Evershore (Skyward Flight: Novella 3)

When my flight hyperjumped near the coordinates we’d gotten from the hypercomm, we appeared in space around a large, bluish-white planet. A blinding star illuminated most of this side of it—far away, but still much larger and closer than I’d ever seen a star before. The planet was huge, even from this far out, and the whitish parts of it were moving across the surface, bubbling and roiling.

Clouds, I realized. Collections of moisture that would rain down periodically. I’d read about them, but I’d never imagined them looking so…fluffy. They looked almost soft, like cotton. Not like water at all.

“Oooh, that’s pretty,” Sadie said.

“Gorgeous,” Kimmalyn said. “And I’m reasonably certain at first glance it isn’t going to eat us.”

The rest of the flight detached and separated into wingmate pairs, with the medical transport ship sticking close to me. The flight adopted a wedge formation around us, with Arturo and Nedd taking point, FM and Sadie on one side, T-Stall and Catnip on the other, and the rest following.

“Can we fly through all of that?” I asked. Our starfighters were airtight of course, but I still wouldn’t expect all the systems to function perfectly underwater.

This water wasn’t solid though. It was more like steam rising from a boiling pot. Did that mean it would be scalding to touch? “Our ships can handle extremes in temperatures,” I said. “So even if they’re hot—”

“The clouds are not hot,” Cuna said, sounding amused. They were riding with FM in the Dulo. We’d brought them along to help with diplomacy. “The atmospheric pressure allows the water to remain in its gaseous state at a low temperature.”

Huh. Okay.

“I think it should be fine,” Alanik said. “Your ships handled the miasma, didn’t they? It’s just a different type of gas.”

Right. That made sense. “Still,” I said, “I think we should try to fly through the gaps between them.” Visibility would be limited in the clouds, and who knew what might be lurking within them. They shouldn’t be too difficult to avoid. Large swaths of the atmosphere were clear, showing through to a brilliant blue-green surface.

More water. An ocean. Stars, I’d read about those too, but I’d never been able to quite picture so much water. It sounded terrifying to live on a planet covered in that much water. How could you be sure it wasn’t going to wash over everything and swallow it?

I zoomed my proximity monitors way out, searching for other spacecraft or aircraft, but I couldn’t find any around the planet. If there were ships, they must be much closer to the planet’s surface. So far this didn’t seem like a Superiority trap, given the lack of cytonic inhibitors and enormous battleships, but we couldn’t rule out that they might have changed their tactics.

A signal came through the comms—a local radio transmission trying to reach me. I switched over. “This is Skyward One, callsign: Jerkface,” I said.

“Human!” a tiny voice said. It sounded like Kauri, though I wasn’t confident I’d be able to tell kitsen voices apart. “Welcome to the Den of Everlasting Light Which Laps Gently upon the Shores of Time. We will send you a heading to meet us on the Burrow from Which Spring Dreams Both Sweet and Sorrowful!”

“Um,” I said.

“Um,” Boomslug repeated.

“Thank you,” I said. “We look forward to…making your acquaintance.” Scud, I’d listened to enough political pleasantries in my life. Why could I never remember them when I needed them?

Kauri gave us the coordinates, and I instructed the flight to head toward them in formation. We flew down into the atmosphere of the planet and through a large gap in the clouds.

As we neared the enormous blue-green expanse, I began to be able to pick out landmasses—large islands of broken land that looked almost like crumbled pie crusts at this distance. The coordinates led us to one particularly large island, and we flew over some rock formations weathered into bulbous pillars, the stone worn into the same geometric shapes over and over like a castle made out of sand.

The coordinates marked a spot on the far side of the island where one edge of the land met the ocean. The water below us was moving, the blue-green edged with white sea foam where it met the beach.

Waves. I remembered learning about those—they were caused by wind and something to do with a moon, I thought, though I didn’t see one of those at the moment. The sky was a wide swath of blue from down here, dotted with clouds, the sun too bright to look at without squinting.

A ship slightly larger than our fighters waited for us on the beach. I reached out to Alanik, who flew in front of me. Do you sense any inhibitors?

No, she said. Still no cytonics either, though I think that ship has a taynix.

That would make sense, if they had a hypercomm. These aliens had managed to steal a Superiority taynix, which was impressive. It also showed initiative, a good trait in allies. We couldn’t be expected to protect every species in the galaxy when we could barely protect ourselves.

We cruised in for a landing on the sand, and I used my ship’s air quality monitor to check the levels of oxygen in the atmosphere. The air appeared to be breathable, and there were no alerts about any noxious gases like the miasma on ReDawn.

I landed my ship within sight of the other vessel, and the rest of my flight landed around me. I waited until we were all on the ground before opening my canopy.

The ocean, I discovered, was scudding loud, like it was being run by a starfighter engine. The water rushed toward us, the peaks of the waves rising and then receding, like an arm reaching for something it couldn’t quite grasp. I didn’t understand how it moved like that, as if it were alive, and it made me wish I’d paid more attention when they’d taught us about Old Earth.

I climbed out of my ship, and the members of my flight joined me one by one. Though we should have been focused on the ship, and watching for ambushes over the strange, layered sandstone cliffs that lined the beach, I noticed mine weren’t the only eyes on the ocean.

I turned toward a flurry of motion over by the kitsen ship, shielding my eyes from the blinding sun. A group of rodents was moving toward us, the one in front floating on a disk about the size of a dinner plate—a small acclivity-stone craft, I was guessing. Most of the rodents were wearing flightsuits, but the floating one wore a red and gold uniform and had a furry head with a set of enormous ears that looked something like the pictures of foxes from Old Earth, though I thought foxes were bigger. These creatures were around twenty centimeters tall.

But they were coming toward me from a starship, standing on two legs, and wearing clothes, so…

I turned around, looking for Alanik. She was already walking up behind me. The sand seemed to slip from under her feet as she walked, making the trip laborious.

“These are kitsen?” I asked her.

“Yes,” she said. “I’ve never met one, but I learned about the species before I left for Starsight. They have a dynastic culture, I believe.”

Dynastic. That seemed so primitive, like something out of Spensa’s stories.

Farther back on the sand, I could see Cuna and FM climbing out of the Dulo, which had landed next to the medical transport ship we’d brought along for Cobb and Gran-Gran.

The kitsen were growing closer now, and the robed one on the floating platform raised a paw clenched into a fist, like they were angry with me.

I wasn’t the most qualified person to establish diplomatic relations, but I had been the one talking to Kauri over the radio.

“Hello,” I called. “Are you…Kauri?”

“Yes, human!” the kitsen said. She had a translator pin affixed to the front of her uniform like a brooch. “I am Kauri.” She floated up in front of us on her dinner plate while the rest of her crew clambered over the sand behind her. “I am the captain of the Swims Against the Current in a Stream Reflecting the Sun, and I welcome you to our planet.”

“All their names are like that,” Alanik said quietly beside me. “The Superiority shortens the name of their planet to Evershore.”

The kitsen’s ears twitched, and I wondered if this was an offensive term given to them by their oppressors.

“That is very astute, Alanik!” Kauri said. “Indeed, you may call it that if you wish.”

“Evershore,” I said, glancing at the ocean again. “That seems fitting.” Though Alanik seemed somewhat alarmed that the kitsen knew her by name.

“Thank you, human,” Kauri said.

“You’re…a friend of Spensa’s?” I asked. “But you knew her as Alanik.”

Alanik seemed to relax a bit. It was probably disconcerting to meet people who felt they knew you, but didn’t quite.

FM and Cuna trudged up beside us. I was glad—I could use their help.

“Yes, I know Spensa,” Kauri said. “I was hoping to see her again after her disappearance from Starsight. Is she well?”

I didn’t know if Spensa was well, but I had to believe she was. “She’s on a mission to learn more about the delvers.”

“Ah yes,” Kauri said. “We were there when Winzik summoned the delver. A nasty decision, and one I fear he intends to repeat.”

FM and I exchanged a look. If this ship—stars, it would be a whole battleship to them, given their comparative size—was there in the battle with the delver, then the kitsen had been fighting on the other side.

“Which one of you is the human Jerkface?” Kauri asked.

Scud, I’d forgotten to introduce us. “Sorry,” I said. “That’s me. I’m flightleader Jorgen Weight. This is Alanik of the UrDail. And this is Minister Cuna.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Cuna said. “Your people are quite advanced for a lesser species, and have been very close to acceptance into the Superiority. I hope that we will be able to help you continue to advance, as we consider what is best for all of your species.” Cuna raised their fist in the air with this pronouncement, in a similar greeting to the one Kauri had given me, though Kauri did not look impressed.

Alanik shot me a look. Cuna really had to stop announcing that they found every species we met to be beneath them. We’d brought them along to help with diplomacy, but I didn’t want it to seem like they spoke for all of us.

“And this is FM,” I said. “She’s our…diplomatic specialist.”

FM’s mouth fell open. I raised an eyebrow at her, questioning whether she was going to argue with me. I probably should have put her in charge of this interaction to begin with. I’d been too busy avoiding her to think of it, which meant I was letting my own personal feelings get in the way of my job. That had to stop.

“Thank you for the invitation to your beautiful planet,” FM said. “That rock formation we passed over on our way in—was that a city?”

Cuna bared their teeth in one of their strange smiles, which I thought meant they were okay with FM taking the lead.

Whether they were okay with it or not, it was clearly necessary.

“Yes!” Kauri said. “The Burrow from Which Spring Dreams Both Sweet and Sorrowful! You may call it Dreamspring, if you wish.”

“Dreamspring,” FM said. “That’s beautiful. I would love to see more of it.”

“And I would love to share it with you,” Kauri said. “But we must be careful. Not all of my people will welcome your—oh, how unfortunate.”

She looked up at something in the sky over my shoulder, and I turned to see another starship approaching. This one had a startling number of guns mounted on the front, far too many to be tactically effective.

“Humans!” said a kitsen voice through a loudspeaker on the ship. “Your invasion stops here! You shall not step one more foot into the beauty of the Burrow from Which Spring Dreams Both Sweet and Sorrowful! We will cut you down where you stand.”

Scud. I took a step backward, taking shelter against my ship, and FM and Alanik joined me. If that ship let loose its destructors we were dead, all of us. The rest of the flight scattered, ducking beneath wings and jumping back into ships.

“It’s all right!” Kauri said. “That’s Goro. I will speak with him.”

“He said he was going to cut us down,” I said. “I don’t think that implies a lot of talking.”

“Yes,” Kauri said. “And he wonders why the Superiority thinks we’re primitive.”

The other ship didn’t fire, but instead began to lower itself onto the sand. Bits of grit blew in our direction, and I shielded my eyes.

A host of kitsen poured out of the ship, all of them wearing tiny suits of power armor and carrying guns no longer than my hand. That made them enormous to a kitsen though, and they all wore tiny metal helmets with a visor over their eyes and holes cut out for their ears.

That seemed somewhat impractical—I wondered if they used their ears to regulate their temperature like some animals did back on Old Earth. Or perhaps their ears grew back and were therefore seen as expendable.

In the air above them, riding on another dinner-plate-size platform, was a large kitsen wearing richly ornamented plate armor that looked like something out of another century entirely. His helmet had curved horns jutting out of it, so large that they almost reached the tips of his ears.

Oh, Spensa would really have loved this.

“Scudballs,” I heard Arturo say.

“Oh dear,” Cuna said. “Such aggression.”

I couldn’t argue with that. The kitsen swiftly marched across the sand. More of my flightmates climbed back into their ships. Since we were currently being flanked by what amounted to rats with rifles, I didn’t blame them. I supposed I should give orders to my flight, but I didn’t have any better idea what to do in this situation than they did.

FM stayed by my side, Alanik and Cuna a step behind.

Kauri rotated her platform to float between us and the oncoming kitsen, though her other people mostly seemed to be getting out of the way. Since they were both unarmed and unarmored, I didn’t blame them either.

“Goro,” Kauri said. “What are you doing?”

“We intercepted your transmission, traitor!” Goro said. “You invited these treacherous giants onto our planet. Bad enough that any of their kind are being permitted to sully our sands. We should have blown them out of the sky when they first appeared.”

“No one is getting blown out of the sky!” Kauri said. “These are friends of a friend.” She looked over her shoulder at me. “Aren’t you?”

“Um, yes,” I said.

“Other kitsen!” FM said. “I am a diplomatic representative from our people.” I barely heard her add “apparently” under her breath. “We’re here to collect our lost friends and discuss an alliance. We’re not…invading anything, and we don’t mean to…sully your sands.”

“This is heresy!” Goro shouted, pointing a furry finger at me. He had quite a loud voice for such a small creature. “We will not be fooled by your gilded words! The Den of Everlasting Light Which Laps Gently upon the Shores of Time has seen the last of your tyranny and we will not suffer it again!”

“I’m sorry about him,” said a voice near my feet, and I looked down to see that one of Kauri’s people had scurried over to join us. “Goro has…a tendency toward the dramatic.”

“It’s understandable,” Cuna said. “Your culture is not yet advanced enough to move beyond these aggressions.”

FM sighed and ignored Cuna, addressing the kitsen at my feet. She had little white tufts at the ends of her ears and a brownish one at the end of her bushy white tail. “What’s your name?” she asked.

“Hana,” the kitsen said.

“Hi, Hana,” FM said. “I’m FM. Your people have interacted with humans before?”

“When the first wave of humans conquered the galaxy, they started with us,” Hana told her. “Our ancestors fought bravely, but they were no match for human technology. And it didn’t help that at first they welcomed the humans to our shores—the kindly giants straight out of legend! The tales of our early interactions through the nowhere had been passed down for generations.”

Goro’s soldiers had stopped about three meters from Kauri, but their tiny kitsen leader floated his platform up until he stood toe to toe with her. “I demand that you step aside,” he said.

“I will not,” Kauri said. “I contacted the humans so they could collect their lost people. They aren’t invading, and there is no need for all of…this.” She gestured at the kitsen soldiers, whose power armor hummed ominously. The kitsen hummed with it. It was probably meant to seem intimidating.

It was working.

“Very well,” Goro said. “If they claim to come in peace, they must prove it by the sword.”

A sword? I supposed that might be preferable to being shot at by many tiny rifles, but…why?

“Send forth one of your people,” Goro continued, “and they may duel my champion in honorable combat.”

“Champion?” I said.

A single warrior stepped out of the mass of kitsen. Her power armor was decorated by a tiny skirt, and her helmet curved into two wicked points underneath her chin. She was carrying a sword slightly longer than a dinner knife, which made it taller than she was.

I looked at FM, but she was staring at the kitsen champion. Cuna was watching us all with wide eyes, like they couldn’t believe they had deigned to be present for so much barbarity.

On this particular point I had to agree, though it wasn’t the barbarity that alarmed me so much as the practical concerns.

A sword? Really? “We’re not fighting that,” I said. “No way.”

“I’ll fight it!” Nedd called from behind me, and FM shot him a withering look.

“We don’t want to fight anyone!” FM said. “We’re here on a mission of peace. Our people have also been oppressed by the Superiority, and—”

A chortling sound came from the kitsen. Stars, were they laughing?

“You call it oppression?” Goro said. “When you leveled the great city of Defies the Void with Mighty Heart and Endless Perseverance, that was oppression! When you burned the forest of Rain Falls from Clear Skies, that was oppression! When you—”

“That’s enough,” Kauri said. “They get the point.”

“When it happened to you,” Goro added with a menacing growl, “it was justice.”

“Our people weren’t even involved in the last human war,” I said. “We were a traveling fleet of ships. It was only when the war was over that we were captured and contained by the Superiority. Also, that was a century ago, and—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Goro said. “All humans are the same.” He pointed at Kauri. “You returned from Starsight spouting ideals of democracy and claiming we could make decisions together without our esteemed One Who Was Not King! But then you skirt the will of the senate, and seek to ally yourself with the enemies of the Den of Everlasting—”

“You’re right!” Kauri shouted. “You’re right. We should have had a vote about it first. But you have marched your clan in here and challenged the humans to a fight without bringing your grievance before the senate, even though your clan’s representatives agreed that they would abide by senate decisions.”

Goro looked somewhat disgruntled at this point. “This is correct. But the invaders must be stopped immediately, so there is no time for—”

“We’re not invading!” FM reminded them.

“Right,” Kauri said. “There is still time to consult the senate and see if they are willing to hear the human offer of peace, or if they would prefer that your clan be permitted to prove them in trial by combat.”

Kauri seemed to find this as ridiculous as I did, so maybe it wasn’t a kitsen thing so much as a Goro thing. Kauri’s ship, after all, had only an average number of destructors.

“I didn’t agree to any trial,” I said. “By combat or otherwise.”

“Hush,” FM said. “She said they’re going to vote on it. We could at least wait to see how the vote turns out.”

Given the disaster that had resulted from the DDF trying to work with our own assembly, I wasn’t eager to meet with another group of politicians. But we were looking for alliances, so we’d have to work within the kitsen governmental framework at any rate.

“Fine,” I said.

“Very well,” Goro said. “First we will prepare a feast, and all may partake. Then, after the vote of the senate, we will see who is right.”

“A feast?” FM said to the kitsen at my feet. “That’s good, right? Unless they mean to poison us—”

Goro’s disk shot to the side, and he glared at FM. “Never would my clan participate in something so dishonorable!” he shouted. “Before you die, you will be staring down the glinting metal of my champion’s blade!”

“Um,” FM said. Even she was starting to look unnerved.

With that final outburst, Goro and his people marched back to their ship, their power armor leaving rows of tiny footprints in the sand. Kauri hunched a bit, clutching her hands together like she was trying very hard not to tell Goro exactly what she thought of him.

“The feast is not a good thing,” Cuna said. “Their tradition is to dine first with those they wish to fight to the death. Over the meal, each will try to determine the weakness of the other. They consider it…honorable.”

I didn’t like the implications of that. “We’re not going to fight them—”

“Hopefully you won’t have to,” Kauri said. She flew her platform over while Goro and his people piled into their miniature battleship. “I think the senate will see reason.”

“I’d like to see Cobb,” I said. “And Gran-Gran. The humans you found.”

“I can arrange that,” Kauri said. “If you will follow the Swims Upstream, we will take you to see your people.”

“Thank you,” I said. Hana raised her fist to us, and Kauri and her people traveled across the sands again to their ship.

“That was surreal,” FM said.

I nodded. “Not the welcome I expected to receive.”

But they were taking us to Cobb, and none of my people had yet found themselves on the wrong end of a kitsen blade, glinting or otherwise.

I supposed that meant we were doing okay.