Hi darlins!

 Yes, it's a Hadrian's Colony day. No, I don't have it. I need brain space to plot and my brain has been maxed out lately from many, many things vying for attention, and I don't want to do the story a disservice. So! I'm going to let you read the beginning of Falling to Dark instead, a very different sci-fi story I'm currently writing for my Patreon. I hope you enjoy it, and I should be back to regular programming next week.

Falling to Dark

Photo by Toby Elliott

Prologue

 From where he lay on top of the coolant shed on thewestern side of his compound, Ooris Zile raised his hand to the sky and tracedthe tail of a falling star. He started at its most distant point, little morethan an afterimage in the deep purple of the night, then followed the trail asit became brighter, an ember turned to a spark turned to a true flame, beforeit finally plunged into the ground in a plume of fire several hundred milesaway. He felt its impact like a gentle thud in the back of his mind, anotherpiece of space trash coming to rest on this heap.

“Welcome to hell,” he muttered, dropping his hand to hisleft temple and rubbing at the knot of tension there before turning his eyesback to the sky and looking for another newcomer.

Stars were always falling to Dark. Every night was a panoplyof burning splendor as the massive gravitational waves caused by Dark’s fivejealous, unpredictable moons pulled bits and pieces of each other into theplanet’s orbit. They lingered in a disparate ring around the planet before timeand impact sent them blazing to the planet’s surface. Almost all of them wereimmediately incinerated, not so much because of Dark’s atmosphere, which hadcomparably light gravity, but because over ninety percent of Dark’s surface wasstarkly unstable.

If Dark had been a planet covered in water, it would havebeen prey to massive tidal waves. As it was, Dark was barely more than its ownmolten core, and the gravity of its moons ensured that lava flowed constantly,sometimes spewing into the air where it burst unpredictably through the fragiletop layer, but more frequently racing along the planet’s surface in the form ofmassive molten rivers that constantly coiled, eddied, and butted up againstothers.

Dark was unpredictable. Dark was dangerous.

Dark, for all its burning light, was also, well…dark.Technologically speaking, at least. The levels of electromagnetic interferenceproduced by its inchoate geology was too much for most modern technologies toovercome. Outside of the occasional eclipses that offered up a lull in theinsanity on the surface, there were only two spots on Dark that were capable ofsupporting even the most rudimentary technology.

One of them was Stele, the sole city on the planet, locatedat the north pole and protected by an enormous chunk of iron oxide thatresisted both melting and the inconstant pulls of gravity. It was the home ofeveryone who’d ever lived through their fall to Dark, either as shipwreckedsurvivors who’d been caught in the chaotic gravity waves that emanatedthroughout the system, or those who’d been sent here deliberately. Stele wasruled by one of those marooned survivors, and although it was a dire place to carveout an existence, it had nothing on the certain death that awaited those wholingered on the lava flows.

The only other spot on Dark that could support life andtechnology was, currently, about fifty miles south of Stele. It was Ooris’shome, his island fortress on the sea of lava, his personal palace, his stagingground. After three years on Dark, he’d managed to insert a few creaturecomforts in amongst the necessities. One of them was a still, and he groped tohis right for the cup of alcohol he knew was waiting for him there…somewhere.Probably. He was on his third glass, or was it his fourth? Either way, he’drefilled it, he was sure, he just had to—ah. There it was.

Ooris grabbed it in clumsy fingers and raised the cup to hislips, then tilted his head and poured the vile brew back as quickly aspossible. This wasn’t a sipping whiskey, after all, or a delicate ice winemeant to be savored after a meal. His rotgut had one task and one task only—tofuck him up as fast as possible. And after four glasses…or was it five now…hewas well on his way. Ooris lowered the cup with a gasp at the burn and openedhis watering eyes just in time to see a new star enter the night sky.

Oh, lovely. This one burned large and bright white, whichmeant it had very few impurities and was going to land nearby,relatively speaking. Ooris toasted the falling detritus with his empty glass asit finally broke into the lower atmosphere and—

Vanished?

“What the hell?” That didn’t happen. These things werepredictable in the extreme—they burned until they hit the ground, at whichpoint most of them floated atop the lava until it finally burned them to acrisp or, on rare occasions, were caught in an eddy and completely subsumed.Either way, it ought to be visible, it hadn’t hit the ground yet. Unless…Oorissquinted, forcing his vision sharper, and was just barely able to make outsomething lilting through the distant air. Lilting…that motion meant acanopy, which meant this falling star had a parachute, which meant it wasn’tanother hunk of space junk at all. It was a ship.

Ships meant people. Better yet, ships meant tech. Freshtech to grow Ooris’s home with, to hasten his inevitable escape. Maybe he couldturn forty-seven more years of exile into forty-five, or forty-two if it was amodern vessel. But what kind of modern ship bothered with the Dark system? Onthe contrary, everyone avoided it because the gravity was so unpredictable itcould absolutely ruin a flight plan.

Probably another exile, then. That meant shitty tech, hardlyworth bothering about, although better than negotiating with Rovus for more,but…

Ooris felt it when this ship touched down on the lava. Notbecause it hit with a bang, but because the presence on board was enough tomake a gentle touchdown feel like someone had just hammered on a gong a foot infront of his face. Someone had arrived, someone important, someonewith a devastating amount of potential energy. It didn’t make sense; this was aperson with a Destiny, capital D. Only two other people on all of Dark feltanything remotely like this, and one was that bastard Rovus, so he didn’t count.

What was someone so important doing on Dark, of all places?Ooris needed to know.

And he needed to know before whoever it was either died ofthe heat or was picked up by the Rovers.

Ooris closed his eyes and focused his energy inward for amoment. It was hard to concentrate, with the blinding blue light on his leftthat made true darkness seem like an impossibility these days, but he managedit well enough to lift the haze of alcohol from his body. He was still tired,massively dehydrated, and unrelentingly grumpy, but it would have to do.

“Striga!” he shouted as he got to his feet and jumped downfrom the cooler. He headed for the antenna in the center of the compound, wherefaint silver threads rotated up and over the tip of it like they were weavinginvisible cloth. “Striga, wake up!”

Ooris heard the grumble of an annoyed bot deep in the depthsof the compound and grinned even as he switched his focus to the antenna. Asingle, questing silver thread broke off from the rest of them, and thecompound wobbled slightly on its hillock of dead lava before finding itsbalance once more.

“Easy on,” he said to the ground beneath his feet, keepinghis sights on the thread. He used the antenna’s power and reach to push thethread, following the feeling of this new arrival. Farther…farther…he’d pushedout five miles already, but there was a long ways to go yet. Ten…twenty…theheadache was back with a vengeance, but Ooris ignored it.

Thirty…Forty…fifty-three. There, on the lava, mercifullystuck to one of the small, temporary islands instead of falling prey to thevast orange river that traveled not fifty feet away. There was the ship, modernand sleek, full of bright and valuable technology that Ooris was alreadysalivating at the thought of incorporating into his compound. And there, insideof it, struggling his way out of his seat and crawling to the surface, was aboy…no, a man, but not by much given the smoothness of his skin and the wide,thoughtless fear in his eyes. No adult in this system let themselves look soperfectly innocent for long, not if they wanted to live free. And oh…

Oh, stars. He was beautiful. Rich brown skin marked withbright gold lines, in a black suit that clung to his body like mist. Beautiful,but also bleeding and afraid. Ooris would solve those issues quickly enough.All he had to do was—

It felt like being hit in the face with a pillow, if thatpillow was made of sound. It knocked Ooris out of the thread, whichdematerialized immediately, and left him swaying and blinking as he clung tothe antenna in an effort to stay upright.

Something warm and hard pushed beneath his free arm,supporting him. Ooris smiled even as he groaned. His dear pet, come to lift himup once more. Forget what his father said about programming; some bots had moresoul than that old bastard ever could. He opened his eyes and looked at her,then grinned fiercely at her bright yellow cluster of orbs.

“Get your dancing boots on, my darling. We’ve got a ship tohunt down.” If they were lucky they’d get there before the Rovers did, althoughgiven how Ooris had been knocked out of his own electromagnetic construct, hethought they might be on the back foot there.

But that was all right. You didn’t survive this long on Darkwithout learning to think quick. This prize would go to him, he wasdetermined. The ship, the man, all of it. He couldn’t let such riches fall intoRovus’s hands. What a terrible waste that would be.

Sinking his focus deeper than the antenna, Ooris reachedinto the heart of his compound and connected the power matrix to his array ofheat-sensitive panels. Soon he had more than enough power to activate thesecondary gyroscopes, and cumbersomely, ponderously, his home broke freeof the rock that was somewhat safely imprisoning it. The artificial gravitygenerators groaned as they hoisted the compound up, but Ooris paid them noheed. They would last. They would have to, because he was not doingall of this shit by hand.

He set their course, ignoring the new star that fell to theeast—a common flame, a pitiful spark of light there and gone, its reflectionlingering briefly in the single new, silver hair that bloomed from his templelike midnight’s flower.

Chapter One

It wasn’t until the scent of char bled through the impactfoam that had spewed from the safety valves inside the escape pod as soon as itbroke atmosphere that Adorn’s mind went from “you’re falling to your deathyou’re going to die you’re going to die you’re going to die” to “fine, you’renot dead yet. Now what are you going to do about it?”

Not sit immobile inside the pod until he was cooked alive,for starters. Gaps and gorges, where had he landed?

Please not Dark. Please, not Dark, I can handle anythingbut Dark.

He would have rolled his eyes at himself if they hadn’t hurtso much. Bold thoughts for a man who couldn’t even handle defending the spaceabove Elethar, but that…

Not now. Adorn couldn’t look back right now. Heneeded to look ahead, and that meant releasing his restraints and crawling outof the pod to get his bearings.

Releasing the restraints was simple enough. The impact foamwas malleable to organic matter, and he easily pushed it aside to unhook thecables that held him into his chair. It was harder to move his limbs than tomove the foam; the effect of long hours in the chair coupled with the intenseadrenaline of his planetfall had left Adorn terribly stiff. His body ached in away he’d never felt before, and he wondered for one fleeting, hopeful moment ifhis crash landing had been what his psyche needed to finally initiate hisshift.

Adorn touched the planes of his face with shaking fingers,and he couldn’t help the way his heart dropped when he felt completely smoothskin. It was better this way, of course—an uncontrolled shift inside a space assmall as a pod? What if he’d become something huge? What if he’d taken apsychic path? He could have messed everything up, could have imploded himself,could be floating dead and frozen in the dark of space right now instead ofbeing…wherever he was.

Fine. This was fine. He wanted to be awake for his firstshift anyway.

If you live to see it. Get out of here.

Adorn pressed painfully to his feet and felt around for thehatch. There was so much foam, stiff and slightly sticky and completelydisorienting…where was the damn hatch? Not here, not—ah. There. Behindand thirty degrees up from his seat. The electronics were shot, but everyescape pod came with a manual backup. Adorn stared blearily at the handles fora moment. Shift this one right…no, left, then twist this one right,both hands on the big lever and pull—

An unrelenting wall of heat blasted him as the hatch wasliterally torn from his hands. Adorn stared at the wavering scene of red andblack flowing sluggishly by until the pod shifted, and the molten sludge beganto seep over the edge of the door. He went from numb with incomprehension toswearing at the revelation that he had, in fact, landed on fucking Dark.And he’d landed in a lava flow.

That was his exit, the only way out. If he survived aninvasion, a betrayal, and a crash landing only to get burned alive, Adorn wouldliterally fight every one of his godly ancestors about it once he joined them.He stepped forward, but the lava was rising quickly. He needed to block itsomehow, or find some way to shield himself from it while he climbed out.

Luckily, this riddle wasn’t a challenge to answer. Adornripped at the foam around him, tearing it from the walls and molding it againsthis lower legs and feet until he was wearing a facsimile of boots, enormous andclunky though they were. The foam was incredibly heat resistant, and he watchedas the first little flow of lava ran into the pod, hit a clump of foam, andstopped there, sputtering and indignant, its red veins going silver as itsquest to devour was stymied.

Good. He grabbed another piece and held it over hismouth and nose to act as a filter, then stepped over the lave and, clinging tothe top edge of the door, pulled himself out and on top of the pod.

The heat was almost enough to prostrate him. His pod wasn’tdirectly in the lava flow—not entirely, at least. Instead it was impaled on atiny, rocky island of what looked like basalt—the fire river’s lastincarnation, perhaps. On every side, orange and red flowed by in a mockery ofwater. Adorn’s eyes burned from the heat and the acrid gasses, and he swiveledhis head wildly to look for an escape route. There had to be something he coulddo, someplace he could reach that would be safe—even if just for a secondbefore he had to leap again.

Or you could just do what everyone wanted you to do inthe first place and die quietly, alone and forgotten by your clan, your people,and your empire.

Adorn gritted his teeth, his heart filling with therighteous fury that had helped him survive seven assassination attempts so far.Eight, if this could be included. I’ll show them all. I’ll prove to Fatherthat I’m the best of them. He was going to live, damn it, and rub hissiblings’ faces in his survival if it was the last thing he did.

There! His surroundings wavered in everydirection, but over there the color, at least, was black. That might meanslower-moving lava, or it might even mean something solid to settle on. It washard to tell how far away it was with the heat and fumes playing havoc with hissenses, but as the pod shifted beneath him, Adorn knew he’d run out of time.Decision made, he crouched down, rested one hand lightly on the pod’s surfaceto help push off, then leapt as hard as he could for his best chance at solidground.

It wasn’t solid. It wasn’t liquid, which was whatsaved his life, but it wasn’t solid. His right foot hit and immediately sunkinto the stiff, crunchy surface layer of lava. Adorn almost lost his balance,arms wheeling for a frantic moment, but managed to stay upright and get hisleft foot ahead of the other. It stuck as well.

 Fucking move faster!

Biting down on the foam mask to hold it over his mouth, hegrabbed the tops of his makeshift boots and yanked them up along with his feet,stepping doggedly forward. Each stride cost him a layer of foam, and beforelong the heat in the soles of his feat was almost unbearable.

Just a little farther…just a little farther—

“Reach up, freshie!”

Adorn blinked his bleary, watering eyes upward toward theauditory hallucination he was having. Ah, it was a visual hallucination, too—aman in thick, leathery layers wearing a full face mask dangling from a metalbasket which hung down on a chain. But where did the chain go?

“Reach, you fool!”

Why not? His boots were done for anyway. Adorn reached up,half expecting to touch nothing but air, and instead found his wrist gripped sofirmly that he could feel the flesh bruise. “Up, up!” the man shouted, and asecond later they were being swung through the air, around and around untilthey finally set down on actual ground, firm and steady underAdorn’s painful feet. The moment his savior let go of his arm, his legs gaveout from under him. Racking coughs escaped through his spit-slick mask, and hethought he might choke on it before someone jerked it off his face.

Shit, that was worse! Adorn reached up and grabbedfor the hand that had taken it, catching it in his faltering grip as he staredup into eyes that gleamed like copper. The eyes were all he could see of thethief’s face, but those were enough to know that he was dealing with one of hisown kind: a Verenge.

Maybe it’ll be okay. Maybe he won’t recognize me. Fewpeople recognizes Adorn for who he was as a person, but as an institution,that was another matter altogether. He felt his heart sink as those copper eyeswidened, and a thumb stretched out and rubbed against the lightning-bolttraceries of gold on his face. Damn it, he knew. He knew.

Adorn dropped the man’s hand and jerked away, but he didn’thave the energy to go far. For all that he wasn’t on active lava anymore, theheat was still oppressive. He had no sweat left to give, and Adorn felt hisbody temperature rising as the tiny hairs in his nostrils began to crisp. Hetried to get to his feet, staggered back onto his knees, and then—

The clunky mask came down over his head with a thud,covering him completely down to the shoulders. It smelled just as foul inside,but there was air being pumped into it—soothing, cool air. Foul or not, it wasthe most delicious thing Adorn had ever tasted.

“Feisty little freshie!” someone yelled toward the Verenge.“Not many have the energy to try and run once we get ‘em out! Good for thepits, eh?”

“Or the pleasure houses,” another leather-wrapped rescuershouted with an audible leer. This one had four arms, two coming out of theshoulders and two more jutting from the lower abdomen. A Quilothid. Its skinny,short lower legs bent low as it made an obscene rutting gesture, and several ofthe others laughed.

“Whatever Rovus wants for him,” the Verenge called out, thenknelt down in front of Adorn and said, very quietly, “Your title won’t help youhere, Dulius. Don’t use it.”

“What’s the whispering about?” the Quilothid demanded,stumping over toward them. “Not staking a claim, are you, Wing?”

“Who’s got the money for a claim on a freshie, huh?” Wingreplied casually, straightening up. He extended a hand down to Adorn, who tookit after a moment. He wavered a bit once he was on his feet, but his head wasalready clearing thanks to the helmet. He turned around and watched as thedangling daredevil who’d rescued him attached a magnahook to the top of hispod, which was already a third of the way consumed by the lava. The hookextended up to the end of a miniature crane which looked like it had punched astability spike into the basalt, holding it steady. It lifted up, the chainstraining for a moment, and then finally the pod came free.

The crew swarmed the pod the second it touched down, onespraying it with something that put out the flames as the next came in with asledgehammer and began to beat away the lava still clinging to its surface. Twomore got to work with atomic torches, peeling the outer shielding on the podaway like it was paper and throwing it toward the crane, where another twopeople stacked it into a trailer.

“Rovus’s gonna love this shit,” the Quilothid said with asatisfied grunt. “A freshie and an intact pod, good bargain.” Helooked back at Adorn with squinty eyes. “Don’t have to take him back quite thispretty. We’ve got time to break him in a bit before we get back to Stele.”

“Take a healthy freshie and mess him up before Rovus getshis share first?” Wing scoffed and shook his head. “That’s asking for trouble,Frith.”

“It’s perks! Perks of being a Rover!” He scuttled a littlecloser to Adorn, one hand reaching out like he was ready to jerk him in closeand make a run for it. “You’re new to the crew, Wing, so I’ll give you a passfor now, but you gotta learn how these things work. Rovus gets the best, butRovers get the rest, y’understand? That includes first touch, long as we keepthe freshie mostly intact.”

Wing held himself uncertainly, glancing between Adorn andthe Quilothid. As covertly as he could, Adorn slid his left hand down theoutside of his thigh until his fingertips brushed the dagger he’d had therebefore he crashed. Feeling the hilt was reassuring, even if he wasn’t sure howlong he’d be able to hold onto it.

As long as it takes. Whatever it takes.

The Quilothid sidled closer, finally reaching out andgrasping Adorn’s upper arm greedily, reeling him in close. A second later hereeled back with a screech, clasping his dangling, bloody wrist where Adorn hadcut to the bone.

“Fucking freshie!” he shrieked. “Gripper, get the fuck downhere!”

Down?

A boot hit Adorn in the upper back, throwing him forwardonto his hands and knees. The man dangling from the crane smashed down on topof him, all his weight going directly onto Adorn’s lower back. It should haveknocked him flat, but he got a knee up and used it to roll himself to the sidefirst. He kicked upward with his aching foot, the blow landing right in the Vof the man’s groin. Luckily, he was close enough to humanoid standard that hisgenitals were vulnerable, and he folded over in his metal harness with a howlof pain.

Adorn felt like he’d just split the skin on the bottom ofhis foot in two. Every inch of him prickled with pain, and the distraction wastoo much—he didn’t catch the next blow to his ribs, or the one after that tohis head. He lashed out with his blade, but a second later someone stomped downhard on his wrist, pinning his arm in place as someone else kicked his knifeaway. He snarled, adrenaline surging once more, ready to rip the helmet off anduse his teeth if he had to.

“Wizard!”

Everyone froze. Even Adorn, riled as he was, stilled at thepure panic in the Rover’s voice. “Wizard on the way!” the man screamed fromwhere he sat at the controls of the crane, already reeling the extension in.“Get your asses moving, now!”

Wizard? Adorn looked around for any sign of whata wizard might be, but all he saw was the occasional burst of fire and thewavering haze from the heat, and…wait. In the distance, there was somethingscintillating through the air. It looked like a sheet of silvery rain, but thatwas impossible. Everyone knew it never rained on Dark.

Whatever it was, Adorn was captivated. The closer thesilvery lines got, the more they looked like tendrils, a handful of delicatethreads completely out of place against the fiery hellscape. One of the threadsranged farther than the others, stretching forward almost like it knew what itwanted, and what it wanted was…him.

For the first time since landing—really, for the first timesince he was ejected from his home—Adorn’s fear melted into the background.Whoever was on the other side of that thread, they didn’t mean him harm. Theywanted to help him.

Adorn stretched out his hand toward the silver thread, whichcame closer and closer. The Rovers were in a frenzy but he ignored them; itdidn’t matter. Nothing mattered except making contact. The thread crossed thelava easily, leaving wafts of steam in its wake. Closer, so close, almostthere…

A bag came down over his head as his arms weresimultaneously wrenched behind his back and magna-tied in place, and Adorn’schance at freedom vanished along with his sight.