Leaving Pākihi
Kelii kept to herself for most of the evening, while the rest of her team slowly made their way back from the wreck to the van-walled camp site.
She had spent almost two hours now, mulling over Ngaio’s reaction to the splinter of wood she’d discovered, and just how uncharacteristically serious he seemed. Carrying something that was so obviously precious, without knowing why, was nerve wracking... and yet her curiosity was palpable. It hung thick in the air like the morning mists that had wrapped around the warship wreck. She couldn’t get it out of her mind, and it remained that way until the sun over Pākihi Basin had almost reached its nadir and the sounds of revelry had changed to the distinctive tones of packing vehicles.
Kelii snapped herself back into the now, shifting her mental search for the splinter’s truth ever so slightly to the side. She rose and rubbed her hands up and down her thighs after realising just how cold she'd gotten. Her legs had caught the chill of the evening air, a consequence of Kelii neglecting the small fire pit she had sat around while she was lost in her thoughts.
Back at the camp, Kelii found Charr sitting on the edge of the middle row of one of the vans, with the sliding door wide open. She was draining the liquid of a dusty glass bottle of opaque purple into her mouth, while also pinching a rubbery black cigar between her lips. Everything the recovery team salvaged from the wreck was technically the property of The Harmony of course, but if it wasn’t brought back with them, no one was any the wiser.
“Ah I think you’ll find that bottle belongs to The Harmony” said Kelli with a sarcastic grin on her face. “With every sip you take, you’re hindering our efforts of restoring peace and prosperity to the Junction of Worlds”
Charr looked up towards the voice and retorted the moment she realised it had been Kelii’s. “Ha! I’d like to see some of those lackeys at the Exchange take a swig of this stuff.” She waved the bottle in the air, sloshing a bit of the clear liquid onto the dusty ground. “I haven’t had Iceatyl spirits this strong since before the collapse!” She took another generous gulp from the old bottle before setting it down beside her, on the van floor.
Charr rested one of her legs on top of an elastic sack filled with the various engine parts she had extracted from the warship, and leaned back slightly against the van's seats. Many of the parts in the sack were visibly rusted, or were otherwise too wrapped in dirt and severed rātā vines to clearly make out. Kelii sat down on the ground beside it and looked up to the reclining salvager as she puffed away at her cigar.
Kelii was curious. She had heard a few stories about Charr’s exploits from Ngaio and some of the others, but never actually asked her directly about it. It seemed a little rude that she hadn’t, now that she thought about it. It wasn’t like she’d ever been blocked from the opportunity to do so.
“You know, Charr, I don’t think I’ve ever asked you where you were during the collapse.” Kelii said.
It was probably one of the most asked questions in all the multiverse but Kelii played it off as if this specific thought had only just occurred to her.
Charr exhaled, but it wasnt so much a sigh as it was more of an amusing scoff. “Well I was on the Bazaar wasn’t I, in the Spring District. At an Evening.”
The line was rattled off with such disinterested ease that Kelii almost missed how ridiculous it sounded. The thought of Charr at an Evening was almost beyond her imaginative capacity. The Evenings in the Spring District were legendary, even to those who’d never visited the Bazaar.
Kelii didn’t know how to respond. “Whaaa… what were you doing there?”
Ngaio, who had been loading the back of the van opposite them, chimed in before Charr could answer. “Running security probably! Scaring the uninvited away at the door.”
Charr rolled all of her eyes and made an antagonising motion towards Ngaio with a clenched fist. Ngaio smiled but said nothing in response, instead going back to packing crates of gear into his van.
“My parents used to go to those, I’ve heard stories but I was always too young to go myself” Kelii continued. “I thought it was more for…”
“Fancy people? Wealthy people? The galactic elite?” Charr interrupted, making air quotes while saying “elite”.
Kelii flushed red hot and felt a pang of guilt. “. That’s not what I meant! I mean… I can’t imagine that would have really been your… ahh... scene?”
Charr seemed unperturbed by Kelii’s slip up and took a large puff of her cigar. “Oh I’ve been around mate. One day, a long time ago… I was engaged to the heiress of a prominent family from the second ring.” She finished breathlessly, pursing out the last of the smoke between her lips.
“The Evening was actually a celebration for that exact engagement. Though we never went through with it of course. She had been travelling with her mother and her two brothers from their home in Catagar Cliffs when the Collapse happened.”
Kelii didn’t need to hear anymore to know the fate of Charr’s heiress. It was inferred. Catagar was one of the known world’s closest to what was thought to be the epicentre of the Collapse. The ship that was carrying the heiress and her family would have likely been vaporized in an instance, regardless of what side of the track it was on.
“I’m sorry, Charr.” Kelii said, reaching her arm over her head and to the top of the sack of salvage, but not quite meeting Charr’s leg.
“It’s alright mate, I’ve got myself to be thankful for at least. I lost someone, yes, but her father? That poor bastard.” Charr shook her head with a wince. “He was already at the Evening with me, having been on the Bazaar on business. He lost everyone that meant something to him that night. I won’t lie when I say that I thought just as much about him as I did about her in the years that followed. I still do!”
“What did you do then?” Kelii asked. “How did you end up here with us?”
Ngaio, having finished packing the vans, turned to Kelii and Charr. “You’ll probably have to save that chapter for another time folks, we best get underway if we want to make it back to the track gate before it gets too dark”
“Ngaio’s right, mate” Charr said. “we better hit the road. The story that fills the space between then and now is a big old yarn, for a much quieter day.”
Charr leapt from her recline and gave Kelii a quick squeeze around the shoulders, smiling. Nothing was said, but Kelii knew Charr sensed the unease she felt about bringing up a sensitive subject. Charr was good like that. Tough around the edges but a heart of gold, and filled with the empathy that went with it.
“I'm going to ride up the front this time, the backseat gave me the wobbles on the way over” Charr said to Kelii, looking over to Bathel who was approaching their van. “I’ve relegated our friend Bathel to the back seat.” Bathel shrugged slightly and slid into the middle row of the van.
With the back most row now filled with salvage, Kelii slid into the middle row also. She sat opposite Bathel, facing forward toward the driver's seat. While Ngaio was doing a final check on the salvage, she turned with her face against the window and took one last look at the wreck they’d lived beside the last three days.
The ride back to the track gate felt a lot longer than it had going to the wreck. Time was an enemy to anticipation, and drew it out at any opportunity. Kelii thought more about Charr’s unexpected tale. She felt bad for not having known, or for never having asked. She wondered what else she didn’t know about Charr, or any of her other teammates for that matter, simply because she hadn’t had the wherewithal to reach out to them. She also wondered why Charr had not mentioned this heiress by name? She was entitled to her privacy of course, but it seemed odd for someone like Charr to remain coy about such basic details when she was so cavalier about most everything else.
Kelii sat nestled between a dirty window and a pile of large elastic bags filled with non-descript electronics and tangled wires that were all now covered in a rich layer of Pakihi vegetation. The book that had slid under her feet on the ride over was still sitting on the seat where she’d left it two days ago. With little else to distract her from her thoughts, Kelii picked up the book, and pressed a pale blue button on the right edge to turn it on and continue reading.
...and so a great coldness spread across the multiverse the moment the bazaar closed its tracks, and the Junction of Worlds, once the only connection between the Heavens Bazaar and the gateways to 1000s of realms, fell into an unnatural stillness. Its circulation had been cut off, its lifeline severed, and now the Junction, a quadrant of space once brimming with the colour of life, was as cold and as grey as the rest of the galaxy. For the first time in a millenia, sentient life felt alone.
“What’s your plan after we turn in?” A voice mumbled.
It surprised Kelii, who could have sworn Bathel was fast asleep mere seconds ago. Kelii touched the splinter in her jacket pocket and heeded Ngaio’s earlier warning. “Not sure yet” she said, “I’ll probably just take a week or two to recharge, I guess.” Unconvinced with her own misdirection.
Bathel dignified this with little more than an uninterested “hmmm”. There was an awkward pause, and just as Kelii thought she’d escaped the conversation barely before it started, Bathel raised his eyebrows toward Kelli’s pocket. The warm shine of the Pakihi dusk thawed his thin lips as he said “What’s that then? You’ve been patting it down non-stop since we got in the Van.” No amount of dirtied workwear could disguise Bathel’s pretentious drawl. Even if he was here, working in a salvage team, there was no hiding the fact that he’d been born into a wealthy Meridian family. Though, perhaps the only reason Kelii detected this, was because she was cut from much of the same cloth. She shelved her bias as best she could. She wanted people to treat her for who she was not for where she came from. It’d be wholly unfair for her to treat Bathel any differently than that.
“What? My pocket?! Oh” Kelii feigned surprise. “It’s nothing, just some wood samples I took from the crash site.”
Another “hmmm” in response, although Kelii thought she detected a slight eye of suspicion on Bathels shadowed face. Thankfully he didn’t press the issue further and instead shaded his face with his cap, folded his arms, and sent himself back to sleep.
The outside view was darkening now and the threat of more pointed questions from Bathel loomed. Kelii had no choice but to burrow further toward the window, and rest her head on a scrunched up piece of clothing she’d pulled from another one of the elastic bags, before continuing the book, and hoping she didn’t recapture the attention of the astute electronics specialist.
“... Many of these now trackless worlds had no choice but to turn inward in their isolation. Some of these worlds continued on, learning to live without an open track to the Junction, or a direct line to 1000s of other worlds. Some worlds were not as fortunate, and instead faded away, without the source of life and energy that only being connected to the Junction could bring.
Years passed, and just as time felt like it had settled into a steady rhythm, tracks began opening again, reforging the paths between worlds and connecting millions of people who had spent a generation, light years apart. It was different this time though, as worlds reopened one by one, desperation and greed took hold. The Junction of Worlds became a staging area for the galaxy’s new powers to assert their dominance and as more tracks reopened and more worlds were invited back, conflict rumbled in the depths, awakening long forgotten feuds and unknown fears. It was clear, then, that mere decades of isolation was all it took to sow suspicion in even the most welcoming of worlds and soon the Junction, once a place of great unity, became a theatre for war.
Historians have attempted to explore and analyse a single catalyst behind the formation of The Harmony and its success. The truth is, There is no one reason for it, but rather a number of key factors that lead to its victory and brought peace to the junction once again. These were namely the strategic positioning of The Harmony fleet, its diplomatic prowess and its considerable reach with…”
Kelii skipped ahead. As shrewd as she was, she did not wish to read about the inner political machinations of The Harmony. Not right now, anyway. The next chapter, titled “The Three Rings of the Exchange” did not promise any new information for Kelii but she was always curious to hear about how others described her home, especially the ideas people concocted about the third, most inner ring. She skipped ahead a few more pages before continuing her distraction.
“...Left behind by some long forgotten and long dead civilization, is The Exchange. Though it pales in comparison to The Bazaar’s impossible age and scale, it is still a remarkable sight to all those traveling through the Junction of Worlds. Before the collapse, the exchange functioned as a forum of diplomacy and a home to the millions of sentient life forms who had left their home worlds to live near The Bazaar. In the decades after the collapse, it has become a hive of such activity again, and the seat of power and governance of The Harmony, who keep the peace in the Junction of Worlds, and have worked steadfastly to restore The Rings of the Exchange to their former glory.”
Ah. There it was, then. Kelii had been keeping an eye out for it. The chauvinism masked in reverence. A common feature in many of these short-form Harmony publications. The ancient rings that surrounded The Exchange were met with an almost cultish adoration by many in The Harmony, in addition to becoming somewhat of a subject of pride amongst The Harmony elite. The rings had a long and storied history of being the seat of power in the galaxy of course, and The Harmony traded in power. The Rings of the Exchange had their fair share of detractors too, mind you. Kelii, for one, didn’t share in this worship, and though she grew up on the First Ring, the older she became the more uneasy she felt about how little was known of the rings ancient origin, or of their original purpose. It couldn’t be anything too sinister though, Kelii mused now, as often she did when she had these thoughts. How could it be? It had been occupied by sentient life for hundreds of years without any malevolence. It had always been a peaceful place, and there was no evidence to suggest otherwise. There was just one question. That one question that was never at the forefront of Kelii’s concerns, but steadily prodding the back of her mind. The question that was always reminding her that it was there, waiting for its answer: What happened to the constructors of the rings?
There were centuries of history recorded about the Junction of Worlds, the area of space that so many like Kelii now called home. Yet to Kelii’s knowledge none of this history mentioned a time before The Rings of the Exchange. It mattered not whether the history was recorded on old paper scroll, or direct to a data pad, In all the stories of the past, The Rings of the Exchange were always there, much in the same way the Bazaar had always been. They weren’t seen as constructions anymore, but celestial bodies, part of the very fabric of the galaxy, and as ubiquitous as the stars that enveloped them.
To have built something as large and as complicated as this, and for it to have been around for this long, a similar magic that powered The Bazaar must have been used… and yet, everything about the regimental design and construction of The Rings was so fundamentally different to the organic, matured, feel of the Bazaar. They might have been built at the same time, but they can’t have been built by the same people. Kelii was always able to rationalise this thought by embracing the axiom that mysteries were simply truths that lacked the right knowledge to explain them. This didn’t change the fact that the thought of these mysterious superstructures, and the disappearance of their creators, sent chills down Kelii’s spine.
This time however, the chills had been replaced by the tingling sensation of Travellers Touch. Switching off the book, and gazing out the dust-covered window, Kelii saw that sure enough, they were very near to the Pākihi side of the track now. Soon they would be leaving this world behind and crossing back through to the cold steel of the track station.
“Annnnnndddd… everybody buckled up!? Safety first, danger second!” Kelii jumped at the booming voice, apart from her brief conversation with Bathel, the ride had been one of tired silence for all of the van’s occupants.
There were no eye rolls or exasperated noises from Charr this time, just her blue arm from the front passenger seat, reaching across to the drivers side, followed swiftly by a solid thud against Ngaio’s left shoulder.
“Oi!” Ngaio whined, followed by an insult that was indistinguishable to Kelii over the sound of the approaching track. Whatever was said however, was clearly taken in jest. Charr and Ngaio laughed with each other as Charr rubbed the spot, albeit still roughly, where she had just landed her blow. No more than a few seconds past, and even the laughs of her companions were drowned out by the swirling sound of the track. Without any delay, they crossed the threshold between worlds, and a new sensation, almost like a vibration in her side, caused her to twitch. By the time she realised it was not her body, but the splinter that had been oscillating against her, it had stopped.
The noise of spinning tires against dirt was replaced with the squeeks of rubber against smooth floor as Kelii’s eyes, still used to the golden hue of the Pākihi Basin, took a moment to adjust to the artificial light of the station. It was quiet now, without any vehicles in the parking bays, or queued in the staging area. Only a few maintenance vehicles remained. With their autonomous scrubbers, the oversized cleaning machines polished the dust and dirt dragged in from Pākihi in wide, circular motions. The breath of it’s sweeps echoed throughout the empty station floor, broken only by the low hum of the engine that spun the scrubbers in ruthless unison. Kelii found this scene unsettling, as if they had arrived at the station too late, or stayed for too long. Thankfully though, they didn’t have to stop this time around, and instead drove straight from the track entrance, and across to one of the docking bays, where a clear-topped space barge waited to fly them back to the Rings of the Exchange.
Traversing the Tūporo-class stations was easy. These stations were smaller than most; designed to service low volume tracks to worlds of little social or economic significance. The station’s size meant that it was a lot more mobile than the permanent hubs that coiled themselves around more important tracks. Unlike the giant stations surrounding core worlds, this Tūporo-class would move on, not long after Kelii’s team boarded the barge. It would retract its bridge to the Pākihi Basin track, and rescind the sphere that smothered it in atmosphere, leaving the track floating alone, in the calm vacuum of space, once more. Onward then, the station would go, off to another track, to fulfill another contract, allowing team’s just like Kelii’s to move to and from these worlds with relative ease.
Within a matter of minutes, all three vans were out of the main station floor, and being ushered onto the barge by rolling green lights. The barge itself was probably at about half capacity with a few other research vehicles, some old mining equipment and a tangled bundle of what looked like sling skimmers. Kelii guessed from their sodden sails that they’d been picked up from Storm Shelf, a recently reopened world that had, before the collapse, been known for its extreme weather systems. The sling skimmers were likely off to receive repairs on the Rings of the Exchange, perhaps even from Casp, the scrapformer that Kelii’s team would soon be visiting to hand in their salvage.
Looking out from her window and through the clear domed top of the space barge, Kelii could see the station in its entirety. Though it was little more than an endless parking garage from the inside, the station’s exterior was an impressive sight. Kelii could see the hole the barge had emerged from on the side of a stocky cylinder that was, in turn, surrounded by a giant metal ring. The ring’s exterior glittered with activity as smaller vessels floated on its periphery, hoping to save some fuel by hitching a ride to the next track the station would travel to. The cylinder was bound to the revolving ring, by eight black steel struts and was about 500 meters long and perhaps 300 meters wide by Kelii’s reckoning. At the center of the cylinder, no longer enveloped by the station, was the familiar auroral sphere of hazy colours. Though much smaller, the track to Pākihi Basin was somehow more impressive from a distance than it was up close. Kelii caught glimpses of the browns and greens of the world beyond, before the angle of the barge, and the rotating station ring, made it impossible for her to see it.
Kelii continued to stare beyond the glass dome of the barge until her eyes became heavy and the station was just another faded glimmer in the nebulous starscape. She thought about the strange reaction the splinter had had when they traversed through the track, and hoped that now at least, as they made their way back to The Exchange, she was on the home stretch of learning its truth.
In a state of partial wakefulness, Kelii reached for the splinter in her pocket and rested her right hand on top of it. Muscles pained, and mentally drained, she eventually lay her head against her shoulder and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
