GHOSTS OF PROELE

This story takes place three years after DUALITY, but prior to future books in which Nika and Dashiel will appear.

Proele.

The word whispered through her dream, carried along by an eerie, haunted wind. Wisps of fog obscured any details of where she was, but everywhere she turned, there was only the word.

Proele.

Nika awoke with a start. Silvery moonlight drifted into the bedroom, and she turned to see Dashiel sleeping peacefully beside her.

Taking care not to disturb him, she eased out of bed and tip-toed to the kitchen, where she poured a cup of coffee and took it over to the windows looking down upon Mirai One.

Proele. She knew the word, though not from where. It took only a fraction of a second to delve the history banks and she had her answer, though not her ‘why.’ Proele was the name they’d given to the planetoid where, near the end of their two-century-long Exodus away from the Anaden Empire, they’d first discovered kyoseil. Though the rock wasn’t fit for habitation, they’d paused there for several weeks while a team set up a camp on the surface to extract and study the mineral. After loading up sizeable samples in the holds of their generation ships, they’d continued their journey, and only after settling on Synra had the first experiments integrating kyoseil into their biosynthetic bodies began.

She wondered. Had Magnus Forchelle known as he stood on the planetoid’s surface what he had found?

Proele.

She jumped in surprise. She wasn’t dreaming any longer, was she? She pinched herself. No, she was not. Yet the ghostly voice had echoed anew in her mind nonetheless.

She sighed, sending ripples through the steaming coffee held at her lips. It appeared she was going to Proele.

*

 Nika and Dashiel stepped out of the wormhole onto the planetoid. A pale gray crumble of rocks almost as fine as sand coated the uneven landscape. In every direction, the surface had been upended, and haphazard valleys, mounds and crevices marred the horizon. Asterions had returned here millennia ago to strip the planetoid of every ounce of kyoseil in the drive to sate their ravenous appetite for the mineral—back when they didn’t understand how it was not merely incredibly ancient, but alive.

“We wrecked this place good and proper.” Her voice echoed inside her helmet and was swallowed up by the emptiness surrounding her.

“True.” Dashiel’s voice rang tinny and hollow. “But something tells me it wasn’t much of a scenic vista to begin with.”

“No.” The planetoid exhibited a slow, wobbly orbital pattern, and to their left a sulfur glow from the distant sun peeked over a mound of upturned rock. Shadows raced into the crevices—and in the corner of her eye light glinted off something. She started walking that way.

“Where are you going?”

“There’s something over here.”

“Nika, there’s nothing left.”

“Maybe someone left a tool behind.” The ground sloped down into a shallow bowl, and she slipped and slid down the bank toward the lowest point.

The light glinted again as the sun rose higher behind them, and she dropped to her knees and began pushing away the top layer of sand.

At the center of a jagged hole sat a perfect specimen of pure kyoseil. Amber threads with hints of opalescence threaded in on themselves like an intricately woven knot.

Dashiel knelt beside her. “Impossible. We wouldn’t have left a chunk this large behind. Not back then.”

“Maybe it’s spent millennia traveling up from the mantle to the surface.”

“Kyoseil isn’t usually much for the traveling, but maybe.”

She worked around its edges until she’d dislodged it from its cradle, then cupped it in her hands. The prodigious kyoseil in her body hummed with excitement, as if reuniting with a long-lost friend.

This was what she was here for. But why?

She set the sample back down and began detaching one of her gloves from her suit.

“Nika, what are you doing?”

“I need to touch it. I’ll be fine for a minute or so.” Asterion bodies were designed to withstand the brutality of space for short periods.

Icy daggers burnt her exposed skin, and she quickly picked up the kyoseil—

“Drayden, come look at this!” The ghost of Magnus Forchelle motioned excitedly with his ethereal gloved hand, and a spectral form working at a screen above a large piece of machinery hurried over.

“What do you have?”

“I’m not certain.” Ghost Magnus knelt and scooped up a handful of the sand-like material covering the chalky surface, then stood. Within it, tiny golden strands gleamed like brilliant stardust.

“Huh. That doesn’t resemble any of the minerals or crystals we’ve identified so far.”

“I know it doesn’t.” Ghost Magnus brought his cupped hands close to his face, his head tilting. “It’s beautiful. I wonder if perhaps we’ve discovered a new element, out here amidst the endless sea of black.”

“How did you find it? I don’t see any other samples in the area.”

“I was scanning the horizon, and I spotted what resembled a flickering of lights in the air over in this direction. As I got closer, the lights dissipated. I looked down, and there it was.”

“I don’t see any lights.”

“Neither do I. It must have been a trick of the eye. Let’s get this back to the camp and see if we can learn what we’ve found.” Ghost Magnus kept his hands carefully surrounding his prize as he trailed the other spectre back to their camp.

Behind him, in the shadow of a boulder canted askew and half-buried in the surface, a cluster of blue-white lights swirled languidly for a moment, then was gone.

Nika dropped the kyoseil to the ground and stumbled to her feet.

Dashiel’s hand grasped her arm. “Are you okay? What happened?”

She swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. “I saw the camp. Magnus Forchelle and others working.” She hurriedly reattached the glove over her throbbing, damaged skin, then grabbed his hands in hers. “Dashiel, why was there a Kat on Proele when we discovered kyoseil?”

***

~ Image Credit: Adam Block/Mount Lemmon SkyCenter/University of Arizona