Chapter 4: Sibling Rivalry | page 2

The Blue Phoenix hovered burning in the sun’s corona for the better part of the morning before Tiberius would even consider venturing out of the shielding plasma for a quick scan around. Radiation from Axis’ sun made it impossible to make even the most basic sensor sweep, but that same concealment hid the Phoenix and its crew from the Axis fighters. The hull still rippled with blue fire and the crew waited.

With Duaal in tow, Tiberius stumped down into the crew lounge. It was a round room in the belly of the ship, circled with circular viewports, all covered for the moment by thick illonium radiation shielding. Duaal followed his grumpy Prian captain to the scuffed dinner table.

Though he had flown with Tiberius the longest, at eighteen CSYs, Duaal Sinnay was the youngest member of the crew. For all his youth, Duaal was a powerful and rare specimen, if he did say so himself. Practitioners of magic were found exclusively on the outer rim worlds of the galaxy. There were fairies of the old White Kingdom, the tree-like Jinn or the fearsome mystic drones of the Tower, but not humans. It was widely theorized that the Alliance races simply lacked the ability to learn their magic. Not a great loss, many felt. Yet Duaal, born to the very human planet of Hyzaar, could loop his fingers through the air, speak a short incantation and summon forth lightning or a deep, hypnotic sleep.

How he did so was a mystery even to Maeve, a fairy of the oldest family, the royal bloodline of the Arcadians! Magical studies were long and involved, requiring many years of dedicated schooling, much like the education of Ixthian doctors or the most skilled Lyran programmers. How such a young human had learned, Duaal never said. When he could help it, he didn’t even think about it.

The air circling sluggishly through the broken recycling system was hot and heavy and smelled like burning oil. Maeve sat silently on one of the acceleration couches. Duaal wondered if the white feathers stuck to her sweaty skin were uncomfortable. They looked… itchy. Gripper waited beside her, his claws black with grease. Dirty engine oil streaked his heavy-browed, brutish-looking face. God, did he ever wash his hands?

“By the Great Green,” he ranted, gesticulating wildly with his long arms and grinning boyishly. “That was wicked fine, Claws. Right into the sun! You just about fried the SL engines jumping them like that, though.”

The pregnant Dailon girl, Kessa, wandered a slow circuit of the room, staring in wonder. Her fear was subdued for the moment as she drank in the ship, the strange crew and their miraculous escape. Duaal surreptitiously combed his fingers through his golden hair. He wasn’t particularly interested in women, but it never hurt to make a good impression.

“We’ll need a new coat of phenno,” Tiberius said. “We don’t have a replacement for the coat we’re burning now.”

“Phenno?” Kessa asked timidly.

“Phennomethylln,” Gripper said. “That’s what’s keeping most of the heat and radiation out right now, or we’d get cooked inside the ship!” His sudden claw gesture suggested something more like an explosion than cooking and Kessa flinched.

“It’s been profoundly useful for all sorts of protection, but the Lyceum hasn’t quite approved its use yet. It’s a protein secreted by the Nnyth. It protects them from heat and radiation and the like when they fly near stars,” said Xia.

“They fly in space? Without ships? But that’s impossible.”

Maeve slapped her hand down on the tabletop with a loud noise. “Coreworld arrogance has no bounds! Whatever you can make no sense of, you call impossible. For generations have your kind told stories of fairies and angels and enchanted trees, yet when we were found in your own stars, you recoiled!”

Kessa did exactly as Maeve described and backed away, frightened again. Xia cleared her throat.