Authors: Jess Harpley
Eli’s face drooped, biting his lip as he turned away. Sway knew that look, and couldn’t let the gesture go unanswered, “What is it?”
“It’s nothing.” He smiled, not fooling her.
“Eli.”
He mumbled, “I’m curious is all. We’ve been living with a fair amount of technology for eighty years, and nothing has come to wipe us off the map. What if the Priyon are wrong?” Her left brow pointed as he went on, “I mean, if this
darkness
is really attracted to technology, wouldn’t it have followed their colony ship here? Why hasn’t it found us?” She felt heat building in her chest, a frustration which usually came with anyone disregarding the Priyon’s warning.
“And what if it’s true, and we blow three sentient races to smithereens because we refused to pay attention?” She asked with a hot tone, hands moving to her hips. His wilful ignorance infuriated her! How could he think to risk the lives of all that remained of humanity, the Priyon, and the Mews?
“Hey, enough with the chit chat! We want to get out of here before noon.” Sojin yelled from the egg repository.
“She’s right.” Eli jogged back to his cart, rubbing his hands together for warmth. He escaped a tough conversation with Sway once again. She knew he felt more than unfavorable about the Priyon.
While no one in the community openly embraced them, most tolerated their presence, and paid attention to their warning. Eli disregarded it entirely, and hated the Priyon. His grandfather survived combat with the aliens, and lived long enough to instil his wartime prejudice in all his children. Sway concluded it wasn’t really Eli’s fault; he’d been raised with fear in his heart.
They loaded the first wave of milk onto the pulley elevator. Eli and Sway attempted to help as Vendum and Sojin tugged it to the top level. The Mews certainly didn’t need Sway or Eli for that part of the task, but it made them feel like we were contributing to pull the slack rope and wind it into a coiled pile on the cave-like ground.
Eli and Sway ran up to the kitchen, pulling the cart out into the cooking center to unload it. They always competed to see who could finish their side first, which had only led to a few liters of spilled milk, yet several slaps on the wrist. Eli beat her, which she attributed to her damaged hand, then raced down the stairs. She pushed past him as they crossed the first floor, and so she blocked the stairs all the way down to the bottom.
Sojin tsked at them. “Always fooling around. You’re both so childish.”
“So, what were you doing this morning with Sway?”
Her head turned, as if annoyed he’d even asked. “Practicing.”
Eli laughed. “Practicing to kill humans? Why would you ever need to do that? Priyon are the danger.”
She grabbed him hard by the collar, “I’ll kill anything that puts my kind in harm’s way. Remember well.” Sojin shoved him to the dirt of the catacomb floor, and he knew not to retort. Sway retrieved him from the ground, patting his back to help quell his quivering lip.
“Ignore her.”
While Sojin had never let on any differently, Sway knew beneath the robot’s cold, rigid exterior lay a hard drive filled with compassion and love for them. Why else would Sojin stay when she could retreat to an all Mew community?
The remainder of their duties were completed in silence, without horseplay, as Sojin called it. Returning to the surface, Sway was eager to get out of the parka, and off to the week’s elective time. They were carving figurines from fallen trees, as the Priyon demanded the humans not cut down anything more than was absolutely needed to survive.
The scent of fresh sawdust brought pleasant daydreams of frolicking through the forest to her mind. Caressing the fist sized block of black walnut, she imagined it as it would be finished. Perhaps Sway was being girlish, something she would never admit to, but she thought a heart with
their
initials carved through it was a nice commemoration of their infatuation with one another.
She had yet to see Reese that day, and assumed he must be busy with chores. All the better; he couldn’t see what she was working on. Before long, the free hour expired and she groaned at the lack of progress. Sway begged Christine to allow her to take the needed tools home, and as always, she refused.
“What happens if you lose them? Or break them? Then no one gets to woodwork.” She snatched the chisel from Sway’s hand, locking it and the lathe away in the supply locker.
Sway sighed indignantly, pushing the stolen exact-o knife deeper into her pocket. It could at least help her to work on cleaning up the edges of the heart, but she’d have to work on the initials again at the next electives class.
She deposited the love project at home, then ran to find Reese. He should have been at the windmills, helping repair a damaged blade. Upon arriving, Sway saw the metal was fixed, beautiful welds all the way around. There was only one other place he would have gone when his chores were complete.
Twigs and crisp weeds snapped underfoot as she ran to the training facility. He was the only other teen in the community with a desire to join Beacon that rivalled hers, and maybe Eli’s. He could always be found learning techniques for some sort of situation in his downtime. That day it was trapping, but not for rabbits. He was learning to set traps for Priyon.
With all of his focus on the knot, he appeared to be oblivious to the opening door. He looked back and forth from the book to his thin, metal wire. Sway eyed the Priyon dummy he worked on with annoyance. It wasn’t at all accurate to the true anatomy.
Priyon had a hard exoskeletal structure, a remnant from their maturation cocoon. They took so long to mature in their cocoon, humans only saw the emergence of a few in almost a century. Sway felt certain the process was interesting to observe, but all that remained were a series of hand drawn pictures and text.
The Priyon infant created a cocoon approximately one and a half times its size after stuffing itself to the brim with food. Then, when the time was right, it broke through the shell from the inside. It had to attack its own shell to expose the sensory organ on the top of its body, and the section on its abdomen for the mouth.
In a book Sway once read, the artist wrote in the margin it took nearly three days for the Priyon to break away the shell in front of the sensory organ. It was essentially blind until then, and he could get near to it without risk of injury.
The test dummy slumped in the corner with no exoskeleton, and was missing the additional two leg appendages. It looked more like an awkwardly shaped human with too many limbs than a Priyon.
Sway crept closer to Reese, taking shallow breaths through her nose as the excitement gathered in her chest. What she would do to surprise him was unknown to her, but stealth was necessary to carry out whatever plan happened to emerge.
He spun from his seat, tackling her to the ground. “Oh thank god, it’s you. If you’d been River, this would be awkward.” He smiled sarcastically, then planted a wanton kiss on her lips which she returned with vigor. Sway’s slender fingers wound through his wavy auburn hair, and she could think of nowhere else she’d rather be than in his arms. All too soon, they pulled away from each other, knowing at any moment they could be without privacy.
“How was
electives
hour?” He yanked her from the ground.
She brushed stray debris from her worn corduroy work pants, grumbling. “The usual: too short, too few tools, grumpy children, grumpier elders.”
“Did you finish it yet?” He pulled on her hand to sit with him as he continued working the knots.
“Maybe,” with raised eyebrows, she added, “but maybe not.”
He smirked, “You didn’t finish it.”
“I’m so close! Christine said I couldn’t take any tools home, so once again, it will have to wait until tomorrow.” She lied about the pilfered exacto blade hidden carefully in the wall behind the bunk bed she shared with Dymtre. It was where Sway hid all of her prohibited paraphernalia.
She almost felt bad about it; stealing. It wasn’t as if she didn’t intend to return it eventually. With the except for one item. She found an unguarded pistol years earlier, which quickly became
her
pistol. She knew without it she would never have made it into the trainee group that started two years previous. Or perhaps she had more of her mother’s marksmanship in her than she knew.
There was a large search for the pistol, and the armory attendant got in some trouble, but after a few months the hoopla died down. Very suspiciously, nine-millimeter ammunition started disappearing one at a time since then. Even more suspiciously, the shells returned 10 at a time for reloading.
She was sure someone in Beacon knew she had the pistol. It was hard to hide gunfire no matter how many kilometers she ran out into the forest. Still, no one bothered her for it. It wasn’t as if she was preparing to kill anything, or anyone, she simply found target practice entertaining.
There was something gratifying in hitting a bullseye on a target forty meters out with just a handgun. Sway knew even some of the best marksmen in Beacon weren’t as accurate at that range, and it gave her immense pride, especially with her mother having been who she was to Beacon.
Reese pulled her from thoughts of mothers and goodies hiding in her room with a gentle pinch, “Where did you go?”
“Nowhere. Just thinking about our little two year anniversary present.”
“Two years.” His brown eyes darted away in thought. “How the time flies.”
“I only remembered it was two years because it was the day we both tried out for Beacon training. The day I embarrassed you.”
“We went over this,” He waved his finger at her. “I went easy on you because I was afraid to hurt a girl. We both made it in, didn’t we?”
Pecking his lips once, she whispered, “Yes, we did.” The eventuality of initiation came rushing to the forefront of her mind, and her palms clammed up. “Are you nervous?”
“Not a bit. We’ve both made leaps and bounds, progressed beyond all the other initiates, even the older candidates.”
He pulled her closer, taunting, “Why, are you?”
“There’s not a single thought of failure in my mind.” A lie. She was extremely nervous. Beacon was all she ever wanted, aside from Reese.
“Hey, what do you say we go see our parents before heading off to bootcamp?” He tossed the knot aside, slapping the book shut.
Their mention caused a throbbing in the pit of Sway’s stomach. It had been six years, almost seven, but the dagger in her heart twisted when she thought of her parents, dead before their time.
“Yeah, that sounds good.”
With their fingers laced together, they walked in silence to the west edge of town. Sway stopped every so often to pluck late season flowers. Though they were mostly weeds, they still looked nice.
The closer they got to the graveyard, the more bile turned in her gut. Though she loved them dearly in life, Sway avoided their graves. The thoughts they brought were never of the pleasant times, the safe times. It was always destruction and suffering.
Even the young trees cast long shadows in the low afternoon light, encompassing the private site in gloom. The forty-two graves sat apart from the others, with their own memorial plaque at the large pine tree in the center.
Beloved victims and defenders of the Night Raid, October 3rd 2123. May they rest among the angels in Heaven.
Placing the flowers at her parents’ headstone, Reese and Sway chanted together, “Gone are the lives of so many. Brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, children, and lovers. In their sacrifice, we live on. No matter the foe, we are prepared. We are the light in a great expanse of darkness. We are the first warning, the protector at the gate, the savior in the night. We are Beacon.”
She kissed the icy memorial that mirrored her frozen heart, and pushed back tears. With a stoic face she nodded for Reese to proceed to his mother’s grave. He dug through his pocket, pulling out a handwritten card he rested against her site. Sway wondered what he could write to the dead, what was the point of it? The living could hear his words, know the feelings of love and gratitude. Why did he spend time writing to the deaf and blind, emotionless corpses, when she, Sway, or his father could be better targets for his affection?
He pulled her from these dismal thoughts, and again, they recited the vow of Beacon, the vow their grandparents and great grandparents created. One last stop, the hardest stop, then the pain was over. Reese knelt in front of his sister’s grave, and Sway knew to stay back, give him his space. He whispered the vows again, reliving the night she died. Never had they feared an assault from other humans, until that night.
The raiders infiltrated
Kamloops, Sway’s home, under the guise of seeking sanctuary, and the community was all too willing to provide. Kamloop’s leaders had been more cautious after that night, and few outsiders without a backing community had joined since.
Why hadn’t they just asked them to share? Why did they have to steal? Priyon never stole from one another, much less killed each other. Theft and murder were human conditions. They could have joined the community, but Beacon terrified them.
She didn’t blame them for that, Beacon was something to be feared if they were crossed. They were well organized, well supplied, with a cooperative community, and competent leaders. Kamloops had been host to a large Canadian military force during the war. They’d brought stockpiles of weapons, erected ammunition production factories on the outskirts, built up the train transport to Vancouver, and done many other things to ensure their success.