Caverns Measureless to Man

The First Star was a different class of ship than any other in the galaxy. She was small and sleek, with her outside a smooth hard rock, not the mined-out asteroids that most Guild ships were built from. Only one gravity ring girded her center. Her small stature made her faster than any ship had a right to be. Since she wasn’t designed to carry cargo, and only a small number of passengers, she could jump in about three-quarters of the time it took a normal ship, or even faster, if she was pushed.

Aymon almost regretted that it was Kino accompanying him on this trip to Tyx III, rather than Yan, because Yan would have enjoyed touring the First Star . He expressed this sentiment to Halen one evening after dinner, while Halen was sitting and reading on the couch in Aymon’s suite. Aymon was looking over the full text of a report from Tyx III, one that he had previously had summarized to him, but now had time to pore over in detail, since they were well out of contact range while travelling. He had reached a section break, however, and rather than turning the page to the next section, he looked up and simply watched Halen.

Halen certainly noticed Aymon’s shift in attention, but didn’t look up from his own reading until Aymon spoke, which took some time.

“Would you have preferred that we brought Yan on this trip?” Aymon asked a Halen turned the next page in his book.

Halen didn’t look up. “No,” he said.

“Really? You would have like to show her the ship.”

“She and Sid work well together. It makes sense for them to go to Olar.”

“That wasn’t really what I was asking.”

“I’m sure that Yan is happier not being here. Neither going to the front nor being near me are things that she would appreciate.” And finally, Halen smiled, though he didn’t look up from his book. “At least if Kino is unhappy, I don’t have to know about it.”

Aymon chuckled. “True. You gave her the tour, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And what did she think.”

“I don’t know. You’d have to ask her.” He looked up at Aymon, searching for something in his face. “Would you have preferred Yan be here?”

“Hm? It doesn’t matter what I would prefer.”

“And yet it matters what I would prefer?” Halen asked. His eyes didn’t leave Aymon’s face now. It was a delicious feeling of attention, one that Aymon basked in regardless of how long they had known each other. He smiled languidly, leaning his head on his arm, just watching Halen watch him. “They’re your apprentices, Aymon.”

“And?”

“What you think about them is more important than what I think.”

“Mmm,” Aymon said. He was amused by the conversation, and was half joking. “I’m not sure it is.”

“And what would Herrault say about that?”

The line was delivered with Halen’s usual calm, deep voice, but it made Aymon abruptly sit up, on the border between annoyed and angry. “I don’t care what she would say.”

Halen’s eyes hadn’t left him, and he watched him in silence for a moment, then looked away. “I think it would be to your benefit if you made an effort to connect with them,” Halen finally said.

Aymon was silent, waiting for him to continue.

“I’m not trying to upset you, Aymon,” Halen said. He closed his book and stood. “I don’t think there’s any benefit to keeping your distance. I’m not trying to keep mine.”

“You couldn’t.”

“No?” Halen asked, and there was a coldness in his voice, one that made prickles rise on Aymon’s arms. He tried to relax, leaning back into his chair, a picture of nonchalance, though Halen would see through him like a pane of glass. It was an act.

“It’s a working relationship. And none of them seem to have any interest in being… close… with me.” It was the wrong word, but he couldn’t find a better one.

“Do you want to know what I think?” Halen asked.

No, he didn’t. He stood. Halen was still, and Aymon walked over to him and put his hand flat on his broad chest, feeling the rise and fall of his slow breath. “Will you come to bed?”

Halen stroked two fingers lightly from Aymon’s temple toward his jaw. He was restraining himself from telling Aymon what he thought, though it would have been easy for him to send Aymon a thought through the touch, one that he wouldn’t be able to stop.

Tell me, if you must , Aymon said through the power.

Halen responded in kind, though it took him a moment. He was putting the words together carefully. It wasn’t that he walked on eggshells around Aymon; he could say whatever he liked, and did, for years, regardless of Aymon wanting to hear it. This was a caution born of love, not just for Aymon, but for the three apprentices. If Halen misspoke, they would feel the fallout. You fear losing them, Halen finally said. But it will not hurt any less to lose them without having cared for them. You will only discover that you have care, and nowhere to put it.

Aymon frowned. “Fine,” he said aloud.

“Take some time to spend with Kino,” Halen said. “Have dinner with her some night.”

Aymon nodded, and Halen brushed his grey-streaked hair back from his temples with his strangely delicate touch.

“Now will you come to bed?” Aymon asked.

Halen’s response was to tip Aymon’s head up, holding his chin, so that he could lean down to kiss him.

Tyx-III was a miserable planet. Although it had a breathable atmosphere, the surface was far too hot for human habitation. Even in the cooler parts of the planet’s winter, and far from the equator, the temperature rarely dipped below forty-three degrees, and the humidity only made it worse. The planet had been terraformed in the distant past by its original settlers, and so there was plenty of hardy plant life on the surface in areas. Thick vines and stubby trees lived in depressions in the ground just deep enough to provide some protection from the wind that screamed along the swept, red-rock ground. Still, this did little to break up the view to the too-distant horizon, which seemed uncomfortably far away. Though the planet was large, it was not very dense, and its gravity was only about three-quarters of standard.

The few structures that were built aboveground on Tyx were for the military bases the Empire constructed as their entryways onto the planet. The airstrip that their shuttle had landed on (with some difficulty) was not far from that complex of short buildings, all built partway into the ground, with sloped roofs for the wind to roll across.

Aymon stood stiffly under the weather’s assault as he and Kino stepped down out of the shuttle, greeted by an array of Fleet staff, all saluting. To do so, they drew their right hands down across the center of their faces, ending with a clenched fist on their chest. The leader of the troops on the planet, a broad shouldered woman named Loan Lang, was at their front.

“General Lang,” Aymon said, “It’s good to see you again.”

She dropped her salute with a smile. “And yourself, First Sandreas.” Although she was wearing the blue formal Fleet uniform, Lang was a sensitive. “I am still surprised you deigned to come visit me out here. It’s a long way from the cozy capital.”

“I’ve always enjoyed travel,” Aymon said. “As you know. How’s your leg?”

“You know, it hasn’t bothered me in years. Or at least, scrambling around in this place has made everything else worse to compensate. Introduce me to your apprentice,” she demanded. “It’s too hot to stay out here for long.”

Kino, whose empty gaze had been studying the barren landscape, snapped her attention to Lang. Her face was still, and Aymon couldn’t read anything from her expression. Beads of sweat were already forming on her forehead.

“Lang, this is Kino Mejia. Kino, General Loan Lang. We attended the Academy together.”

“Pleasure, Apprentice Mejia,” Lang said, sticking out her hand to shake. Kino took it, nodded, and said nothing. “Quiet?” Lang asked. She glanced at Aymon. “Nothing like Jalena and Obra, then.”

“No,” Aymon said shortly. “Shall we go inside, or must we remain in the heat?”

“Let’s.”

They all ended up in open-top cars, speeding across the flat rock towards the buildings. At least there hadn’t been any need to build roads on this planet. Kino leaned on the car door, sticking her hand just off the side, letting the wind catch and lift it, like a sail or a bird’s wing.

“I didn’t come here expecting a positive report,” Aymon said as they drove, “but I’d like one if you have one, Lang.”

“We’re making progress, but these are approximately the worst conditions that you could ever attempt to wage a war in,” she said. “I think you’ll understand much better when we get inside.”

“I’ve seen pictures. I’m not doubting that it’s difficult.”

“There’s a difference between seeing a picture and experiencing it. Here we are.” They pulled up to the largest building, and got out. “I can give you the tour, if you’d like, and we can talk plans over lunch.”

“Of course. Lead on.”

“All of the formal activities have been held off until tomorrow, to give you some time to get acquainted,” Lang said as she pushed open the door. “It will be just you and me and a few staff to discuss where things stand.”

“I appreciate it,” Aymon said, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the dimness inside the building.

Going inside the building was an obvious relief. The air conditioning was a powerful roar over the sounds of the many people were in the lobby, all of whom stopped what they were doing to watch Aymon come in. He ignored them, though Kino looked at them all coldly. Halen brought up the back of their pack, saying nothing. Lang led them all back and through, to a wide set of double doors: an industrial elevator. With her access card, she summoned it, and the doors swung open almost immediately. Cold air whistled up through the crack between the elevator car and the floor. When Aymon reached with his power down the shaft, he reached the end of his power’s range before he reached the bottom.

His surprise must have shown on his face, at least enough for Lang to read. “It’s deep,” she said. “About three kilometers to the bottom, but we won’t go to the bottom.”

“What’s at the bottom?” Kino asked.

“The long tunnels. They go off towards the more active part of the front.”

As the elevator rattled downwards, Aymon stretched his power out through the rock, feeling the strange pockets of air amidst the stone rushing by. “I can see why it would be inconvenient to sink new shafts.”

“We are at war with the planet itself, Aymon,” Lang said. In the more private elevator, some formalities could be dropped between old friends. She turned to Kino. “Are you claustrophobic, Apprentice?”

“No,” Kino said.

“Good.”

The elevator came to a shuddering stop, about a half kilometer down, Aymon estimated. They stepped out into the tunnels.

These red-stone caverns twisted all throughout the planet’s crust, naturally formed in huge numbers. Aymon had read in one of the many briefing on Tyx-III that long ago, volcanic activity had created these pockets in the stone, and that over an incomprehensible period of time, erosion from underground rivers and seeping water had transformed huge amounts of the planet into an underground labyrinth. After humanity settled here, with the surface of the planet nearly inhospitable, they had made the underground their home.

It was not dark, exactly. There was a bare bulb mounted into the ceiling a few meters distant, and it threw harsh light on the scraggly rock walls. But the walls themselves were illuminated, glowing with a pale moonfire light from every crevice in the rock. Even the floors glowed, though the places where feet had worn the rock smooth were dull and dark.

“Fluorescent algae,” Lang explained, taking the lead as they walked. “It’s quite useful.”

“What does it survive on?” Halen asked.

“It breaks down some chemicals in the rock, from what I understand,” Lang said. “But you’d have to ask our xenobiologist for more details. Further down, things can survive on geothermal, but up here, it’s too cold for that.” And indeed it was: the air was a slimy damp chill, quite different from outside, though the wind still whistled through the tunnels, lifting Lang’s short hair and making strange noises— high whispers and low moans that sounded nearly human. Kino trailed her fingers along the rock. They took several turns in rapid succession, down branching paths that were marked with signs that Aymon didn’t have time to read. Lang knew the way by heart.

“I’m curious as to how anyone eats here,” Aymon said.

“We have artificially lit greenhouses, the same way you’d have on a ship. They have a combination of things. A lot of genetically modified plants that accept a symbiotic relationship with some of the native life that’s capable of taking advantage of the environment. Before, they grew a few things hardy enough to survive on the surface, but we put a stop to that fairly quickly.” They had to switch from walking shoulder to shoulder to in a line as the tunnel narrowed.

“Where are you taking us?” Aymon asked.

“I figured our first stop should be our one tourist destination of note around here.”

“Do tell.”

“It’s better to see it in person. It’s about another half kilo, through the back ways.”

“The back ways?”

“I assumed you would prefer the privacy.” Aymon couldn’t see Lang’s face, walking behind her as he was, but he could hear the smile in her voice. “These single-body tunnels are shortcuts to many places, but they’re mono-directional by necessity. You don’t want to meet a whole group going the opposite way. So it’s a bit of a winding route.”

They did occasionally hear footsteps and conversation as they passed junctions in the tunnels, but the journey was indeed a solitary one. Aymon glanced behind himself at Kino and Halen. Kino was running both hands flat along the walls as they walked, her fingers dipping and wavering over the bumps in the stone. Halen, when Aymon met his eyes, offered a nod. He seemed at home in the tunnels, though they were nothing like the hallways of a ship, and his head was perilously close to hitting the ceiling in places.

They walked further. Aymon’s sense of direction was totally confounded by now, and the sensation of being lost and trapped underground began to grow in his mind, making the skin on the back of his neck prickle. He didn’t let his discomfort show on his face, should Lang choose to look back at him.

“If there was some sort of emergency,” Halen said from the back, “do you have easy modes of egress?” It was clearly for Aymon’s benefit that he was asking.

“Yes,” Lang said. “The main tunnels are all clearly marked out.” When they came to an intersection, she pointed at the notation on the wall. Now that he had the chance to look at it more carefully, he could see that an emergency exit route was marked, along with what the distance was to the nearest elevator. “We have shafts in as many places as we can reasonably sink them,” she said. “But this base is quite secure. All of the real fighting is far, far away. That’s the only reason it’s even feasible to have you here. We’re almost there.”

Their small tunnel joined a much larger one, large enough for a quarter-scale rail line to sit on each ide of the tunnel, and room for people maybe thirty abreast to walk in between even with trains present. Aymon took a deep breath in relief at being in this more open space, and Lang glanced back at him, amused.

“You get used to it,” she said.

Aymon just frowned at her. “How much further to where we’re going?”

“We’re here,” she said, pointing at a huge set of double doors set into the opposite wall. She walked over confidently, and pushed them open; they weren’t locked. She held them open for Aymon to enter. “Are you scared of the dark, Apprentice?” Lang asked.

“No,” Kino said.

The room they had walked into was some sort of cavernous amphitheater, but Aymon didn’t have time to study it in detail. As soon as the doors swung shut behind him, Halen grabbed his arm, hard, fingers digging into his skin through the fabric of his cassock, and then all of the lights in the room went out.

Halen sent him a thought through the power. No danger.

So Aymon didn’t need to respond to the sudden shock and darkness in any way other than a sardonic, “I’ve never appreciated surprises, Lang.” The sound echoed in the cavern, bouncing back and forth through the room.

“Give it a moment,” Lang said.

His eyes were adjusting, and he saw that Kino’s dark shadow was already traipsing confidently down the thick-carved stairs towards the central stage area.

“What am I looking for?”

“Don’t look at me,” Lang said. “Look up.”

Aymon did, craning his neck to look at the ceiling of the cavern. There, up on the distant dome of the ceiling, were gigantic, luminous dancing human figures against a field of stars. The expressions on their faces were inscrutable, their arms lifted to the sky. The figures were carved shallowly into the rock, guiding the luminous algae to live there. Artificial lights would have drowned them out completely for how far away they were, but now that Aymon’s eyes had adjusted fully, he could see them as clear as the stars in the sky at night. It gave the strangest feeling of being outdoors, with the wind still blowing through the cavern.

Kino was down at the bottom floor, the stage area, and she was looking up as well.

“Can you sing, Apprentice?” Lang called down to her. It was clear why she had asked; the acoustics of the room were splendid.

Obediently, Kino lifted her voice in song, the first verse of the Red King’s Canto. Aymon wasn’t sure he had ever heard her sing before, certainly not this song, and the clarity of it struck him. The shape of the room made it sound like she was standing right beside him.

“In those days of fire

There was war between brother and brother.

There was war between father and son.

There was war between daughter and mother…”

She didn’t sing the whole Canto, since it would have taken some twenty minutes, and she stopped at the end of the first verse. The Red King’s Canto was an odd choice— if he had been asked to sing he would have picked something from Terae’s Canto, perhaps— but maybe it was an appropriate selection, considering their location.

“Very nice,” Aymon said when Kino fell silent. “At the next Solstice, you should deliver the song for me.”

“No,” Kino said. “Yan would do better.”

“Consider it,” Aymon replied. He stepped down the tall stairs, then turned to Lang. “I assume you didn’t carve this?”

“No,” she said. “It was the Adversary’s. But it would have been a shame to destroy it, so, for now, it remains for our use. It’s a convenient spot for making large announcements. You’ll greet the base troops here tomorrow.”

Aymon nodded.

“Shall I turn the lights back on?” Lang asked.

Aymon glanced down the stairs at Kino, who had at down cross-legged on the floor and was leaning back on her hands to look up at the ceiling.

“No,” Aymon said. “Let her look a little longer. You and I can go talk strategy. She can join us when she’s ready.”

Aymon and Lang spent the remainder of the day talking about the high level strategy at play on the planet. The goal was to clear out all the scattered resistance in the underground, but this was a difficult task. There were still millions of people, possibly hundreds of millions, living in the caves, and the nature of the caverns made them difficult to locate, and also difficult to fight. There were some methods that could be used to win easily, but Aymon had drawn the line.

At the end of the day, Aymon was lucky that Lang was called away to address an urgent issue happening some hundred kilometers distant, and so he was free for the evening, including dinner. A small and simple suite had been prepared for his use, and that was where he had his dinner sent. Halen had gone off during his meeting with Lang to inspect the base security, so Aymon arrived alone, and had enough time to shower in the strange rock-hewn bathroom before dinner. When he came out, feeling much fresher, he found that his food had already been delivered by the base staff, and he sat down at the table, waiting for Halen and Kino to arrive.

When he heard a knock on the door, rather than the door simply opening, he sighed and stood to let Kino in. Before he did, he put a smile back on his face.

“I see Halen has followed through on his quest to make sure we spend some time together,” he said lightly, and gestured for her to sit across from him at the table.

“Yes,” Kino said. “He told me that you wanted to speak to me.” Her voice was monotone, and her eyes looked anywhere but at him: the green laminate surface of the table, the ruddy rock walls, the omnipresent glowing fungus in the crack of the ceiling, the just slightly too dim lamps. But she sat down, and immediately began picking at her cassock sleeves under the table.

“Wine?” Aymon asked.

She nodded, and Aymon poured her a glass before sitting down.

“Care to say the blessing?”

She closed her eyes and lifted her hands. Very perfunctorily, she said, “Lord, we eat first by the fruits of Your love, and second by the fruits of our labor. May our works and their fruits give You glory, forever.”

It was another very strange choice of blessing, but there was no fault in it, so Aymon didn’t comment on it, and simply opened the metal trays on the table to serve them both. Although he was sure that the food was of far better quality than the usual soldier’s meal, it was still simple: a hearty vegetarian meal of curried beans and rice. Kino didn’t say anything about it, and simply started eating, a rather mechanical set of motions. Aymon watched her in between his own bites of food.

“How did you enjoy the tour?” Aymon asked.

“It was fine,” Kino said. “I would like to see more of the planet.”

“It seems all the same to me.”

“There are hot springs, further down.”

“You like hot springs?”

“I’ve never seen one,” Kino said.

“After tomorrow, there may be some time when you could go on a tour of them. We’ll need to do formal activities tomorrow. There’s a meeting with all of the high commanders on the planet— they’ll all be flying in for that. And I also need to give an address to the troops.”

Kino nodded silently.

“Lang assured me that it’s fairly safe to go sightseeing, if there were any sights that I wanted to see,” Amon said. Kino just nodded again. “What did you think of General Lang?”

“You used to know her?” she asked.

“Yes. We were close friends when we attended the Academy together. I nearly got her killed, once.”

“How?”

Aymon smiled, reminiscing. “We took an unauthorized vacation to the wilderness, and she broke her leg while we were rafting, and nearly drowned.”

Kino nodded again.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“She seems capable. You trust her.”

“True on both counts.”

He ate silently for a second. He wasn’t sure what to say to Kino, but he wanted to say something to her. “What do you think of the situation here?” he asked.

“Of the war?”

“Yes.”

For the first time that night, she looked directly at him. He was startled by the cold intensity in her dark eyes. “There are easy ways to win,” she said. “Why don’t you take them?”

“Name them.”

“Biological weapons,” she said. “You could poison the water, or blight their food.”

Aymon realized that she knew the secret, though he didn’t know how. The way she looked at him revealed it. “You know the answer,” he said.

“Falmar,” she said, naming the planet of her birth, the one that had been devastated by a plague, one made from a modified biological weapon that had been originally used to destroy the remnants of the original population of the planet, before Imperial settlers arrived. He didn’t know if Kino knew that whole story, but she knew enough.

“Yes,” Aymon said. He looked away from her, trying to keep his tone even. “I’ve made many mistakes, but I will not make the same one twice.”

She nodded, and went back to her food.

“You blame me for that?” Aymon asked.

She didn’t answer. The hand that wasn’t holding her fork had pulled the button completely off her cassock sleeve, and she stuck it in her pocket, then continued to pick and pry at the now loose threads.

“Why did you choose this apprenticeship?” Aymon asked after a long moment of silence.

“I didn’t have a choice,” Kino said. “I had no other offers.”

“You could have refused. There are some that do.”

“I am not free to desist from the work,” she said after a second.

“No,” Aymon said, and he leaned back in his seat and took a sip of his wine. “Neither am I.” He tilted his head and looked at her more closely. “I’m surprised that your project didn’t attract more attention. I thought it was very clever.”

“Thank you,” she said, but even through her normal monotone, he could tell that it was a rote answer.

“Why did you make it?”

This was a question that made her hesitate before answering. “I didn’t want to be seen,” she said. “But the projects are about seeing. I thought… the piece of God within you is the same as within me, so it doesn’t matter what is being revealed.”

He looked at her. She stared down at her plate. “You’re in the wrong line of work,” Aymon said. But he let out a breath. “We have that in common, at least.”

She tilted her head.

“I was never the favored apprentice to take up this role,” Aymon said. “It should have been Obra. But they died, and left it to me.” He shook his head. “If you end up where I am, you’ll figure it out.”

“Yes,” Kino said. “I will.”

“You’re very confident. Yan wouldn’t be.”

“Sid would say the same as I did.”

“Sid would be lying,” Aymon said. “But you’re not lying.”

“I know what I’m capable of,” Kino said.

“Good.”

She was tense, more than Aymon could explain by the strangeness of the conversation. “Is something the matter, Kino?”

She put her fork down and looked at him again. “Why are you doing this?” she asked. For the first time, there was a plea in her voice.

“You know the reason,” he said. “These planets pose an existential threat to the Empire. Before the Empire was founded—”

“I know the story,” Kino said. “Edden and the Unknown Colonies. Edden was destroyed, and the Empire was what unified humanity. I paid attention in history class.”

“Then you know the answer to the question. If humanity is not united under one flag, we are in danger of destroying ourselves.”

Kino just shook her head, looking away.

“You’ll understand eventually,” Aymon said. “It’s not pleasant work, but, as you said, I am not at liberty to desist from it.”

She nodded. “If that is the way it must be…”

“Yes,” he said.

They hardly talked about anything else of substance through the whole meal. On one hand, he felt he had accomplished what Halen had wanted— getting to know Kino better— but, on the other hand, he had only upset her. This was not the closeness that Halen had wanted for them. He resolved that on the way back to Emerri, when the trip was over and all the unpleasantness of the front could be put behind them, he would meditate with her and try this again.

He studied her across the table. When one of her braids fell forward over her shoulder, she tucked it back, brow furrowed. She cleaned her plate. She was small and strange, but she knew her own mind.

It was affection he felt, looking at her there. He could admit that. And if she became his successor, he would feel confident that she could do what it took. The thought was strangely comforting, despite everything it entailed.