meters from escape. Like many ships, this vessel was equipped to handle warps and jumps without the need for gel pack – only the pods contained self-inflating gel. He had never been in a pod. What faithful Amarrian would? Only the Matari seemed to feel floating in gooey slime regularly was acceptable. Then again, they were heathens.

A chair sat outside the cell door, at his request, and he picked it up. Keying the door with his voice, it slid open. The form inside blocked the light with her arm, a form locked inside a tiny three meter by three meter cell. He set the chair to straddle the door frame, and sat down. He held a lance in his hand, charged and ready. Her lance.

“Hello sister,” he said. “Shall we begin?”

“Hello brother. You may begin at your leisure.”

He watched her for a time, saying nothing, old memories surfacing as he watched. Gaelbhan Wulf. His sister. He remembered a time when they played together out in the compound, when they were too young to understand the differences between boys and girls, when they were too young to understand that he was Amarrian and she was his slave. Neither knew they were siblings. His mother had no notion of it either, but he now wondered if maybe she had suspected it. His father was notorious for picking the most beautiful slaves from the auctions.

Daison sat with his sister that first day, saying nothing to each other. He simply watched her as she seemed to watch him. He remembered a time when he finally came to understand that Matari were slaves rather than simply servants. He remembered the feeling of superiority, and in that following week he strode about the house ordering the slaves to do ridiculous things. His mother laughed, but after a week she told him to let the slaves get back to their regular work. He obeyed, with the exception of Gaelbhan. She had always beaten him when they ran together. She had beaten him in games of ball and swimming on the Salten Sea. He menaced her and made her cry. He even slapped her once, but as soon as he did he ran into the house and avoided her for several months.

Now he sat in front of her, his sister in chains, and he controlled her life. He could order her execution. He could let her live in darkness forever. Whatever he wanted.

The next day saw the same scenario. They sat across from each other, him in his chair straddling the line between freedom and imprisonment, her chained in the dark. He found her beautiful, despite being Matari. She wore only the tattered garments she had been delivered in, barely serviceable for modest society.

“Hello sister,” he said. “Shall we begin again?”

She said nothing, and he touched her with the tip of the lance. The electrical jolt caused her to jump, and she twitched for several minutes. “Stand up,” he said.

When she did not, he touched her again. She kicked at him, but her ankle chains were thick and it was doubly hard to move with her body systems disorganized by the jolts.

“Stand up,” he said with the same normal voice. He was used to immediate respect, but found her silence and insolence refreshing. The lance.

“Stand up,” he said. He waited for only a moment more, then used the lance again. His saw her in his mind as a child, huddled at his feet crying. He had pushed her down after teasing her about being a slave, and that she would never be free. When she spit at him, he had slapped her across the face and then pushed her down. She cried, and he stepped back. He had loved hitting her, but he didn’t want to do it again. He didn’t want his mother to know, and he remembered how they had played together so many years before.

He ran into the house, leaving her to cry.

He sat in his chair now, remembering, prodding her with the lance, watching her cry. After a dozen or more times with the jolt of the lance, she finally stood. It took great effort because of the weight of the chains. The Septum Collar also inhibited movement, fairly encircled her head to keep her facing in one direction. The lance had likely sent her nervous system in shock, but he menaced her with the lance as she struggled upright. Tears rolled from her eyes. He laughed. “It has been a year, sister. Let us talk about that.”

A year. How simple that period of time seemed, how strange to once again be in front of his sister. His father had raped her mother, of course, on many occasions. The mother had given birth to this Matari terrorist, and then a year later another bastard child. Daison remembered when his mother had sent the second child away to a cousins farm down south. Gaelbhan had been confused, but he explained to her that the baby was a slave and sold off. She was quite young, as he was, but she never asked about it again. She seemed to even forget about her sister completely as the years went on.

Until the day, a year ago, when he contacted her.

“What . . . what do you want to talk about?” His prisoner said, finally, leaning against the cell wall for support.

“You escaped me, sister, shot in the chest, past the slaver hounds, past the guards and across open country. That is quite a feat.”

“You forget, brother, that I grew up with those hounds.”

He laughed. “Those hounds tore your mother apart.”

She lunged and he leapt back, lance ready. The chair fell backwards and he struggled to remain upright. The chains kept her close at hand to the wall, but if they had been lighter she might have reached him before he realized.

“Those same hounds ripped into your mother, that night you escaped. I let them lose. You murdered my mother, and I let them lose.”

She struggled and reached with her hands, but in no way could she reach him. He laughed at her, prodding her hands with the lance. She fell, chains cracking against the cell floor. “But perhaps you are right, sister. Perhaps the hounds remembered their good deed, but felt something for you because of your anguish. It is said the hounds are quite emotionally territorial. Perhaps they did let you escape.”

Nothing. His prisoner simply lay on the floor.

“Then of course, after miraculously escaping the hounds, bypassing my guards, you managed to find your sister. However did you manage that? That seems a right bit of coincidence.”

Still nothing, but he didn’t care. He pulled the chair upright, and again sat down, straddled between the door frame.

“After all of that, you helped her escape. Just free as you please you killed her owner, my cousin . . . our cousin, and escaped.”

“Thank you brother.”

Daison stood up, knocking the chair backward again. “What did you say slave?”

“Thank you brother.”

He reached down with the lance, but rested its side along her face. “You are on a dangerous thread, sister.”

She moved a little, pushing against the floor to again sit upright. The lance followed her face all the while. “You shot me, but not fatally. You had posted your guards and hounds prior to my arrival. You allowed me to escape.”

“Heathenistic ideas.” He pulled back and kicked the chair out of the cell. He stepped into the corridor. “You are wrong. I wanted you dead.”

She laughed this time. “You could have killed me with that pistol. You did not. You had posted your guards and hounds to not only allow me to escape, but to be forced along the path that led to my sister. The logic and strategy is plain.”

“Is it?” He said as an Amarrian medic came around the corner. “We shall see.”

Daison held the lance to her face as the medic grabbed her arm. He placed a device on her arm, and she felt a sharp jab. She could feel the substance being injected into her bone, feel it slowly crawl along her body.

“A poison. Just enough to make it a lingering death – perhaps a month or so. There is no escape this time, sister.”

The cell door shut her into darkness, and Daison walked down the corridor with her lance clutched to his chest. “No escape this time.”

cont...