Chapter 21 – Mothers

  Desert verge, beneath The Rainbow Mountains – Drift 14

  He’d been running downhill, then uphill again, with Iliana on his shoulder the whole damn time.

  His legs were burning. His boots were heavy, wet with sweat.

  At least the wind had stopped slapping his chest. Serendipity tied the two other runners to her old one, saying she trusted Eat-Sand more than the newer models.

  That bucket was lucky to last two more drifts.

  Honestly, they all were. A small generator with its Faraday sleeve tight around the control block rattled on a side rack, still working. Now they were stuck, with no choice but to keep moving forward.

  With the damn predator behind them and a desert full of bitey things ahead.

  He sighed. He needed Dice back. The runners fixed. His gun reloaded.

  But what he wanted most was just to sit down.

  Maybe even sleep.

  Maybe two full night-drifts, if he was lucky.

  He hadn’t slept a full hour since they left the ship.

  “There,” the wild herbalist said, pointing ahead with a steady hand.

  She didn’t even look tired. He wondered if she knew she was the main reason he couldn’t sleep.

  “What?” he asked, squinting. Nothing but rocks and heat shimmer up ahead.

  “That ridge,” she said, climbing the back of her runner. “We camp there. It’s a good spot. Easy to defend. You and I can take turns watching from that peak.”

  "You and I?" he repeated. “Great.”

  “Unless you want to stay up all through the night-drift, then yes.”

  She looked smug. Of course she did.

  “Iliana’s still out,” she added, “and David hasn’t even noticed the Felidae tracking us for the past hour.”

  “The what?” David said.

  He was slumped over his runner, legs dangling, just minutes from total collapse.

  Still clutching Serendipity’s knife in his right hand.

  Uselessly.

  “That feline from the canyon,” she said, tone unreadable. “It’s been tracking us for a while.”

  Sure, scare the kid a little more.

  Adrenaline never killed anyone.

  “That’s not in my memory vault,” David mumbled.

  “Why not?” Remulus snapped. “Fauna’s not important stuff either?”

  “I have fauna,” David replied, clipped. “I’ve got shellkrats, silver darts, trumpet-nose skinners, sand spiders, youlsnouts—”

  “Oh yeah,” Serendipity cut in. “Youlsnouts—those guys were the ones who saved you back in the desert.”

  Iliana stirred on his shoulder. Her suit display flickered faintly, monitoring heart rate and oxygen flow.

  Low.

  And dropping lower.

  “Enough chatter,” he barked. “We gotta move. She’s not gonna make it if we waste another drift standing around.” He picked up his pace.

  “What’s wrong with her?” David asked, trotting up closer. “She’s been off ever since we landed.”

  "Her implants," Serendipity said again, unnecessarily.

  “Oh.”

  David slumped further. “It’s my fault, isn’t it?” he said in a low voice. “If I hadn’t asked her for help… she wouldn’t be here. She wouldn’t be on this desert planet.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” he snapped, deadpan. “And now that she is, standing there moping about it will help exactly no one.”

  He shifted Iliana higher on his shoulder with a grunt.

  "These nodes," he muttered. "Are older than you. She's lucky they've lasted this long."

  He didn’t mean to sound harsh. He was just tired and telling the truth.

  “These people, the Sulei, aren’t meant to live on land. Or not fully. They need flowing water to cleanse the gills.”

  David still wasn’t convinced.

  Serendipity slowed her runner, letting David catch up. She slid down into the saddle and let the reins hang loose.

  “You can’t predict the future,” she said, not looking at him. “Your job is remembering, not predicting. Right?”

  She met his eyes then.

  “It’s not your fault. Even if it was for you. She made the decision herself. Blaming yourself just hurts her more.”

  That wasn’t what he expected her to say.

  David nodded once, chin tucked to his chest.

  He had seen that look on David before, too many times. After a mission went wrong. After a teammate was lost. On young cadets, but David was too young for it.

  So Remulus looked ahead instead.

  He might have shouted and blamed her, if it wasn’t just as much his fault she was here. Not that he’d ever admit it.

  She didn’t need to know that.

  She had done this before, pushed herself until he had to patch her up again. All to get into Robin’s mind and change it. And for what? A stupid transport. He would have done it just to avoid seeing her hurt like that.

  And after he got angry and patched her up, his reward was ignorance—his own, caused by her. As if things like that could be set aside so easily. He had only glanced at the footage Dice kept of them, and he realized she had made him forget. Forget them. Then it all came back: the hurt, the happiness, and the foolishness.

  He told himself he was better off.

  He was hungry. That was it. Hungry, tired, and avoiding her. He’d run halfway across Lyra Nine just to never see her again, but ended up on the only planet that let him work without papers. He knew she stayed on Aurelion, but tried not to think about it. Maybe he stayed there because she did. He wasn’t sure if it was his choice or something else. He’d stopped thinking about it for a long time, but being near her again made him wonder.

  But when they reached the ridge Serendipity chose for camp, he pushed those thoughts aside. Again.

  He’d opened his mouth back at the Aurelion docks and asked her to come.

  He’d been stupid.

  He knew she would come. That was all it took. And now she was probably dying. Again.

  He laid Iliana in the sand, opened the toolbox, and went to work.

  The panel behind her left ear was hot, overheated from constant syncing. The sealant had cracked, and the salty, iron-rich air had started to corrode the exposed contacts. It was a delicate design, made for humid planets with filtered air and balanced salinity, not for Devon Five.

  He knelt atop sand that was hot and coarse and stuck to his knees, and popped the hatch with the knife’s tip. A small hiss as the pressure equalised.

  “She’s been breathing half-right,” he muttered. “That’s why her heart rate’s crashing. Not enough oxygen uptake; she’s overcompensating.”

  The suns were setting, but the heat stayed. Sweat ran down his neck and stung his eyes. Inside the implant, filtration nodes were caked with dust; one pulsed wrong, stuck in a failed recalibration. He didn’t hesitate. His large hands used the fine tools he always carried, steady and careful. The wires were as thin as a bird’s. He cleaned the corrosion, flushed the lines four times, and dried the node with compressed air. He sealed the last node and held his breath for a moment, remembering what it would mean if he made a mistake. When his hands steadied, he cauterized the split along her cheekbone and sealed the hatch with a thicker gel scraped from what was left of Dice’s water-tank lining. The gel hardened in seconds. She might have a faint scar, but that was the least of her problems.

  He injected a low-dose painkiller into the soft groove behind her jaw. Her cheeks would burn when she woke, but the patch would hold for a few drifts at least. His thumb lingered at her jaw for a moment, and a memory crashed in from another time and place when his hands were on her face, his calloused fingers tracing her soft skin. Then he pulled away. Again.

  One repair down. Two more to go.

  He took one last look at the sleeping Sulei and pushed to his feet. David was already sprawled out on the hard rocks, passed out cold. Serendipity was nowhere in sight.

  So he got to work on the runner. This one only needed a few soldering points. A fly kept buzzing around his face. He cursed when he caught more than he meant to in a suture. He was hammering at a panel when the girl returned, arms full of dry twigs and a large rat-like creature swinging from her belt.

  “Don’t tell me that’s dinner,” he growled. “We’ve got food. I packed every nutrient bar and ration pack I had on board. Hayam gave us twice as much dried stuff, too.”

  “Yes,” she said evenly, jerking her chin toward Iliana’s runner. “That bag full of nutrient pouches was on her runner, the one you’re currently mistreating. Notice anything missing?”

  He sighed. Yeah. He’d seen it. Just hadn’t registered it fully. The saddlebags on Iliana’s runner were gone, either lost during the sprint or crushed in the canyon.

  Either way, they were in trouble now.

  "Gods, damn it," he muttered. "I’m not eating that. I’d rather eat dried fruit."

  “You do that,” she laughed, “more for me.”

  She hadn’t caught the Whiskered Volex.

  It was an offering, left on a flat boulder like a gift.

  Still bleeding when she found it.

  A few meters ahead, the Felidae sat calmly, licking her long snout.

  Half-hidden in the sand.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Her fur shimmered the same color as the dust, like she belonged to it.

  “Full on centipedes?” she asked, gesturing at the fresh kill.

  As she walked closer to the gift, the creature rose without rushing.

  Slipped around the narrow ridge.

  Melted back into the heat shimmer.

  Now, from a distance, she saw it again.

  Pacing between the ridges,

  stalking.

  Still watching.

  Still there.

  She gutted the Whiskered Volex with steady hands, working quickly but not carelessly.

  The creature wasn’t much bigger than a house cat, most of its weight carried in those oversized ears and its heavy, long tail.

  There wasn’t a lot of meat, just a few decent cuts along the hind legs, but it would do.

  She could make something of it.

  Did the Felidae know they needed food? Unlikely.

  She sniffed the cut—fresh, clean, no rot.

  Was she being fed the way she had fed Nosy to her?

  Hopefully not.

  The thought froze her heart.

  The Felidae wasn’t large, but she was the best hunter in the desert.

  They should all be dead.

  Not… fed.

  She’d spared the Felidae once. Maybe this was repayment. Or a warning. Or something else she couldn’t name yet.

  Iliana stirred, wincing as she cupped her jaw.

  “Do I smell blood?” she mumbled, pushing off the sand.

  She looked disoriented, but better.

  “Dinner,” she said, holding up a few squares of meat.

  “Dinner?” David slid off the rock and landed hard on his butt.

  “I want dinner.”

  They ate in silence.

  Iliana refused the Volex, but Hayam’s rations were still plenty.

  The meat wasn’t much, but it was warm, and nobody else complained.

  Even Remulus ate two pieces off a stick, unsalted and nearly rare.

  Later, the fire burned low, just enough to keep the wind at bay.

  The stars came out in full, crowding the sky like curious watchers, dragging Lyra behind them.

  David tried to sketch them in Hayam’s old notebook, then gave up after a few lines.

  “Impossible,” he said, and just lay back, arms behind his head, staring at the sky.

  He never complained.

  Not the heat. Not the sore muscles. Not even the burnt dinner.

  He just stared upward, like the stars might blink back.

  She used to complain all the time when Hayam took her hunting.

  The ground’s too hard. The food’s too dry. The meat tastes weird. The drinking water’s hot…

  Not David.

  Resilient kid.

  They sat close and let the silence stretch between them, tense but unbroken.

  A cleaner spider approached the fire, drawn maybe by the ignition fluid’s tang.

  Iliana picked it up, hissing when her fingers brushed the flame.

  Its metallic carapace shimmered red and gold in the firelight.

  “Is that an AAD?” David asked, propping himself up.

  “We call them water sprites back home,” Iliana said. “Ours are green, like submerged moss, and much rarer.”

  She lifted it to eye level, watching the fine legs twitch. Almost indistinguishable from a living creature.

  “Artificial Arachniform Drone,” David recited. “Designed for micro-sifting terrain: filtering toxins, clearing debris, managing invasive spores.”

  “They’re everywhere here,” Serendipity added, leaning over to get a better look. “They move in elegant patterns across the dunes. Most people avoid them, say they’re unnatural.”

  “Yes. Semi-organic,” David said, sitting straighter. “Manufactured. Originally built on Earth to clean pollution from the surface. When we left Earth, we brought them along. To make other planets safer for us.”

  Iliana huffed and set the drone gently back in the sand, turning it so it wouldn’t crawl into the flames.

  “The ones on Devon Five are… unpredictable,” Serendipity said. “Sometimes they eat away at rocks for drifts on end. Sometimes they just spin in circles.”

  “Do you miss it?” David asked Iliana. “Your home, I mean. Tera—, I mean, SulSul?”

  “David!” Serendipity snapped. “You can’t just ask something like that.”

  Iliana burst out laughing, real, full-bellied laughing, which startled even her. “Oh, it’s alright,” she said between breaths, massaging her still aching jaw. “He does that.”

  She just stared at the siren. These people were weird.

  But something about Iliana kept yanking at her attention. Why was she here? She didn’t seem too close to David, and Remulus still sat at the far edge of camp like her presence was allowed but not accepted.

  “Then,” she asked carefully, “can I ask?”

  Iliana looked over with a slow smile. “What in both suns’ blistered names am I doing here, on a planet that’s been trying to kill me since we landed?” She gave a lazy shrug. “Yeah, you can ask. Depending on how you ask, I might even answer.” Her eyes glanced at Remulus, who was still pretending to check his gun. Still definitely not listening.

  Before Serendipity could ask, Iliana answered. “I didn’t want to be like my mother,” she said, laughing drily. All the amusement drained from her voice. “Cliché, right? But really… at the root of it all, that was it.”

  Truth. Mostly.

  David’s voice cut through the quiet again. “What’s that like?”

  Remulus gave a laugh.

  “Having a mother, I mean,” David added quickly, silencing him.

  Iliana cocked her head, curious. “You don’t have a mother?” Then softer, correcting herself, “Right. Of course you don’t. Mnemonic Heirs are grown from prime genetic material, not born. But I figured someone must’ve raised you?”

  "Well, yeah. But not a proper mother," he muttered, toying with the knife she had given him in the canyon. She was never getting that knife back; the kid looked attached.

  “We all grew up together in Aurelion. Most families only have one Heir. Growing one is expensive, but the Isos insisted on two even though there is no record of such a thing happening before. Emma tells me we’re unique.”

  He stabbed the sand with the tip. “But I had her. Always. Ever since I've had my memory vault activated, it’s been the two of us. Other kids teased me, teased us, for always studying together. Eating together.”

  He glanced up. “She never seemed to mind.”

  “What’s she like?” she asked. “Emma?”

  David tapped his wristpiece. A soft rectangle blinked to life over it, no bigger than a book, the projection floating just above his arm. Dust stuck to the screen corners, but the image remained sharp. A young girl. Probably not much older than Serendipity.

  She looked like David.

  Same green eyes. Same half-smile. But where David was curls and dust and motion, she was stillness. Restraint. Composure.

  Her hair fell in one long, straight line. She had full lips, a thin, slightly bent nose, and a stare that promised a scolding followed by high praise.

  She looked beautiful. Mature and graceful.

  Serendipity stared at the image, tilting her head as she pictured it. Not David now, but David in the future: grounded and steady. The kind of person others might follow without question, just as she had. She shook off the thought.

  “She looks like she could take you in a fight,” Iliana said, voice mild.

  David grinned, for the first time since leaving the ship.

  “Oh, she can,” he said proudly. “No one beats her. Not even the trainers.”

  “Librarians are taught to fight?” she asked, looking at his small frame.

  “We are. It sharpens the mind. Though… some of us aren’t very good at it.” He smirked. “But she was the best. Is.”

  His grin softened. “She really is the best. I can’t let her take my place. It’s not right. She looked after me my whole life.”

  More truth.

  They meant it, both of them. Honest in a way that relieved something in her chest.

  Being around them was… easy. Calming. She didn’t need to pretend not to know.

  No need to stay guarded for a lie to hit unexpectedly.

  No need to test every sentence for weight.

  The only one lying now was Remulus, and even that, mostly to himself. Like a flame that had gone out, still smoldering under his rough exterior.

  David yawned mid-sentence, slumping where he sat.

  “We get it, kid,” Remulus muttered. “But if you fall asleep there, you’ll wake up without eyebrows. If you’re lucky.”

  “Right,” David muttered, dragging himself toward his mat like he was running on fumes. That last spark of excitement had used up what little he had left.

  And still, he didn’t complain.

  He was out a fraction of a second later.

  Serendipity thought of Hayam. Was he sleeping? Was he worried? Of course he was. Was he alright—alone in that cold house, with only his rumination for company?

  He was both her father and her mother. He taught her all that he knew, and what he didn’t know he found out, all for her. He’d talked to traveling medics, to the strange merchants that landed at the docks, to the monks—anyone who might have answers, so he could teach her in turn. It was difficult to ask about something you didn’t want to ask, for fear of drawing suspicion.

  The monks had no answers, and so he knew nothing about her own birth. Nothing about her biological mother or father. She’d only ever had Hayam. And that was enough.

  But Iliana was the only nonhuman she’d ever had the chance to speak to, and Serendipity was somewhat entranced by the siren’s power. Iliana felt like kin, but not quite. A friend, if Serendipity had the nerve to admit it. But she didn’t.

  She looked toward the Sulei, expectant.

  “Ask,” Iliana laughed, shaking her head. Had she been that transparent? Maybe the siren’s song was unreachable to her ears, but her own feelings reached out. Iliana could read them—Serendipity was sure of it. She’d never asked, but she was certain the siren could pick up on everyone’s moods more than she let on.

  “Why follow them here?” Serendipity finally voiced the question that had been bugging her since they met.

  She’d gathered a handful of starsongs and, almost without thinking, stacked them into a small tower beside the fire. Talking to people was never comfortable. But with these ones, the words came easier.

  “There it is,” Iliana said, sighing. She leaned closer to the fire, as if the crackling might cover her voice.

  “Here,” Serendipity offered, pouring another cup of tea. It was her favorite, should work as a bribe. Then, with her free hand, she pulled a final starsong out of her pocket and placed it gently at the top of the stack.

  It hummed, soft and low.

  Iliana took the cup, inhaled, and drank it in one long swallow. “Oh, this is the best tea I’ve ever had,” she said.

  Truth.

  Iliana leaned back, arms draped over her knees, eyes on the desert beyond the firelight.

  “I couldn’t influence him,” she said. “Not even a little.”

  She sounded nearly amused, but tired. Like it still bothered her.

  “I could feel him, though. His mood. His resolve. That ridiculous, unshakeable stubbornness.”

  Her gaze wandered upward as though she could still see it.

  “He came into the bar looking like royalty, face down in a gutter. Dirt on his slippers, grease on his stolen jacket, he carried himself as if he belonged somewhere else. The whole bar stared. And of course, he didn’t notice. Oblivious.”

  “I had to reach out to everyone at once and turn their minds off of him.” She let out a breath, as if the memory had cost effort. “He looked straight at me. I reached out to him, too, just a brush, and got nothing. Just like trying to bend iron.”

  Her hands curled into the fabric of her pants.

  “He was a wall of woven steel. That kind of focus that either saves you… or burns you alive. He was going to do this one task, or nothing at all.”

  Iliana shook her head slowly. “I wanted him out of that bar. Fast. Before someone recognized him. He stood out too much. So when he asked for a pilot, I almost laughed.”

  A quiet chuckle escaped her lips.

  “There were three pilots in the bar that night. Storm was playing dice in the back. Louie—the other bartender—flies part-time. Even I’ve flown worse jobs with less notice.”

  She turned toward her now, the flame casting one side of her face in gold.

  “But that’s not what he needed.”

  “He didn’t need a pilot. He needed help. And hope. And I only knew one pilot brave enough to give him both.”

  A long silence stretched between them.

  “So I took him to Remulus.”

  She ran a hand through her hair, pushing it back from her face. Long, silvery strands caught the light from the fire.

  “When I felt that boy’s pain—that wave of hurt and fury and wild, desperate resolve—I had two choices. I could try to stop it from cresting. And fail.”

  Her voice fell to a murmur.

  “Or I could ride alongside it.”

  She looked away again, toward the dark. Toward where David slept.

  “So here I am. Riding it. Praying I don’t drown.”

  Serendipity watched the fire twist. She knew a thing or two about drowning.

  She accepted Iliana’s truths—all of them—and smirked into the flames.

  "He has this magnetism," she said. The word suited him almost too well.

  "It draws you in. You don’t even notice at first. You just find yourself standing closer."

  She laughed. “What is he—fifteen? Sixteen sols? And already women can’t say no to him.”

  Iliana huffed a laugh, leaning back on her hands. “Right? Even Dice is pleasant with him.”

  That made her snort. “Dice hates everyone.”

  “Exactly,” Iliana said, grinning now. “The damn ship growled at me the first time I tried to run diagnostics. But David? Oh no. David gets polite interface tones and warm corridor lights.”

  She shook her head. "That boy will walk into a warzone one day and charm the bullets."

  Iliana’s smile flattened, just a little. “Yeah. That’s why I’m glad we found you. You seem like the type to stop bullets.”

  TRUTH!