Falling Sun

By Arley Sorg

FLAMES STREAKED ACROSS the viewpane of the Rage as the ship dove through atmosphere. The hull rattled, vibrating under Jerilla’s boots. Her legs trembled. Captain Ward twisted in his chair to watch her. Light flickered over his rigid face.

Excitement and nervousness made sense to Jerilla. Her life culminated here, in the creation of history; in donning the suit. The first civilian to wear the suit.

Her suit.

The veil of fire dissipated. Ondiir resolved into a patchwork of red deserts and thick strips of yellow forests, framed by pale green ocean. Jerilla tried to ignore the captain, to savor the blooming colors, and to etch into memory the sparkling black mountains.

An engineer said, “Sundrive online.”

She caught her response in her throat. That they were too high. That it wasn’t time yet; that she needed to think. The military despised weakness.

The military broke her father. They made him do whatever he’d done, made him keep all his secrets, and they’d left him to wither in the suburbs.

The captain smiled. “You’re up.”

Jerilla glanced at the engineer, about to say thanks. He’d already returned to his readouts, becoming like the others on the bridge: an unwrinkled uniform. Accustomed to killing, trained to be polite.

Over a hundred soldiers had crammed aboard the ship, if Ward hadn’t exaggerated. On her first trips she tried to learn names and to meet people. Now she avoided them.

They made her wear a pale blue “civvy suit.” Her uniform, a word meaning “all the same.” Her uniform was solitude.

“Jumping’s only the beginning,” she reminded him. All Ward’s arguments were about to be rendered mute, so nothing he said mattered. She’d spent a decade proving herself to people who sneered. He was just another careless officer losing gun-waving rights to a civilian. To her. “The real work—”

“Good luck.”

Jerilla nodded, then left the bridge with her head down.

She hustled through shiny, plated halls. She focused on the years of study, interviews, politics; all the bureaucratic screens she’d had to break. She considered those words, like tradition, used against her. Their words didn’t matter now.

A few soldiers smirked or clapped her shoulder as she passed. She managed courtesies, nods, squeezing her fist with her palm.

She opened the portal to the Perch.

Soft luminescence burnished the small chamber, glowing from the circle of thumb-sized lights on the silvery suit. Simple, unassuming, the suit hung in its plexicase on the wall. She entered the chamber and closed the door behind her. She pressed her back to the door.

Ward’s voice cracked through the com. “Ready, doc?”

She nodded, then remembered he couldn’t see her. “Yes.” She peeled off her civvy suit and stashed it in a locker. She opened the case and pushed her arms into the warm, thin fabric. Her skin tingled. The mesh coated her belly and thighs like liquid. The circle of stark white lights settled on her chest. Her heart raced.

Her hands shook too hard. God, what’s wrong with me?

It couldn’t be the freefall. She’d done falls before. Maybe not from this high, but—

She couldn’t catch her breath.

If she told Ward as much, she’d be pulled from the program. Planetside, things would get bloody.

The convex wall in front of her hissed open, revealing sky. Wind flooded the chamber. Where’s my damn countdown? Jerilla hung onto the panic straps, as if she’d never practiced.

The ground tilted far below, a mash of yellow leaves blurring into seamless, dusty land, to distant, frothing waters. A far longer drop than back on Earth.

She leaned through the portal, just like her first falls. Her arms strained to hold her against the wind’s yanking. She set a foot on the metal grate outside the ship, the actual Perch. She pretended Micha’s hands set squarely against her shoulders.

And she let go.

***

Bright orange and yellow flames covered Jerilla’s limbs. Darker red flames coursed from her torso, cut by deep blue and black sparks.

The godsuit energized her. Through fabric she gasped purified air.

Forty or more emaciated Detraili cowered before her. She should study their cracked ochre skin, memorize physical details of their hairless bodies, note nuances of movement. The way the children hid or clung, the way their language sounded carried by air instead of video. Some set their shoulders back in an almost bird-like posture.

Her explosion still rung in her ears. It had shattered the rush of the wind, louder than she’d expected. She’d lit up too early, too close to the ship, not close enough to the ground, but she’d made up for it with a flawless landing, right on the outskirts of their encampment.

Fire flowing over her body tickled.

Trees behind Detraili tents wavered in a breeze that made her flames snap. More faces peered from the woods. Her brightness filled the clearing despite the daylight.

The Detraili had placed boulders around the edge of the circular glen. She didn’t remember that from the vids. She mounted one, dimming the flames on her back to avoid a wildfire.

A few clutched primitive weapons, but none of them stood or raised a hand. Long-limbed and long-fingered, adults covered the faces of the young.

Her breaths slowed.

She should be sitting with them over food, offering gifts, recording cultural tales. When her father taught her to fish, he used to tell her stories. Knee-deep in a river or sitting on his boat in a bay, he had to have a pole in hand to talk to her.

She didn’t know any of their stories.

Jerilla pointed a burning finger toward the eastern horizon. “March,” she said in their language. Her amplified voice boomed. The nearer Detraili fell back. Trees shivered, shedding leaves like shiny, corrugated insect bodies.

Their humanity alone raised questions. She had no idea what lived in the woods, or the desert. The military gave her little. She should do anything other than follow the script.

She resisted the urge to clear her throat. She’d practiced so many times. Anything less than flawless and Ward would take over. She’d already messed up her explosion. “Across sparse plains,” she continued, using the script, her mouth going numb. Like humans, Detraili widened their eyes in fear.

The next line slipped from her.

This or the guns, Micha would say. Micha reduced everything to simple arguments. Jerilla knew a lifetime of Micha’s stories.

In the sky, the military vessel would be invisible during the day, staying close in position to the sun. Jerilla remembered the rattle of the hull, like the march of a hundred soldiers shaking the ground.

“Across the red desert to the sea. There, you will find plenty.”

When Detraili struck their tents and packed their homes they used their feet nearly as much as their hands. She hadn’t expected that.

Despite what she knew, despite the success of the program so far, she hadn’t expected them to simply obey.

She stood idle on the boulder, tempted to bounce on her toes, but keeping herself still. She tried to analyze, to rationalize, to strip away emotion and engage in study. Nimble children worked alongside parents, more mobile than human equivalents, the fine lines marking their faces like delicate etchings. None of the material the military let her see had shown children.

She resisted the urge to fold her arms. She resisted the desire to pull one aside, to ask the questions whizzing through her mind: who are you, what is your day like, what do you eat, are these your children, how do you bond? Do you use names?

Why don’t you fight? Why don’t you fling something at me?

Her suit worked perfectly.

A few Detraili set what looked like fruit before her. The dark gouges in their faces reminded her of parched soil.

She cataloged the individuals mentally, then cataloged the gifts. Small organic objects. She counted them, gave each a description. Shiny green skin with star-shaped yellow bumps. Disc-shaped with yellow peel and tiny external black seeds. Detraili placed them onto a pile and slunk back to their work.

The script anticipated this, a common phenomena exhibited on the five worlds where the suit had been used.

Do you make stories to explain the ones that went missing?

She checked the urge to smash her fist into something, to throw herself at the ground. The flames would respond to certain gestures. She straightened her spine, stretched her arms forward, and sent a gush of fire over the gifts, destroying stores that might have helped them survive.

Their new stories might say that she burned them in scorn; or perhaps they would say she consumed it in delight.

I’m sorry.

Ward would examine the video of her performance later, looking for any excuse to take her off assignment. She stuck to the script. When they were finished, she took up a steady pace, leading the Detraili towards the desert.

Leaving burning footsteps for them to trail, Jerilla stared at the sky. She searched for Ward’s ship. She pictured a sudden ball of fire followed by a light rain of debris.

***

At night Jerilla made the jump to the Rage.

In the confines of the Perch, after the door clunked shut, she pulled the clinging fabric from her skin. Her hands quivered and she told herself it was just the jump, far more harrowing than the fall. Metal vents gushed chilly air.

Four soldiers carried the suit off for storing in the weapons room. A few senior officers escorted her to debriefing, all of them in black with sleek black guns and her back in blue. Stiff plexi chairs with high backs lined a glass table in a sparse, close office.

“Well,” she started, rubbing at the tremor in her fingers, “the population is much larger than we expected.”

Ward snapped off a motion holo of his son—a late teens boy dressed in a snug maroon uniform, the golden Anvil corporate mining logo glinting on his chest.

She continued and gestured, feeling the awkwardness of freed limbs, of having spent hours limiting her movements. “Larger than just fifty or sixty.”

“Sit,” Ward said.

The officers took their chairs.

She stood next to her chair. “Have we surveyed the shore? Or even beyond their glen?” She pressed her thighs against the edge of the table.

Before her program, tradition turned blood into money on over twenty worlds. Twenty that were known, that had been reported, each celebrated by unblinking politicians and corporate magnates.

“There are a lot of children,” she said.

Ward interlaced his fingers and rested his hands on the table. “That’s your report?”

The officers wore blank expressions. Uniform, blank expressions.

“We’re waiting,” Ward said.

Jerilla nodded. “Of course.” Children like your son.

She ticked out a perfunctory report. Micha would tell her to be fearless. Micha had made her fearless—back on Earth.

She excised the words that pushed at her. By the end, she leaned on her fingertips on the table, feeling the weight of her body, her flesh, her blood and bones. The weight of what it meant to be alive, to be human.

She should return to her quarters. Her report finished, she should sleep. Minds often changed after a solid night of rest. Knowing better, she spoke. “It doesn’t feel right.”

A smile melted through Ward’s sculpted cheeks. “You’re too weak for this work.”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know this is typical when civs get involved. The field is not a theory. Maybe there’s no place for you out here.”

“There are other options.”

“I would cut them down. That’s an option.”

She frowned, not sure what he meant; knowing exactly what he meant, but not wanting to believe it. His bluntness stunned her. Politicians, even CEOs spoke in slippery metaphors. Military officials usually hid behind statistics and rhetoric about safety.

“I mean,” Ward said, “all your hard work, your lobbying, your petitions—they should worship you.” He spread his hand flat over its lifeless reflection.

She’d already said too much, though it was far less than she should. Even before her program, protocol demanded they try to force inhabitants to move first. A partially formed argument lodged in her head. She needed time.

“They only live by virtue of your work,” Ward said. “Seriously, are you this weak?”

She wanted to smash his hand through the glass. “We could leave! That’s an option!” Shatter the bones, break his fingers. She straightened her spine and flattened her palms against the bunched muscles of her stomach. “Let them live as they would.”

Ward’s smile faded. “You think fuel is free? Or weapons? The mining barge will show up in weeks; three months at the longest. Oh wait, you think this is about helping people. This is war, civvy.”

“This isn’t war!”

“Not anymore, thanks to you. This was your idea, your design, your plan.” His smile returned, creasing his forehead. “This is only your first shift!”

“Everything changed, program to—” Jerilla’s throat tightened. She hadn’t pictured any of this. Every barrier she’d broken had left her ideas mangled. “I never—” She had a fuzzy vision of sitting on her bed in her university dorm, excited, talking all night. Falling in love.

“You were briefed before we left.” Ward stood. “You signed the docs. You knew the mission. This is what you fought for. Move those aliens or we’ll chop them down.”

“We are the aliens!”

“Stop complaining and do your job!” Ward slammed his fist against the table. It thummed but didn’t break. Not glass after all.

She nodded, her neck sore, and sidled to the doorway.

“Jerilla.”

She stalled, shoulders hunched.

“Your program worked on four worlds. As military ops everything went fine. You have cycles to go and it’s going to get ugly down there. If you can’t do this, it’ll come crashing down.”

“I know.”

“All you have to do is fail.”

“I get that.”

“Then we clean up. Know how much each alien is worth?”

He watched her the way he had before she’d made the fall. Like a predator waiting for her to falter.

Oh, how she wished for a gout of flame.

“I won’t fail.”

***

Burning like a brush fire, Jerilla led the Detraili through a ravine of bare, pale blue rock.

She had deviated from her orders, leaving behind the path Ward designed. The incline would make the hike challenging, but the shade should help them survive.

For days she had marched. Her heart skittered every time she led them astray. She tried to suffocate the feeling, to focus on the ground, on the rhythm of her steps, at least until the feeling faded.

Something similar to dodder grew from cracks, gray-green and stringy, the ends of the strands curling, grasping. When her fire came too close, the strands crumbled.

So far, Ward hadn’t mentioned her changes to the route. She refused to let his silence invoke terror. She had cut through worse tyrants just to get aboard a ship. With Ward, and the people in her way before him, discussions became battles; defiance laced every word, every step.

She slowed and turned to check on Jarmouk. As a student, she never pictured the abrupt conversations she used on him to keep his people moving.

Jarmouk stayed twenty paces behind her, at the head of the march. Sweat glistened in his finger-wide skin cracks and he left damp footprints. Secretly she called him He who Follows. In their language, it sounded, appropriately, like Bishop. He alone spoke directly to her.

Seeing her turn, the elder marched harder, shielding his eyes and squinting to gaze upon her.

A few Detraili farther back broke from the line to pick up and carry their fallen.

How long had they had stragglers? How had she never noticed? Had some already died?

She turned from them and held her head high, looking again for the ship, holding her breath, keeping her arms at her side, keeping them from wrapping around herself, imagining a rod in her spine so she wouldn’t fall over.

Never give them the satisfaction of breaking down. Micha had little tolerance for giving up.

Analysis made things easier, muted her emotions. She mentally logged Detraili behavior and posture. She’d predicted they’d leave their fallen to nature, that they’d be viewed as weak. Her presence had changed them; or maybe she just didn’t have enough research.

Errors riddled the program. Her program.

As long as Ward and his kind withheld chunks of information, she had little more than guesses.

Jarmouk called to her. Why did he have to call to her? She could barely speak to him. The script didn’t anticipate all their needs. She shuffled through approved phrases. She might have to improvise. Maybe Ward wouldn’t care as long as she didn’t fail.

Jarmouk called to her again, something like how long, or how many. Translations grew harder the more they spoke.

The Detraili had no idea how long they would be marching. The script wouldn’t tell them. They already depleted their stores; too many would starve. And yet, for fifteen days they had marched, stoic.

Just keep marching!

She pressed her hands flat against her thighs to keep herself from doing anything else. She slowed her pace enough to look back at him. The right gesture might—

“Rest!” he called, wide eyes cat-like.

Resting is death. Failure is death.

“March,” she said. Her voice made dust trickle down the sides of the ravine. Her skin itched; nausea filled her with dizziness. The suit should keep her refreshed.

“To where?” In apology he laid his long fingers over an eye. “When do we return home?”

Their language had no exact words for sea or ocean. Their people had probably never ventured that far. The script used a composite word, something like lake-forever-large, probably made up.

She dropped her face, then caught herself and straightened. The downward look meant something different to them, though she hadn’t figured out what.

“Ocean,” she whispered, so that only Jarmouk would hear. “Ocean,” she said again, opening her palm as if she argued with Micha.

He repeated her word. He held his throat, which she decided meant he was thinking.

Maybe if I blow something up they’ll keep moving.

Detraili time cycles ran twenty-two-hour days and ten-hour nights. They slept six hours on average. In fifteen days among them, all she could come up with was deviating from the march Ward designed.

If they made it to the shore, the sea should provide them with food. If they adapted to a coastal lifestyle. If they made it that far.

They should gather the dodder, resupply themselves. Her foot landed and one scrap of dodder tried to pull and crawl away, tearing roots from between sharp, crystalline rocks. If she asked if the dodder was poisonous, they might doubt her godhood. They might not follow her. The fear and awe her flames inspired grew tenuous.

Nausea swelled in her gut. She cataloged the different rocks, then the types of clouds.

“When do we go home?” Jarmouk called.

He had slipped a few paces back. He rasped a word she didn’t know, possibly some kind of plea. He clasped his hands behind his back.

She just had to get them clear in time. They had to survive on their own.

She turned down the amplifier, rendering her voice closer to normal. The acoustics would still toy with him, inciting a shiver or a layer of fear and euphoria. She considered turning the effect off. “Jarmouk March,” she said, using their imperative tone.

“Falling!”

She flinched. Her fingers closed into fists. She spread them back open. She couldn’t grasp anything or cover her eyes; she couldn’t look away, she couldn’t rush over; she couldn’t let him lean on her. She couldn’t do anything human.

She turned the effect off. “March. Please.” Her lines evaporated. Deities don’t plead, they don’t beg.

Jarmouk scrambled forward, face turned from her heat. “Dead!”

One way or another, Ward would get rid of these people. If they fell too far behind schedule that day would come sooner.

Not dead. Dying.

“You will be safe!” she lied.

He opened his mouth to say more.

She held her elbows and tipped her head. She’d seen them use this body language. It marked the end of a discussion.

Jarmouk stumbled. He slowed his pace to rejoin the group. His mate carried a child on her chest, it’s feet scratched and dappled with blood.

Jerilla grabbed the suit’s sealing clasp at her throat. She wanted to turn off her flames and strip off her suit. The suit could keep Jarmouk cool, invigorated—he could tromp all the way to the ocean and never lose his breath.

On Earth, she’d created a new way to interact with indigenous peoples. She’d been eager to see other worlds, to study them for herself. But the only way to protect them was to leave them alone.

She clutched her hands at her chest, squeezing against the ache. Flames coursed, coating her face. Light and heat distorted the image of three hundred desperate Detraili. She turned to pick up her pace again. If they sensed weakness, it could end everything.

There had to be another place to lead them. Something other than a march that might end in ruin. Something more that she could do.

A low noise began behind her. She choked, watching the Detraili mimic her gesture, hands clutched over their chests and chins down. They sent up a moan, a cacophony of slow wails that filled the ravine.

***

The lights rose. Jerilla woke confused. Her room resolved around her. Her nerves buzzed.

The suit supplemented her body’s needs, but marching twenty-hour stretches every few days without food or rest left her emptied. She missed the comfort of eating. Falling, driving the Detraili for weeks, seeing them despair, jumping and leaving them, it all wore on her. Her sleep times had skewed.

She rubbed her feet and stretched her muscles. She just had to keep it together a while longer. She checked the time, trying to remember what that time meant on Earth—if the sun would be up, what it would look like.

Ward should be getting off shift.

She cleansed and stood at the foot of her bed. Despite mild vertigo she lit up a motion-holo of Micha and recited the argument she’d worked up over the past few days. Twelve points on the benefits of leaving an indigenous population in place.

As she dressed she practiced key lines, modulating tone, inflection, changing her gestures and stances. She’d made a career out of this. She’d faced panels, boards, politicians. She could defeat a single captain.

Jerilla paced through the halls of the ship. This had become her routine the “morning” after spending twenty hours planetside. After sleeping and waking with everything tilted—time, her bed, her insides—the walk helped her orient; find balance.

She skirted a group of chatting soldiers. She leaned against the wall to get out of their way. Minutes later, at the sound of conversation, she hid in a closet, turned the lights off, and let the door slide almost all the way closed. Soft dizziness vanished, replaced by the urge to run.

Even before university, she smothered loneliness with research and work. At home she found comfort in routines. When pushing for some change she had goals and the sense of doing something worthwhile.

The two soldiers in conversation approached. She sealed the closet and receded deeper into darkness. A man and a woman, their language garbling as if it weren’t her own.

She had been going planetside more than she should.

Once their noise vanished she headed toward the weapons room, where they stored the suit. She bolstered herself with purpose: saving the Detraili. She had faced worse than soldiers in conversation.

Crew members melted into Detraili in her periphery. They blurred back to human when she looked directly. By the third hallway she kept her head down.

She would confront Ward, and when she did, he should be alone. No, it should happen in a room full of officers. They won’t argue, but he’ll act differently, be more human. No—he ran this place like a king. He’d want to gloat over a victory.

In the weapons room, they kept the suit in a shimmering case, a short, steel casket, surrounded by an array of guns wallpapering the chamber in barrels of metals and plastics. She popped open the lid. With the sundrive offline the lights of the suit were indistinguishable. The fabric slid over her fingers, cool and slick.

Like each time she’d done this, perhaps three, perhaps more, in this moment, where she crossed the line, she held onto her collar, letting her rampant heart drench her in dread. She deleted the various futures she’d imagined. Futures with Micha.

She thought of the Detraili that fell, and the wails of their survivors, and the way it made her shake.

Once the godsuit was on, she hurried to the Perch. She pulled on the mask and waved her hand over the door’s sensor, opening the portal to the small chamber.

Inside, Ward blocked the doorway, his face smirched by a smile. “Where are you going?”

“To do my job.”

“Your job? You mean, a drop once every three. Has it been three?” He crossed his arms and settled against the wall. “You’ve gone down three days in a row. Today would make four.”

Keep it together.

“You’re count is off. You haven’t even been on shift.”

“Every portal opening is logged. Your badge tracks your movements. Anyone with more than animal intelligence knows this.”

“I’m not a criminal!” She put her hand to her chest and felt the small, hard circles of the lights; she traced the filaments of machinery connecting them, the architecture of the sundrive. “I have the right to adjust the parameters.” What were her arguments? She couldn’t remember her points.

“You’re attached.”

“I’m invested. There’s a difference.”

“I can’t let you go.”

She focused and whispered the words. Sundrive online. Her seven small lights popped on. The glow coated Ward’s face, turning him to molded plastic. Seven lights meant the drive bristled at full power.

The flames could burst with a thought and a gesture. They could consume Ward. Not a single light would be lost.

Jerilla stared at the patch of panel between her feet and Ward. He would cut her down if he had an excuse. “You can’t stop me,” she said.

“I can do whatever I want.” He straightened out of his lean. “This is my warship, Jerilla. We’re far from Earth, far from any other vessel. Everyone here, including you, follows my orders.”

“I’m not military.”

“This is a military op!”

“Ward.” Jerilla swallowed against the swell of nausea. She stepped close enough to hear his breaths through her mask. “Get out of my way.”

A thought. Just a focused thought.

Ward exhaled through his nose, his eyes fixed on her chin. He moved just enough for her to squeeze by.

She entered the chamber. “I can’t open it with you in here.”

“Attachment screws up missions.” He slid into the hall and hesitated. “When you screw up, I get to fix it.” He closed the door between them.

Muted replies fumed in her mouth.

He’s in this for the blood. Her arguments didn’t matter.

***

The fall still gave her a rush. Her flames flapped like flags in a storm.

Ward kept the ship poised in front of the sun, invisible from land. In this way, without knowing it, he followed her orders. The positioning had been one of her original ideas, from the time of daydreaming during classes in high school, before she threw herself against the world, before her father’s suicide.

The rush used to drown her thoughts in sound and terror; the frenzy of her heart used to beat her mind into silence. Now she turned to fall backwards, to watch the ship shrink and disappear.

To get the program started, she had rephrased some of her arguments a hundred times. Indigenous peoples often gravitated towards a solar mythos. Gods would come as a fireball dropped from the sun, which made everything else easy. Through university she’d daydreamed herself a star in a slow descent, shimmering, brilliant, landing among some kind of adoring aliens.

Scorching the sand, Jerilla landed before the Detraili two hours after sunrise. For tense moments they cowered and covered the faces of their young.

She remembered the news of her father’s death, a string of information sent to her wrist-screen. Despite her wailing and thrashing and cowering under the sheets of her dorm bed, she couldn’t do anything.

Detraili awaited her. After following her for over four weeks they had a new ritual. Pyres smoldered near their campsites.

“Where I go, you follow,” she said in greeting. “Prepare to march.”

Perhaps they believed the pyres summoned her, or perhaps that she received their spirits. They probably imagined she led them into the sky to a paradise.

In the sky, Ward awaited her failure.

After a hasty meal, the Detraili gathered to march. Jarmouk’s daughter clung to his back.

Jerilla’s father had carried her on his back, too. She remembered bouncing as he ran along a beach to the rental boat, the sound of his laughter tickling her.

Jerilla didn’t see Jarmouk’s mate.

She turned off both amplifier and effect. “Where ...” She stopped her question. Gods cannot show mercy. Kindness leads to delays.

His mate hadn’t lasted four weeks. It had to be four weeks—before her life planetside, she could calculate the times in a snap, without blinking, she could calculate a half-day, two days, a month—a year would take a moment, but she could get there faster than most.

Micha never cared about those things. Tell me something that matters.

She glanced back at the sun, its glare masking the ship. How long didn’t matter. Only the distance remaining mattered.

What was his mate’s name? Why don’t I know her name?

Jarmouk fell to his knees in her periphery, cringing from the flames, sweat filling his runnels and eyes pressed to slits. His daughter hung like a little sack. “I ksatru?”

She turned her flames down to a flicker. Ksatru, ksatru. Something derogative. "No.” She stared at the sun until her eyes stung. With the suit’s smart filters it took longer than on Earth. Asking after his wife would show weakness. He might ask questions of his own.

Ward’s plan had them marching the rest of the way across the sands, but it was easy enough to take them back into stretches of forest, where they’d find food and shelter and water. The time added was slight. More Detraili would survive.

She could even use the suit to help them hunt.

“March,” Jerilla commanded.

Jarmouk lowered his forehead to the ground.

“Stop,” she said. “Don’t.” Others had done this by pyres. “Rise!”

His body shook. He cupped his child’s head with one hand, and smashed the ground with the other. He howled a broken, gargling growl.

She doused the flames on her right hand and forearm. She paced over to him. The Detraili near him moved back, their eyes wide. She caught his smashing hand, its skin torn and bleeding.

“Rise. Not ksatru.”

He gaped at her. She pulled him to his feet, then stroked his child’s head. She didn’t have the words to say what she longed to say. “Survive,” she commanded instead.

He covered an eye.

She led, and let her flames rise again. Ward was already killing them. Her fires pulsed with the tides of her anger. She turned the march towards a wall of trees in the distance. She screamed at the invisible ship in the sky, and released a spray of fire into the air.

***

Four days through the woods and Jarmouk no longer walked at the head of the line.

They neared their resting time and the woods grew dark. Dwindling daylight filtering through the trees took on a creamy orange haze.

Jarmouk started every march at the lead, but by this time he straggled near the back; and no one else dared speak to her.

She might need someone else to speak to her. A woman scuffed along closest behind, younger by the cracks in her skin. Jerilla opened a hand and reduced her flames, signaling the woman to approach.

Since losing Jarmouk’s wife, Jerilla learned more names, but without asking, making every brief conversation a challenge, a puzzle. Asking names would mean she wasn’t omniscient. She stopped more often, telling herself she needed to stop to urge them on, waiting for Jarmouk to come to her, speaking to him longer than she used to.

The woman came closer. Jarmouk passed his child to someone then hobbled forward.

Jerilla named the places they discovered, but didn’t share the names. She called these woods Bashyk after Jarmouk’s wife. She imagined telling them, waving her arms in a slow circle and making a declaration. She imagined them telling the story through generations, Bashyk remembered for years.

Any notion of place or belonging might help Detraili retrace their steps, or lead to attachment, or nostalgia of some kind. Safety required staying far from their former home for years to come. Even she didn’t know how long the mining would go on, what they would do to the planet, how they would leave it, if they ever left.

“I name you Bishop,” she told Jarmouk. “My voice among our people. I name you Apprentice,” she told the woman, “to help Bishop.” Help Bishop? That’s not it, not really. "To follow Bishop and be my voice among our people.”

Half her life spent to push her program through, to create the suit, to get herself here, crossing dusty, pale red sands and spots of woodlands toward a strip of green in the distance.

She couldn’t tell them blatant lies anymore. She couldn’t tell them the truth.

Not a single mission failure. How had people managed this on other worlds? Unless that had been a lie, too. But if they hadn’t run well, she would have never been able to get herself out here. Unless the point was to let her fail, to shut her up forever.

“Rest,” she commanded. “We hunt soon.”

Days before leaving she had given a lecture to graduating students. Something about how she had changed the direction of history, that they could do the same. No work is greater than that which saves lives. That was the line she’d left them with.

Bodies littered the way they’d came, people they no longer recovered.

Long shadows stretched from scrawny, tall trees that looked flammable. An accident here could wipe the Detraili out. She took hesitant steps through the woods, more a shuffle than a march. Most Detraili set up camp; some took up tools to use for the hunt and waited for her.

She would have to jump soon. She always expected the grav unit to fail. Jumping drained the Sundrive.

Maybe she deserved for the drive to fail. Maybe she should crash from halfway to the ship. The Detraili would find her in a bloody heap. They would know she was a fake, and that they were alone.

Someone behind her screamed.

A large clump of dark shifted from the shadows. Then the massive beast crashed among them. Dark scales shimmered on a dozen legs, each limb over five meters long. A wiry body lashed through the woods. Its narrow mouth with rows of glinting teeth snatched a woman and broke her in a crunch.

Detraili scattered from camp in shouts and cries. Jarmouk dropped to his knees, pleading to Jerilla, hands flattened on the ground.

“Hey!” Jerilla shouted at the creature, forgetting Detraili language. “Here!” she called in Detraili.

It’s tail swiped and threw Detraili into trees. Its feet stomped and left dead Detraili in spatters of blood.

She ran at the creature, muttering a command to make focusing easier. Right hand, thirty meter blast. She held out her palm and fire gushed across the monster’s back.

The thing brayed. Trees cracked where its tail thrashed. Jerilla’s pulse throbbed in her ears. “Run!” she shouted, and pointed the way their march should take them.

Her people fled around her; she stood to face the beast.

A male tripped and fell, carrying Jarmouk’s child.

“Run,” she whispered. She doused the flames on her left arm and hoisted the man to his feet.

The beast gnashed towards her, crushing Detraili as it came.

She pointed her palms, hear breath catching, a dozen or more living Detraili in the blast zone.

***

Jerilla startled awake in her lightless room.

Screams lingered in her mind. The stink of seared flesh stung her nose, the taste filled her mouth, sensations the mask should have filtered out. She sat on the edge of her bed, spinning head filled with sparks; and the molten image of Detraili caught in blazing woods.

“Computer: time.”

She couldn’t stop gasping. She couldn’t breathe.

“Computer?”

Through the dark she found the console by her bed. She tapped it until the screen woke. The computer icon glowed red. Her computer was off.

Her alarm had been turned off.

In her sleep clothes, Jerilla rushed to the weapons room. She pulled her godsuit on. By the time she was set, she knew there was no way she’d turned her computer off. Instead of rushing to the Perch she stormed to the bridge.

When she entered her limbs numbed. Through the viewpane, a few hundred meters below, she saw what she’d named Deshava rock, a claw-shaped pile of crimson stones on the edge of the woods, named after the first woman the beast had killed; and the muddy current of Calovi stream, named after the man who’d carried Jarmouk’s child. Just beyond the rock the Detraili would be waiting for her.

The ship had dropped from low orbit. They were in weapons range.

Well past sunrise. Her hands balled into fists. “What the hell!”

“You’re late,” Ward said.

He’s already dismissed me. The ship shivered as it landed. “Only once!”

“A scheduled drop.”

“A technicality?” Jerilla looked for sympathy from the crew. No one looked at her. “This is ridiculous! You said yourself that I’ve gone too often!”

“Exactly.” Ward shot out of his seat. His combat suit glittered silver and black. “Computer: announcement.” He strode at her and she sidestepped to avoid being knocked over. When he spoke the computer played his voice through the ship. “43rd, prepare to debark. Announcement end.”

“Wait!” Jerilla tailed him. Bloody histories clotted her mind in flashes. Her chest juddered. She tried to compartmentalize, to file each history accordingly. To point out the differences between those and the one she created.

The image sparked again, golden and bronze, all those Detraili screaming in the conflagration in the woods. “You can’t do this!” she said. “I’m not done!”

Ward turned on her. Jerilla couldn’t stop in time and he caught her. She tried to pull free; he gripped her arms. “Oh, you’re done. You’ve neglected parameters, overstepped authority, and disregarded orders. I’ve documented each point. You’ve done more than enough.” He let her go. “This op is mine.”

Jerilla chased him to the hangar. Soldiers in combat uniforms waited, guns in hands or on hips, small and large barrels, even something mounted on treads. As if he couldn’t blast the Detraili from the air. As if they needed armor. As if their suits weren’t weapon enough. A sergeant handed Ward a rifle.

“You can’t do this!” she said.

His eyes relaxed, his body loosened, as if he’d eaten something intoxicating. “Enjoy the show.”

The hangar bay cracked open. Daylight flooded the chamber. Soldiers crouched, ready to rush. Deshava rock rose on the left. Hesitant Detraili stepped into view from the woods. Curious eyes peered at the ship.

“No survivors,” Ward said.

Jerilla focused. Sundrive Online.

“Captain,” an ensign’s voice came over the com. “The sundrive is—”

Ward turned, raising his gun.

Jerilla concentrated. Full blast. 360 radius.

Flames obliterated her view. Howls and gunfire filled the space. She dropped to her knees and covered her head. The floor shook.

The suit was never designed as a weapon. It was meant to impress, to inspire awe.

When Jerilla could see, she raced from the bay. She ran toward her people. She stopped meters away from the ship. She raised her palms and sent a massive gout into the burning hangar.

“Run!” she commanded in Detraili.

Her people scattered.

She followed after Jarmouk, thirty or more meters ahead of the ship. An explosion rumbled behind her. She wheeled high over the creek. She turned on the grav unit in time to catch herself.

***

A week had passed since the Rage.

When the sun woke her in the mornings, she smelled sizzling flesh. Once the phantom scent of char subsided she rubbed her eyes clean. The heat of her body wafted over her face.

The ground left her sore despite the crunching leaves she’d piled to make a bed. She rose in her grotto near the cliff. The ocean beyond the trees smelled musky and briny and slightly rank. She unfurled the godsuit, which she’d used as a pillow, and shook it out in gentle snaps.

Through trees, daylight glinted on the ocean, just like a flare along a warship’s metal husk.

Something had haunted her father, too. After months on classified ops, after his discharge, he spent most of his time staring at the wall next to a prattling vidstream, his eyes shiny as the buttons on his uniform.

She and her father had slept on boats and on beaches and on cliffs with the sound of waves lulling her to sleep. Until he’d returned from his ops, changed. She used to love rising to the crash of the ocean, to the breeze coming through a smoldering campfire; to her sticky skin, from cold night becoming warm morning, toasting her in her sleeping bag; to his smile, as he crouched over their gear, quietly getting things ready.

She pulled on the godsuit and whispered sundrive online. Two lights had dimmed on her chest. The godsuit would last a while, absorbing solar energy to supplement its reserves, but it was never designed to run independently of a ship for long. Not sustaining flames, anyways.

It tingled across her skin and refreshed her. She missed the comfort of cleansing.

She missed Micha; but Micha would say family can be who you choose. Micha never cried, not really.

Down along the beach the Detraili tottered their way across rocks. Scattered copses would provide building materials. With luck, the ocean would provide food. But so far, for a week they had simply chewed at their reserves, slowly wasting away.

Jerilla had completed her mission. When the miners come, they’ll leave the Detraili alone.

Jerilla leapt from the cliff and exploded, simultaneously turning on the grav unit, calculating how much energy she had left to burn. She floated down to land on the beach. The liquid jade ocean evaporated around her feet.

Detraili sprawled before her. She signaled them to rise and turned off her amplifier. “Jarmouk, come.”

“Shining one.” Jarmouk set a hand over his eye. “We hunger.”

“I know.” She turned off her flames and pulled off her mask. “Come.”

Jarmouk stumbled after her. A babble rose among the remaining Detraili. Jerilla padded towards a broken tree on the shore and left the crowd behind. She could return to the flames if needed; but saving the weapon might be wiser. Besides, having family was better than being a god.

“Others may come,” she told him. “Like the—” Ship? Craft? “I will protect you. Until then, we must eat something new.”

We’ll survive, Jerilla thought. I’ll make sure of it. Her eyes stung.

She smiled at Jarmouk, though she knew it might mean something different to him. “I have something to teach you.” She snapped off a wiry branch and tested its strength against her leg. She passed him the stick and in her own language said, “Fishing." 

Arley Sorg has sold stories to “The Lovecraft eZine,” “Spark” anthology, “Plasma Frequency” and elsewhere. He has an essay out in “Lightspeed,” and works at “Locus” as his day job. He is a graduate of the 2014 Odyssey Writing Workshop.