Episode #1 - "Torn": Star Chasers (Volume 1) (10 page)

    
Ty crossed the bridge. Shilastar followed. Both triumphantly finding hard rough stone on the other side.

    
Wandering about in the dark, his heart raced and a tension steadily built up, running along his spine to his neck. He twisted and strained until it popped. Movement was slow and tedious over the rugged path from the bridge toward the distant city. In numerous places it jumped up and then down, so Ty, leading the way, was the first to stumble or fall.

    
The path held to a swaying curve, and Ty guessed it was hewn rather than natural. The city had tall defiant walls with no apparent entrance. Ty ran his fingers along the surface of the wall, searching for an outcropping or a discernible break, but he found no such breech.

    
“There are walls,” remarked Shilastar, not understanding their purpose.

    
Ty hadn’t considered them until then. “Some places need such things.”

    
Shilastar wavered her head, chewing absently at her finger. “But why? Unless you are hiding something.”

    
Ty considered this. He stood away from her, contemplating his next plan of action. He caressed the stone with his mind instead of his hands, which he should have done first. A crack formed, small at first, and a burning glow emitted through it. Ty pulled the portal open the rest of the way with his hands. He stood back, smiling in the new light.

    
Shilastar shuddered as they stepped in, glaring angrily back at the sky, a shimmer of light just trailing across it. She wouldn’t miss the gloom at all. Any place seemed better than out there.

    
They walked the passageways of the city for some time, without seeing a single sign of its occupants. It took some time for their eyes to adjust to the ferocious purple lights, and it still hurt to open them fully. The light seemed to leap out from hidden recesses all around them. They made a great sweeping circle of the first, and outer, corridor of the metallic city, and now they stood before its entrance once more.

    
Sheltered in the confines of walls, the air was warmer and less pungent. Ty returned the blankets to the duffel sack. Stretching his sore legs, he contemplated what to do, switching back and forth under Shilastar’s scrutiny. She could think of half a dozen better, and more useful, things to be doing right now.

    
“Okay, okay,” intoned Ty seemingly to himself, for Shilastar had heard no voices. Ty urged the door closed with his mind, pushing it into place to form the final seal. As soon as the door was in place, a series of openings formed in the outer channel, and they could now proceed into the inner city.

    
“Are you still there?”

    
“Ty, who are you talking to?”

    
Yes, I am.

    
Come out so that I may see you.

    
“Ty?” cried Shilastar, frightened.

    
I am out where you can see me, welcome to my city, come in, do come in.

    
“Ty, who is that? I can’t see him, where is he?”

    
“Shilastar stay there, don’t move. Be quiet.”

    
It is all right, there is nothing to fear here. It is not often that I get true visitors.

    
“Who are you?”

    
I could ask you much the same, could I not?

    
“I am Ty, and this is Shilastar.”

    
I am Paliy, do come in.

    
“Paliy?”

    
Yes, Paliy. It is the only name I have. Well, what are you waiting for?

    
“
The
Paliy?”

    
Paliy materialized before a startled Shilastar. “I don’t know to what or whom you refer, but that is my name. Come in, come in, hurry up now! Haven’t got all day.”

    
Shilastar looked from Ty to Paliy and back again. She wanted to say something, but Ty silenced her quite effectively. He reached out, held her hand and squeezed until words were lost to her.

    
The inner city was a series of rooms, chambers, and halls mixing off many large, central vaulted galleries. Paliy lead them along many avenues, coming at last to a small room. It had its own source of luminescence, one they could see and touch, and assorted chairs and couches. Paliy left them here, saying he had many things to attend to and would return later.

Ty
reclined on one of the plush chairs, though its gentle oscillations were lost on him. Exhaustion was his only consideration; and before he knew it, he was carried away to sleep. But in his dreams, bright lights were all around him, and suddenly a swarm of insects blocked out the light. All he could sense were the tiny insect shapes shifting all about him.

    
Shilastar ambled about the room, fingering its fixtures and trying to understand their purposes. She came to stand before a wall that was not quite opaque. Images shifted behind it, seeming to writhe and seethe. She faltered back into a table, fumbling her hand across its surface and inadvertently activating a control she hadn’t seen.

    
Light blossomed before her, first pale and glum, then growing and seeming to fade in. Startled, she sprawled backward, tripping over a chair and then falling onto Ty’s lap, waking him from his dream. Ty coaxed the sleep from his eyes. “It’s just a holo, Shilastar. Did you have to go and wake me? I was having a good dream?” He wasn’t sure.

    
“How does it work?” she asked.

    
“With a focusing,” he said plainly as he raised his hands and touched them to his forehead.

    
An image blurred and vexed across the holo screen. Its half-covered scenes and shapes were lost, mixing and blending on each other. Ty closed his eyes and cleansed his mind, thinking in clear precise shapes and scenes. The picture on the screen changed, gradually focusing. The scene was beautiful, snow-capped mountains, though Ty left out the dark lurking crevices in their faces, and blue, blue skies, again sorting out odd shapes from their midst, tall trees and green grasses.

    
“It will play by itself now, if you leave it be,” Ty offered, attempting to slip back to soft, slow thoughts.

    
“But how does it work? And why? I don’t understand, Ty.”

    
Ty laughed internally at her insatiable thirst for knowledge, which he didn’t mind for a change. “Thoughts, and intermingled images. Carry to it, it is perhaps a device best served in a place such as this, where there is no beauty in the sky or land.”

    
No beauty in sky or land?

    
The scene changed now and darkness enveloped it, and then a leering glow formed among misshapen shapes mirroring the outside.

    
“I don’t like this place,” whispered Shilastar. “The glow is so eerie, and it’s frightening so close...”

    
Eerie? Frightening?
inquired the voice.
If you do not like the color, just change it; but as for me I prefer the beauty of solferino. You can adjust it, you know, but please not beyond the spectrum of purple. The eyes, you know... Wait, maybe you can’t change it... You can’t, can you?... What is this? What is this you bring into my very home? What are you doing bringing one of these in here? Out, out with you!

    
“Take your hands off of her! She is a friend, and she will stay.”

    
We’ll just see about that! Perhaps it is best if both of you go, but I could have sworn I felt impulses from you both, rather odd...

    
“She is a friend, and she will stay,” repeated Ty.

    
Shilastar looked all about the room. She saw the man called Paliy but could not hear his words. Only a muffled voice filtered into her mind, agitating her. She concentrated as before, and the voice came to her in whispers.
What an odd word,
solferino.
Why does he want me to go?
She slipped past Paliy and maneuvered beside Ty, feeling safer.

    
Perhaps I have been too hasty with my guests. Sit, please, sit back down, and we will talk. Why have you come to Paliy 3? It is not often that visitors come. Not much to see and little of worth to gain by such a venture. I did not see you among the crew or the cargo of the lander. No, no, didn’t come that way did you? Funny though, two jumps not one, and nothing in the other.

    
“I believe it was an error in judgment that brought us here... Yet, I thought this is where we were to begin,” Ty answered.

    
You should guard well your thoughts lest you wish them to be heard, but tell me of this search of yours, and perhaps I can help you along it.

    
“The story is long, I am afraid, and I do not even understand its bounds. I have too much to do to waste time...” Ty trailed off, deciding to shroud his inner thinkings this time as he regarded the old gentleman before him, and considered his own contemplations. It suddenly occurred to him just how old Paliy appeared. The face from a distance in paled light had been without definition, yet as they sat only a breath apart, the chairs facing each other with a precarious lean, he noticed the deep wrinkles on forehead and cheek.

    
You should do better than that. And to think I never counted your youth against you, but again it is your youth that makes you query so.
Paliy ushered his toothless mouth into a partial frown, that was perhaps meant to be a smile. A shimmer passed over Paliy’s face, a flicker of shadow that caught Ty’s eye.
No time to waste on a tale that has carried you to my door, curious...

    
“Ty,” whispered Shilastar, “I really have to... you know...”

    
The interruption irritated him. “Have to what?”

    
“To... you know...” she said, waving her hands in frustration.

    
I have been a most ungracious host, let me show you about, and we can return to this later. You can freshen up and partake of my stores, and then we can return to this. Come, come, follow me. My feet are not as sure as they once were, but I think I can guide you to where you would like to go.

    
Ty prodded Shilastar and she began to follow. “Timing is everything,” he whispered to her. “Timing is everything.” Paliy did smile then.

    
After Paliy showed them around the few rooms that bordered the parlor where they were to return, he left them to their own devices, saying he would come back again later if time permitted. At first, the two used an aged version of the purifier that still used intermittent sprayings of water and soaps, but their curiosity overcame them after they were left alone longer than they wished. They moved along time-worn streets and avenues, all enclosed within the sphere of the overhead dome or the low-hanging canopy of the corridors.

    
The residences they encountered were fully furnished and kept well but obviously unused, which struck them as abnormal. The only thing lacking was people. Rooms and halls were kept from dirt and dust, yet quiet rumors of faint laughters had long since died out. They lingered longer than they should have, and when Ty longed to return, Shilastar did not.

    
The two searched on and on through emptiness, eventually finding themselves back where they started. Paliy waited for them there, stone faced. He gestured for them to sit, and they did Paliy did not speak for some time.

    
These halls are my home, and you clearly wish to poke and prod where a prudent guest shouldn’t. I could forgive and forget small transgressions, but not easily so. It would mean lost trust and faith.

    
We were curious, that is all,
responded Ty instinctively in thought.

    
Curiosity is best left at another’s door, and not at mine.
A trace of light crossed Paliy’s face, and the image in the screen warbled and shifted, coming to a level of blackness the two had never seen before.
Curious how it reflects so, is it not? I leave you two alone now to think and with a warning to stay out of place you’ve not been invited to visit. I am busy and soon I must rest, and so should you. Announce your intentions and make them clear and chaste.

    
Ty didn’t know why he shouldn’t confess everything he knew and wished. He found in a moment a level of trust in another he had never known. In Paliy’s clear deep eyes, Ty could see the innermost windows of the man’s mind, and none were closed or barred. They were wide and lucid. He didn’t know what he had to fear. Although Shilastar attempted to convince him otherwise, he spoke in full of people, places and things that perhaps he shouldn’t have. “My father was of the first order,” he concluded. “Though academy trained, I am of the second. An outcast among outcasts. It is how I came to be in this system. How I came to know Shilastar.

    
“The murder of one called Rhyess is what set us on this course and I did not know until the last what Aehrone was, though I should have. Phaylio knew though, I’m certain. Phaylio would have let me stand tribunal too if not for Aehrone’s confession. I could see it in his eyes, and he saw in mine the truth of me.”

    
Paliy didn’t add a word or consideration as Ty narrated. He nodded, as with heavy deliberation or careful thought. When Ty finished, he waited; but Paliy never uttered a word or allowed a thought to be heard until finally Paliy stood and left the room.

    
“What do you think you were doing?” demanded Shilastar, “Do you know what you have just done?”

    
“No, I don’t. I have done nothing wrong.”

    
“You are a thoughtless, thankless, Ty. Do you know what you have just done? You’ve just told a stranger a story that puts us in danger. As for what you said about Phaylio, I think I hate you.”

    
Ty stayed her hand from striking his face and held the hand in his. “Shilastar, you could have stopped me at any time and you are wrong. To save you, Phaylio would have put me before the tribunal himself if that’s what it took. You were his everything, and I understand that. It’s why he made me promise to watch over you.”

    
Shilastar retreated to a corner, her eyes flashing. “Take me as far away from here as possible. Take me now, I don’t want to spend another moment here!”

    
Ty stalked after Shilastar and tried to hold her while she mashed her fists into his chest. “It’s time to grow up, Shilastar. You are a child no more.”

    
Shilastar’s face flushed with anger. “A child? Is that what you think of me?”

    
“I—I—” Ty started to say.

    
Shilastar silenced him by pressing her lips firmly against his. She held him there, entranced. When he least expected it, she struck him as hard as she could across the face with her open palm and pushed him away.

    
Paliy did not return that night, nor the next day. Shilastar clenched her hands into fists, considering all the terrible things Paliy could be setting against them. She slept little, and what she managed was unpleasant. It never occurred to her that as they waited she could have come to Ty and spoke her heart, or that later it would turn out differently than she dared to hope.

    
Ty slept well, however. He recalled no dreams, only peaceful bliss. He was not without calculated deliberation as he quietly sat, frequently standing to stretch. He guessed the one called Paliy was indeed some distant relation of the original Paliy but not the great man who once dominated the system and its twenty-two planets. He could guess why the control had fallen to ruin as Paliy was no longer one of the eight ruling sectors, but he could scarcely venture to guess why no other had pushed in and claimed it. Was it perhaps out of respect?

    
Paliy was once a member of the eight, as great as Send or Rhal had ever hoped to be. Ty only recently recalled with distinction why he held the other with such reverence, and in truth why he had been so overwhelmed. Paliy once could have rivalled Alder or Tarid. It was ironic that Ty reminisced the ideals of the founder of the third generation, when ships spread beyond their planetary bounds and could lay claim to an entire system.

    
Ty imagined the Paliy of old at the console of his master helm, leading the first armada, laying hold to planet after planet. Visually in his mind, Ty could not fathom the depths of control it would take to guide such a force’s every move. He wondered what had happened to it all and what of it remained.

    
Come and see for yourself, and you can decide.

    
Ty silently cursed himself.

    
Do not chastise yourself unjustly. The helm is what I should think you would most like to see.

    
What of her? Ty wondered.

    
She is sleeping now, poor thing. She did not sleep much during the night, odd as that is.

    
How can you tell whether it is night or day?

    
The sun shimmers in the sky, and it is day, when it is gone, it is night.

    
Ty enthusiastically followed Paliy, conjuring innumerable visions, each growing so much in size and scope that by the time they passed through a set of twin doors, he imagined the helm a place fifty stories high, fading beyond his eyes in depth with many thousands subjugated at the controls and hundreds of protectors without.