Forget Me – Part 1
Ice crunched beneath Mishka's heavy, stompy boots as she made her way through the frozen greenhouse. The air was jaggedly cold, a thousand tiny needles that dug into every inch of exposed skin. The room was filled with the scent of flowers, sweet and floral, but beneath which was something decidedly more off-putting, something oily and cloying and with a hint of rot.
Overhead the twisted infinity of the Beneath roiled, great streams of purple and blue and red energy twisting through the space between the formations – the great rhizomatic clusters of form and matter. In places the shapes were natural, or some approximation there off, with forests and mountains and beaches and swamps and tundra that gave way from one moment to the next to ruins and houses and schools and restaurants and factories without any kind of logic or reason.
In the chaotic, impassible spaces between the Formations, contradictory laws of time and space and magic and logic fought a ceaseless war, a never ending struggle to take control of the husks of a million, million dead realities as they all slowly fell down, ever deeper, towards the terrible crushing crimson of the Endfire, the Pit, the Final Circle – where universes went to die. Mishka was protected, to an extent, by her people's genius, but even she couldn't linger too long in a place as fundamentally hostile as the Beneath.
Above, past the warring geometries and metaphysics, the skein of the Real could be glimpsed, here and there, and beyond that, shining like a flawless diamond, high, high above, the Sourcefire, the Empyrian, the beginning of all things, or as some knew it – the Heavens.
Mishka knew that she wasn't really walking through a frozen greenhouse, where warped mockeries of roses with petals like fractals grew from feathery white crystals. It was just her mind making sense of the senseless, imposing an order and logic on something that even with most brilliant mind in the universe she couldn't truly grasp and comprehend in truth. She felt the air growing colder still; she quickened her stride.
She passed through the greenhouse and into a dark corridor filled with shelves lined with books. The spines were old and dusty, and etched with runes that even with a semiotic symbiote she couldn't decipher. The harsh, jagged, mind-twisting sigils shifted and changed as she looked over them. Her eyes itched; she looked away.
The hallway opened onto a kitchen. There was a dark, humanoid shape standing over the stove and stirring a pot. She didn't look at it. She knew from experience that the minute she did the illusion of its form would begin to melt away, revealing something that shifted progressively worse and worse and worse and that would, by virtue of her very attention, begin to notice her. So she pointedly didn't look at it. She was safe so long as she didn't draw attention to herself.
Well, some measure of safe.
Well, not really.
But safe was boring. If she'd wanted safe, she'd have stayed at home.
There was a tear in the wall of the kitchen, a five foot high, jagged break in the skein of unreality. She took a moment to peer through it, glancing over what looked like a wide city boulevard. There were people, ursulanoids and non-ursulanoids alike, wandering about in what looked like rather formal wear. Behind them, glittering towers of steel and stone and crystal thrust upward into a cerulean sky. Voidships of various designs scythed through the air: some with solar sails, others propelled by aether drives or spacial manafolds or bound elementals or some other example of the varied and at least a little ingenious solutions the primitive species had come up with to navigate the great dark between worlds. Gold star.
She brought out her pocket watch and clicked open the brassy casing, peering at the shifting dials and symbols on its three faces. It was always difficult to be entirely sure how long one had been in the Beneath, even when within an ontological field using multiple different principles to measure the passage of time. Her own, usually quite accurate, body clock estimated twelve minutes; the upper right face, which measured the steady rate of mana dissipation from a temporal crystal, said seventeen; the upper left, which relied on purely mechanical wound clockwork, said it had only been four seconds; and the last, which tried to measure the background frequency of the universes' ley field, was just spinning back and forth wildly.
Probably longer than four seconds, somewhere less than seventeen minutes. She exhaled, and her breath came out as a puff of white crystals. Cold, but not totally frigid, she still had some time.
She moved on, leaving the kitchen through a pantry that opened into a dark forest. Brass barked trees glinted beneath a gloomy canopy of purple leaves, and long pale grass swayed and coiled in an unseen wind. Terrible, impossible shapes moved between the trunks, and little girl cried on a wooden bench. Mishka ignored her. That was not a little girl, and there was no park bench. The only real things were the un-shapes in the trees.
She reached another tear and peered out into it. It showed a star-scape, rolling above the dark and crumbling ruins of a forgotten people. Above asteroids hung, framed by nebulae and constellations and slowly tumbling on their axis' from momentum imparted by some ancient collision. A dead city on an asteroid. That was reasonably interesting, and the architecture didn't immediately jump out to her, but she didn't think she was really in the mood for rummaging through ruins by her lonesome until it was time to move on. She wanted something new, something interesting, something fun.
She moved to leave the tear, before she caught something in the corner of her eye – a flicker of light in the dead world. She peered at the source. It was something nestled within in the lee of a large pile of blackened rubble, it glinted in the darkness.
It was a long way away, but distinct in the gloom – wood and glass and a bit of metal…
A research base? Now, that was a bit more interesting. She loved watching primitives trying to figure out the universe around them – it was always so adorable.
She rolled up a sleeve and tapped a silver bracelet. Ursulan runes lit up on its surface, and she felt a life-support shell roll down from the top of her head, replacing the cold, tinny scent of the Beneath with warm, fresh air.
She stepped forward through the tear.
The terrible, oppressive alienness of the Beneath vanished, replaced with the far more palatable feeling of Realspace. The hairs on the back of her neck that had been standing up since she'd departed that tropical moon slowly lay back down, and the knot in her back relaxed as the rock within her shell of air shifted and crunched beneath her weight.
She flexed her knees and then jumped, landing a moment later. That felt fairly close to 'standard' gravity, about eight five percent of Ursulan base. That meant that there was, presumably, some kind of local gravity system still functional after all this time. Impressive.
There was something vaguely familiar about the curves of shattered spires. Something familiar, although Mishka couldn't immediately place it. It didn't resemble anything she'd seen in this part of the galaxy, but there had been plenty of ancient civilisations before hers that had cracked one method of ultra-fast FTL or the other. Perhaps it had been one of her people's ancient foes? The ones they'd crushed for having the temerity to be somewhat close to them in techno-arcano development.
She set off between the lonely, dead spires, making her way down an ancient promenade toward the base. Then the bearlike ears on the top of her head twitched, and she stopped as there was a whirring sound behind her and a flick of metal.
"Alright, Space Magician," came a voice in a language her symbiote immediately made intelligible, buzzing from her bracelet. "How about you turn around nice and slowly, hands where we can see them."
Mishka raised her hands and rotated on the spot to see two figures wearing rather primitive space-suits: Thick, sealed leather with crudely stitched runes containment runes in silver spellthread, and large, brass diver's helmets with large port-hole face-plates, which were lit up and gave a good view of the heads of the people inside them.
The first, the one who had spoken, was a toweringly tall alf – a race she'd seen knocking about this section of the galaxy. Fairly ursulanoid, although with pointy, naked pink ears in line with their eyes rather than normal furry ears higher of the head. They were masculine looking, although one could never be confident in guessing gender with aliens, and had black hair pulled back into a ponytail streaked with grey. They had a kind, open face with a dash of roguish features, and rough salt and pepper stubble.
The other was feminine, and another race that Mishka recognised – human. Similar to alfs, but with rounded pink ears. Both of the species belonged to the level eight or nine civilisational milieu in this end of a spiral arm, either in their home systems or in the hodgepodge colonies and polities not organised along primarily one species' line or the other. They were small and waif-like, with large blue eyes behind round glasses, delicate cheekbones, and a shock of blonde hair.
Mishka snorted and lowered her hands. "Do I look stupid?" she said, nodding at the 'weapon' in the alf's hands. "That's a drill."
The large brass and cast iron device whirred, cogs cycling behind the hand-guard and letting off a puff of steam that rapidly dispersed in the vacuum. The tall alf grinned. "Yeah, well, can't blame a bloke for trying?" they said.
"Who are you?" said the human with the glasses. "And where did you come from? Stellar Horizons has exclusive rights on this dig!"
"I'm Mishka," said Mishka. "In this language I use she / her."
"Viktor," said the alf, offering a bulky, suited hand. "He / him. Nice suit – airshell? Very swish."
"Viktor, don't shake her hand," said the human in an exasperated voice. "She's competition!"
"Competition? We going into show-biz?" he said as Mishka gave his hand a deft shake before letting go. "Just saying, I think Ms. Magician might have a leg up on us – two, actually. I really don't think I could pull off those tights."
"I'm just passing through," said Mishka. "And what do you mean, 'Magician?'"
She looked down at her clothes. Is that what they thought she looked like? Her red cloak, white blouse tied with a crimson ribbon, matching skirt, criss-cross patterned tights, and big stompy boots were pretty normal as far as clothes went. Well, the ribbon was perhaps a bit bold, but she liked it – it brought out her red eyes. Neither of them had cloaks or ribbons, it was true, but then again, there was no accounting for primitive tastes.
"Just missing the top hat," said Viktor. "Although that might get in the way of the cute ears."
Mishka brushed some of the hair back around one of her bear-like ears, which poked through her long brown hair she wore in a ponytail. Cute? Her people had been regarded as terrifying in the space near their homeworld. It was always a bit strange to be complemented by an alien.
"Viktor, will you shut up!?" said the human. "How did you even get here? We didn't detect any ship approaching!"
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," said Mishka.
"Ooh,
mysterious," said Viktor, jerking his head at the person. "Don't mind Astrid, she's just grumpy we didn't find anything in… whatever that place was."
"Stop telling her trade secrets!" huffed 'Astrid,' fiddling with some kind of chunky-buttoned control panel on her wrist. "Home Base? Come in Home Base."
"Home base here," buzzed a masculine voice, intercepted by Mishka's bracelet.
"What do you need, Astrid?"
"Home Base, we have an… intruder," said Astrid.
"Can you repeat that? It sounded like you said we have an 'intruder,'" said the comm.
"Yes, an intruder. An alien with advanced survival arteficing – a personal air-shell, calls herself 'Mishka,' she won't tell us how she got here," said Astrid.
"Cute bear ears," supplied Viktor. "Dressed like a magician."
"I am not dressed like a magician," said Mishka. "Although I will accept 'cute ears.'"
Astrid lightly smacked Viktor with the back of her covered hand. "Stop flirting."
"Who's flirting? Me?" said Viktor. "Are you saying her ears aren't cute? That's a bit rude, don't you think?"
"Scrying system didn't detect any ship," said Home Base.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes I'm sure! She's right here! Did you not hear advanced survival arteficing?" said Astrid. "It's probably stealthed."
Mishka tapped her bracelet to hijack the call. "I really don't have a ship."
"How did you get on this frequency?" said Home Base.
"This is an encrypted channel!"
"Barely," said Mishka. "I'm not interested in 'stealing your corporate secrets' or whatever you paranoid capitalists are worried about. I just want to have a look around."
"What should we do, Captain?" said Astrid.
There was a grumbling sound through the link.
"I don't know," said Home Base.
"Arrest her and bring her here, we'll figure something out."
"Arrest her?" said Viktor.
"Yes!" said Home Base.
"Boss, I don't think, legally speaking, we've got the authority to arrest her," said Viktor. He shrugged. "We could do a kidnapping though? You don't need authority for that-"
"Shut up, Viktor," said Home Base.
"And thus we cast aside all civilised norms like so much flotsam, and shatter millennia of social development," said Viktor with a theatrical sigh. "I'm very sorry, Mishka the Space Magician. I'm going to have to kidnap you now."
"Should I be worried?" asked Mishka, her lips tweaking in amusement. She wasn't actually worried about a bunch of primitives. What were they going to do? Wave some pointy sticks at her? Well, to be totally fair, she supposed they were a little beyond that.
"Oh yes," he said gravely, offering his arm, which Mishka took. "Just look at us, armed and dangerous."
"For fucks sake, Viktor," muttered Astrid, trailing after them as they headed towards the research base. "Can you try and take something seriously for at least once in your life?"
As they got closer, Mishka could see that the base was arranged in a kind of hub and spoke configuration. The central 'hub' poked out above the other sections, and looked a bit like a large, octagonal pavilion, with thick wooden beams and paneling punctuated here and there by crystalline windows and roof panels.
There were a few machines and devices attached to it, the most eye-catching of which was at the very apex of the roof – a metal pedestal supporting a glimmering white diamond projecting thin strands of glistening silver mana that wafted upward a two dozen feet further into the air before curving outward and gently downward, forming a thin, shimmering barrier around the base – an air-shell.
Well, a very primitive air-shell. But still, they were trying, bless them. At least they seemed to have moved away from the inefficient maritime inspired designs for Voidships that a whole lot of species stuck to long after they'd escaped the bonds of their planet's gravity. Well done, gold star.
The rest of the base was of similar construction, with mostly wooden corridors connecting a few different sections – one was clearly a greenhouse – its roof almost entirely clear, there was another looked like a series of sleeping quarters, a large, particularly blocky one had some kind of mana-reactor in it, judging by the blue smoke it was pouring out from a set of chimneys that she suspected had once been the drive engines of the ship that had brought them here. The rest looked like storage.
Using wood, even if you reinforced it with structural integrity enchantments, was an absolutely insane material to build a base in space out of unless you had Ursulan level air-shells that you knew wouldn't fail. But still, lots of primitive peoples, and especially capitalistic ones, used it because it was light and cheap and they preferred to stick their heads in large piles of currency and not think too hard about what would happen if their systems started failing.
"Ah!" said Viktor a few paces beyond the air-shell's extremity, taking off his large spherical helmet. He took a deep breath. "Smell that exhaust!"
Mishka tapped her wrist, deactivating her shell, and immediately regretted it. The air was heavy with the smell of the slightly sweet scent the mana-reactor was putting out, and it wasn't nearly as warm as her survival shell.
Thankfully, it was a bit better inside, and after cycling through an 'airlock' that looked like it leaked like a sieve they entered a large storeroom with a small bay for space-suits, crates of equipment, and what looked like various artefacts that they expedition had dug up.
That, in turn, led down a wooden hallway through a habitat section which was a bit nicer – with polished wooden floorboards, white plaster walls, and what looked like sliding hardwood doors. There were eight rooms in total, four on each side, and had named signs in sleek black metal and gold lettering: Charles, Petra, Tiberius, and Astrid on one side, Anastasia, Viktor, Aaron, and one door that was blank on the other.
Then it was down another hallway through another sealed door, leading into the pavillion-like 'hub.' It was a large and octagonal, with a series of quite nicely, if somewhat primitive, looking consoles wrought from brass with smart black enammeled levers and knobs and switches, a few analogue readouts, and even one or two projected mana-screens. Judging by the large wheel at the very centre, it had probably served as the bridge on the trip to the asteroid, but now was the base's 'command and control.'
There were a few seating areas around the edges, what looked like a kitchen, along with some kind of lounge with shelves full of dog-earred books. The floor was hardwood with a few powder blue rugs that gave it a bit more of a homely feeling, and although it was patently bananas to build a research base on an atmosphereless asteroid without a hermetically sealed and reinforced metal hull, it inhabitants had obviously taken some pains to make it a more pleasant place to live.
It was all empty, however, except for a mostly bald human sitting at the central consoles. They were dressed in fairly notmal shirt, slacks, and a jacket that was pretending to be military, and had what looked like a very rudimentary mana-pistol at their hip. Annoyed fingers drummed on the edge of a console that showed a projected mana-screen of what might have been the bases systems, and they had an annoyed look on their face. Tap tap, tap tap-tap.
"Here you go boss," said Viktor, gesturing to Mishka and making an elaborate bow. "One kidnapped Magician. Kidnapped Magician with the cute ears, allow me to introduce our wise and fearsome leader Captain Charles Montgomery the Seventh. Charles Montgomery the Seventh, Kidnapped Magician with the cute ears."
"Sixth," said Charles, looking Mishka over. "I do see what you mean about her being a magician, though."
"Why is everyone saying that?" said Mishka, adjusting the ribbon at her collarbone minutely. "These are normal clothes. Honestly, you aliens have no sense of fashion."
"Hey, I'm on you side," said Viktor. "I've been campaigning to make fishnet tights everyday wear for decades now. I'm glad to see you've taken up the heavy burden."
"Viktor?" said Charles.
"Yes, Boss?"
"Shut up," said Charles.
"Yes, Boss."
The bald human turned his gaze to Astrid. "And, for the record, this is why I wanted you to carry sidearms when you're in the field," he said.
"I don't do weapons – I told you that when I took the offer," said Astrid, crossing her arms.
The bald human sighed and looked back to Mishka. "Alright, what's your name then, species, and employer?"
"Mishka, Ursulan," she said. "And I'm, well, between jobs right now, if you know what I mean. Oh, and I use she/her."
"Ursulan?" snorted Astrid. "Uh huh, and I'm Astrid, the boogeyman."
Mishka shrugged. She got that a lot.
"And where is your ship?" said Charles.
"Don't have a ship," replied Mishka, honestly.
"Then how did you get here?" said Charles.
"I walked," said Mishka.
Charles took a deep breath and massaged the bridge of his nose. There was a beep, and he – Mishka couldn't be totally sure with aliens, but he'd neglected to properly introduce himself – turned and slapped one of the runed buttons. "What is it, Anastasia?" he said.
"No dice on the Greenhouse, can't fix the break," came a feminine voice.
"Looks like we'll have to set the beacon up."
"You're sure we can't bypass it?" said Charles.
"Nope, the damn thing is totally fried, and the schematics might as well be gibberish for the sense I can make of them," came the voice again.
"Who'd have guessed it was a bad idea to send out a multi-year, no-resupply mission without a druid?"
"Having some trouble?" asked Mishka helpfully.
"Stay out of this," said Charles, rubbing his bald pate. "Alright… we'll call a full meeting – make the decision together."
"We can't leave!" protested Astrid. "We only got here three months ago!"
"Greenhouse central system is totally busted," explained Viktor cheerfully. "And no one knows the magic involved to fix it."
"Why don't you have a druid on the team?" asked Mishka.
Viktor frowned, and then shrugged. "No idea," he said. "I'm just the pilot. Well, I was, not much piloting to be done now. Now I just carry heavy things about, stand around and look pretty, that kind of thing."
"I could have a look if you liked," said Mishka.
"You know how to fix druidic arteficing?" said Astrid, looking her up and down.
"I know how to fix everything," said Mishka, taking off her cloak and putting it over an arm. "Well – almost everything. Where's the Greenhouse?"
"You aren't going anywhere," said Charles, pointing at her. "Not until I know who you are, and what you're doing here."
"I told you Mishka, and I'm just passing through," said Mishka.
"You're 'passing through' the only inhabited base in thirty light years?" he said.
"That really isn't as impressive as you think it is," said Mishka. "And, look, from the sounds of it, it seems like you don't have much to lose letting me look at the system. Base like this? Eight people-"
"Seven," corrected Charles.
"Right, seven people, without fresh food? Even with emergency rations? You'll last, what, a few months?"
Charles glared, but she could see he knew she was right.
"She does have a point," said Astrid. "If we don't get the Greenhouse up and running, we'll be eating ration packs until pickup comes. Might as well not have come all this way."
Charles glared more. Mishka smiled brightly.
"Fine," he said, relenting. "Viktor, you take watch."
"You're the boss, Boss," said Viktor cheerily, throwing himself into the spinning chair. "Good luck, Ms. Space Magician."
Mishka was led across the room to another of the spoke of the base, down a plastered corridor, past what was clearly an infirmary where a small green person wearing a white coat was engrossed in reading a comic-book called 'Yuri in SPACE! Volume 341,' and through into a large greenhouse, the clear roof of which showed the slowly turning asteroid belt and stars above.
The Greenhouse was lined with edible crops, all of which seemed to be looking a bit worse for wear. There were some automatic sprinkers on the roof, running between the supporting beams and dripping here and there, along with bags of soil and pots and tools leaning against the far wall.
At the centre was a large crystalline device, at which a feminine alf and a masculine alien with blueish, slightly damp skin were looking at the opened interior of the pedestal, in which Mishka could see runed plates, crystalline capacitors, and metallic wiring.
The feminine alf had short cropped brown hair and a severe face with deep brown eyes, whereas the blue-ish alien had shaggy, wirey, sea-weed coloured locks and a set of gills on the side of their neck. Both of them were dressed similarly to the Captain, with slacks and shirts, although only the alf had one of the military-like jackets and a sidearm.
"Who- who the fuck is this?" said the feminine alf, putting a hand on her pistol.
"Calls herself Mishka," said Charles, holding up a hand placatingly. "'Walked' here, apparently."
"Hello, I use she/her," said Mishka politely.
"And we're just letting her roam around?" said the feminine alf. "Why haven't we locked her up in the spare quarters."
"Because I'm the only person who can fix your little problem," said Mishka, peering at the pylon.
"So she claims," said Charles. "Mishka, this is Anastasia, my XO, and Tiberius, our enchanter."
"Fat lot of good that does me with this mess," said Tiberius, the merfolk, gesturing to the console. "I don't know how druid-magic works. You're a druid?"
"My people moved past such trivial distinctions a long time ago," said Mishka, flicking her hair back and reaching into her skirt pocket, rummaging around for a moment, before pulling out her magnifying glass.
"Claims she's 'Ursulan,'" snorted Astrid, who had trailed in after them.
"And I'm the fucking reincarnation of the Goddess," said Anastasia. "Why are you trusting her, Cap?"
"I trust she can't make a broken thing more broken," said Charles. "And what do you want me to do?"
"Throw her in the spare quarters," said Anastasia. "Put it in lockdown."
"For what, four years?" said Charles.
"That, or kick her out the airlock," said Anastasia. "Bullet to the head would work too."
"Someone's been taking their fash-pills," muttered Tiberius, earning a glare from the very unreasonable alf.
"If she can't fix the Bay, I'll think about it – the confining to quarters, not the kicking out an airlock or shooting her. Saints Anna, that's nuts," said Charles.
"I want it on record that I am advising against this," said Anastasia. "Official protest."
"Fine, if you're so suspicious, you can keep an eye on her then," said Charles. "I'm going back to the hub." He paused for a moment. "Don't shoot her."
He left, dragging Astrid in tow.
"So, can you see what's wrong?" asked Tiberius, looking over Mishka's shoulder as she peered through the small lens of magnifying glass, over which Ursulan runes were rapidly scrolling, highting mana flows and active elements and damaged subsystems. It was difficult to tell with something so primitive, but it looked like someone had torn at it with something sharp. Although, knowing primitives, it could have just made like that.
"What's wrong is that this system might be the most inelegantly made example of a cultivation field projector I have ever seen," said Mishka. "Honestly, it's embarrassing."
"But can you fix it?" snapped Anastasia.
Mishka shook her head. "No – the central vivification matrix is literally melted," she said.
"Dammit-"
"I can make a new one though," said Mishka, cracking her knuckles. "You, Tiberius right? I need a few kilograms of a thaumically conductive metal, a crystalline medium, and an engraver."
He wandered off, leaving her with Anastasia, who was glaring daggers.
"I don't know who you are, or how you got here," said the alf. "But I am watching you, you got it?"
A.N. I am writing this series in 'episodes' of ~15-20k words each, which will be self-contained narratives that string together to form a larger plot (at least, that's the theory). This episode's remaining two parts are written, and I will be posting them next Saturday and the one after that, earlier on my
Patreon.
