CHAPTER 2
NOVA
Sherexis is the biggest starport city on Zairion Prime, and it looks like a psychedelic elven city built in the trees of a giant rainforest—if all the elves were half bug.
The colors here are bright and… wrong. The leaves are a thousand shades of crimson and teal, and the massive, winding tree trunks are grey. Most structures are draped with banners and flags, some sporting garish color combinations and others oddly muddy.
I’m fairly certain these are actually dyed in colors my eyes can’t perceive. I vaguely remember learning that bees can see ultraviolet and mantis shrimp can see some ungodly number of colors. It seems these sapients share that trait with the arthropods they resemble.
I’ve never pretended to understand why some galactic species are so similar to humans or other Earth life, and I’ve never cared. A lot of things are easier to accept than the total destruction of the planet where you learned to kiss and drive and do taxes.
So, as I shuffle along a wood-and-silk bridge spanning the gap between two trees each twenty feet in diameter, and a dragonfly-woman whizzes by while a long-legged Arachnoid resembling an orb spider walks over me, I take it all in stride.
Metaphorically speaking.
Physically, I’m limping—the long starship ride stiffened my muscles, and I tweaked something as I got moving again. There’s a stabbing pain every time I switch weight to that leg, but experience says it’ll go away on its own within the hour.
I check my notebook for the instructions I was given, which I copied down in code before destroying the original blacknet message.
It always struck me as ironic that my knack for cyphers came from the city ship’s assigned problem sets, and I turned around and used that aptitude to hide my actions from it. Now, code making and breaking remain among my most valuable skills.
Perhaps not for much longer. Hucows aren’t needed for anything other than their biological functions. Then again, perhaps I can demonstrate my usefulness and land a placement with more autonomy.
With a patience born more of resignation than true self-compassion, I glance calmly around as I make my way slowly, step-by-step, up the massive set of stairs between me and my destination.
The Arthropoids around me move effortlessly over the same area, either climbing along a network of silk lines and panels or simply flying. A massive centipede, each leg as long as I am, ripples up the trunk next to me.
I envy having so many legs to spare. Then again, more legs means more knees and hips to ache, so perhaps I’m better off.
I keep up my steady, deliberate climb. My muscles are strong: physical therapy was a key part of my attempted treatment, and while living as an outlaw, I had to be ready to defend myself, whether in pain or not.
The extra oxygen in the air also eases the strain. It’s just the pain that slows me down.
So, while my sleeveless top and shorts are soaked with sweat, I’m barely breathing heavier than normal when I haul myself over the last step and onto a broad plaza. It stretches between six trees arranged in a rough hexagon, spanning a breadth comparable to a football field.
It seems strange to keep the concept of football fields as a unit of measure when Earth is gone. But Neo Terra was large enough to have several turf fields in large arena domes, the field markings switching with a few button presses between soccer, football, rugby, and more.
The ICSS deemed sports to be crucial elements of human social bonding, though they did strictly enforce several rule adjustments to heavily reduce the concussion risk.
They’d deemed football to be particularly barbaric.
After seeing a few underground games with the original rules and equipment in the past few years, I’m inclined to agree with them.
Over time, the sports drifted further from their origins.
Now, they’re almost unrecognizable. The ICSS determined that reminders of Earth hindered humans’ adjustment to space life, and so systematically eradicated them.
Sports were one of the last holdouts, since it’s nearly impossible to stop humans from playing a game they already know.
So the ICSS carefully optimized the changes to minimize resistance but maximize cognitive distance—I should know, I worked on more than one of those changes as a Solver.
That life, too, is gone now.
Nowhere to go but forward.
Arthropoids of all types mill about the plaza, which has a blessedly solid floor of planked wood.
The silk panels that make up large parts of the city always yield slightly, feeling insecure underfoot.
Annoying in the lower parts of the city, but viscerally unsettling hundreds of feet off the ground.
This plaza is near the canopy, and I refuse to do the math of how many flights of stairs I just climbed. I could use something to drink, though.
I approach a structure that’s recognizable as a market stall, but the main counter is at Arthropoid height, putting it right above my head.
Signs at my eye level lead around the corner to a lower counter where an Avioid that resembles a hummingbird sells me chilled nectar.
Everything on Zairion Prime is closer to its natural state than what I’m used to. There’s another stall selling peeled fruit speared on a stick and frozen, which I suppose is their version of a popsicle. I also spy candied nuts and fresh vegetables in leaf wraps.
As I take a sip of the nectar and a complex, gentle sweetness spreads across my tongue, I understand why Arthropoids seem disinterested in cooking. With natural bounties like this, why bother with the extra steps?
They’re not all herbivores, though. I pass a stall with a cage full of rabbit-like creatures sniffing the air, and I try not to think about what fresh food implies in that context.
Finally, I reach the meeting place: a statue of a gigantic blossoming flower, rendered in gorgeous veined wood stained deep violet. I don’t see my contact, and I’m a bit early. I gave myself an extra-wide buffer to ensure I could climb unhurried, so now there’s time to kill.
My legs could use a break, but there aren’t really benches nearby; Arthropoids don’t need them, so while there are a few scattered here and there for other species, they’re not as densely placed as they are in human settlements.
The edge of the platform is nearby, so I plop down there, sticking my legs over the edge through gaps in the knotted rope railing.
I lean over, head spinning at the network of interlocking branches below.
The trees grow strangely horizontal here, branches the size of roads tangling and overlapping with each other.
It creates a maze of three-dimensional paths that define the city’s main thoroughfares, augmented further with silk panels woven by Arachnoids or wooden structures built by other Arthropoids.
My heart ticks faster as fear sends my hands tightly gripping the rope across my chest.
I don’t look away.
My life has grown so weary that sometimes the fear is my only reminder that I do still have a will to live. Plus, adrenaline dulls pain. Sometimes, terror is a respite.
Brilliant, blinding violet flashes across my vision: the scintillating colors of a Lepidopteroid flying across a beam of sun, their butterfly-like wings sending light scattering.
It’s beautiful. I wish I could properly appreciate it instead of shifting uncomfortably, trying to ease the stabbing pain in my hip.
“Nova?”
I startle at the sound of my name in a deep, even voice, especially since the syllables are recognizable—if accented—even without the activation of my neural implant.
I turn and find an Arthropoid looking at me.
My body goes still. He’s as stunning as the butterfly, but for an entirely different reason.
He may be the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.
Shoulder-length black hair frames angular features, full lips, and soulful monolid eyes. The sharp angle of his clean-shaven jaw does something to my brain, and the effect is only enhanced by his broad, muscled shoulders narrowing to a slender waist.
Stark blackwork tattoos decorate his arms, shoulders, and upper chest, fading through a honeycomb pattern to open skin at his wrists and neck.
The design echoes the graphic ochre and black of his hornet-like abdomen.
Slender wings rest against his side, tinting the light amber as it filters through.
He has six legs, each with a segmented foot that ends in two crescent-shaped claws.
There’s a cold, intimidating edge to his aura.
I should say something, stand, at least nod.
But I’m frozen.
The intensity of his gaze holds me in place—
A gaze that brims with hunger.