Liturgy of Dust: Chapter 2

Cael hated the Helix.

The gravity pressed too hard on old aches, and the syndicate seemed to like the air too humid for him to breathe properly and the floor, made of a transparent metallic crystal-glass structure that somehow withstood exposure to the black better than his ships hull, was disorientating. The station rotated on a central axis, and the normal arrangement of gravity was inverted. When on a ship, gravity came from acceleration, when on a planet from its mass, but here the centripetal force placed the black where his body insisted there should be ground. He'd expected he would be used to it by now, but down in the vaults, you don't get this view. Besides, he had no choice but to come: it was the only place to make real credits on Drift's Edge.

He paused at the entrance to the private booths while an Enforcer-Acolyte scanned his biometrics.

To his left, a massive bas-relief dominated the curved wall depicting stylised workers, heroic and with exaggerated sharp features. They were rebuilding the outer lattice of reinforced crystal that made up the shell of the Helix. A plaque beneath praised 'The Endless Bounty of the Drift', courtesy of the Remnant clans and smaller operations like Cael's of course. Cael understood well enough the relationship, the rewards from their dives, the risks that they took, paid for all this opulence and the Syndicate kept most of it for themselves. All because they ration the intel, and provide the funding but they take none of the risk. Cael couldn't even say he was bitter, it was just the order of things.

The sculpture, it advertised a dream, but Cael had seen the reality outside. Once, the Helix had crept like a spider's web along the outer skin of Drift's Edge but time and micro meteoroid impacts had left most of its former extent exposed to hard vacuum. This restored chamber remained one of the only places, besides the exit of the docking rim, where you could gaze down into the vastness of the black. It was what made the place exclusive, and with that exclusivity came promises.

For people like Cael, the Helix was somewhere you went only if you had a reason or an invitation.

'Citizen Solari,' the droid's artificial voice announced. 'Access granted. Ms Vanth is expecting you.'

Luckily, Cael had both.

This section was vast by human standards. It had been converted into a high-tier entertainment district, though no one came for the food or gambling. Lit by soft, indirect lighting, it was designed to flatter.

A polished pathway of repurposed ancient black stone, the same kind Cael had seen wherever he'd found the Choir's ruins, ran over the clear glass panels underfoot. Low tables punctuated the space, half of them humming quietly with privacy fields. The Resonator pressed at him, hissing half-words like breath through static, not clear enough to make out any conversation.

Assuming conversation was what it was feeding him at all.

Fixers, brokers, and Syndicate agents. They all met here, ordered food out of courtesy, and made eye contact only strategically. If they were lucky enough to afford a table, they were here to move mass.

He spotted the woman he'd come to meet at the back, right where the room began to curve away. She had chosen a privacy booth tucked well clear of the other patrons, glassy and low-lit.

She didn't rise to meet him. She just sat with her chin tilted high and looked down the length of her nose as he approached, each step heavy under the drag of one-g.

Habit made Cael check his exits.

She merely gestured for him to step into the booth, where he took a place on a plush bench seat.

'You're late,' she said, her smile flashing like a blade caught in light.

Solé Vanth was never patient, but in this instance, Cael really was several minutes late. She wouldn't have cared for his excuses. He'd recovered from the booze easily enough, but the chatter from the Resonator had kept him awake until exhaustion took him.

'I'm surprised you waited,' he said, rubbing his thumb against the edge of his pad.

'Well,' she said. 'Some Rems are luckier than others.'

Cael placed his hands flat on the table, palms up. She was pissed off and not hiding it, but there was no point in offering an explanation. It wasn't her job to care.

After a moment of letting the pressure hold, her expression abruptly softened.

'I waited because you're valuable, Cael. Reliable. That last contract? Efficient. Elegant.' Her voice hardened again. 'But you know what will happen if you don't deliver.'

Efficient? That didn't cover the half of it.

Cael, Vetch, and Nomi had been sent on a planet-side run at the edge of the Orpheus system, following up on a mere rumour. Old, vague, and typical of that kind of lead. All they had to go on was the promise of a unique piece of pre-Collapse salvage.

What they found was a whole ship.

Not safe for flight, unfortunately. He'd never have needed to work again if they'd been that lucky. But the score was undeniable. The Burn-Lens drive was intact. They managed to recover it, along with a whole stack of pre-Collapse alloys.

It should have scored the Syndicate billions on the market. Cael and the crew got a 'nice bonus' instead, still only a fraction of what it was worth. Enough to cover the cost of a cryo-med module and finally pay off the Nadir.

In theory, they were equipped to go deep into Drift Space now, where the real Collapse-work was to be found.

Except that, because of what Solé had initially called some 'minor bureaucratic issues' with the lease transfer, the Nadir was impounded the moment he'd paid off the loan. The Syndicate told him fixing it would be a matter of days.

Days quickly became months.

He was sure the stress was half the reason his skull was pounding. He needed this meeting to go well. If he lost the ship, he'd lose the last thing he had of Chellen, the closest thing he'd ever had to a father.

'I heard from dry dock that you acquired a new capability. Upgraded med chassis, cryo options. Is that accurate?'

Cael's mind flashed back to the spark of light he'd seen on the hull in the impound yard.

Had someone been checking the inventory?

'Paid it off too,' Cael said, pride slipping out before he could contain it.

He hoped she didn't check too closely. As far as he knew, the hardware was still sitting in crates in the Nadir's hold, untouched since the impoundment.

But Solé merely smiled. It didn't meet her eyes.

'That's good. You're going to need it. Let's hope we can do something about the issues with that lease.' She glanced past him. 'Where's your team posted?'

'Two decks down. None of us likes it up here. It's too heavy.'

Maybe Vetch could still cope with one-g, but he had other reasons for avoiding these people.

Solé's eyes narrowed.

'I'm sorry.'

Cael would have been shocked if she'd ever said those words and meant them.

'But they'll need to attend. Form counts. This meeting demands a full cast.'

Cael didn't bother arguing. Without another word, he signalled Nomi to meet them and bring Vetch with her. Then he sat back as Solé flagged down an Acolyte for service.

Twenty minutes of painful small talk later, Nomi and Vetch arrived.

Solé stood to greet them.

'Seer Nomi, always a pleasure. You look exceptionally calibrated today.'

Nomi's chin locked tight. She hated the title, but in the Helix, protocol was the only currency that kept its value.

Her face slid into a new configuration. Her Seer face, as Cael thought of it. Not a literal transformation, just the way she held herself.

Even her name, Nomi, was chosen. Her given name had been cast into the wind when she achieved her rank at Yurrah Temple. She'd never shared it, and he doubted she ever would.

Cael had pieced together as much as he could in the five years they'd known each other. He didn't know why she was here, but she seemed content to drown out her past with the Drift.

'Nice suit,' Nomi replied. 'Mirador Line, classic weave? That thread carries metre.'

Solé smiled, broad and practised. Nowhere near her eyes.

'Sharp eye, as expected.' Solé's gaze flicked around the room. 'Let's take this somewhere more secure, shall we?'

Nomi moved towards the booth as Solé indicated the way. Vetch lingered at the edge of the carpet, looking like an industrial cutter someone had accidentally dropped into a jewellery box.

He offered a firm handshake. Cael noted that he'd at least washed the grease off it. The gesture was a move he'd clearly practised from watching old vids of 'important people'.

Patiently, Solé took his hand and shook once, already guiding him onwards with the other arm.

'Suit walks, I keep step,' Vetch said, grinning to himself.

Cael followed Vetch, with Solé behind them.

He wasn't sure what the rush was. Normally, there was more public chat, more time spent feeling out a crew. Solé knew all of them, of course, but it was always part of the experience.

Out here, journeys took months or years. A few extra minutes wouldn't hurt. At least, not more than the keening pressure already seeping from his implant.

Solé flicked a gesture towards the wall panels. The privacy field engaged with a weighty, pressurised thrum that made the air feel as heavy as their bodies.

'Seat yourself. Please.'

The final word landed like punctuation.

As the privacy field settled, the Helix's ambient hum dimmed, giving way to a hollow stillness that felt profoundly unnatural.

Automated cleaning droids crawled over the outer glass, their shadows passing across the stars for brief moments. Holographic advertisements flickered beyond, frozen mid-loop. They showed smiling executives, luxury goods, real food instead of protein packs and flavouring. All the distractions of a life Cael had never known.

His implant twitched again, sending a faint wave of static across his vision and blurring the edges. He blinked hard a few times to clear it, but the distortion clung, clawing at the borders of his sight.

Solé's shoes tapped against the clear pane laid over the void. Inside the privacy field, even the echo felt muted.

Cael's implant picked up a subharmonic vibration, low and rhythmic, resonating from deep inside the Helix's internal structure: a subtle pulse, like a heartbeat slowed to a crawl.

It was so low-frequency that he felt it vibrate through him.

How had he never noticed it before?

It struck him in the gut, a count of twelve that made him nauseous.

'Comfortable?' Solé asked abruptly.

Anything but.

Her question cut through the swell of sensation, dragging him firmly back into the present.

Even with the privacy lock, they still sat exposed to the black beyond the bay, where the cleaning droids and advertisements lingered. In the silence, it felt less like luxury and more like surveillance.

Cael, Nomi, and Vetch settled into their assigned seats. Solé sat across from them. Vetch stretched himself out to his full width, trying to look relaxed even in the uncomfortable gravity, but a voice from the booth's speaker made him flinch.

'Who is present?'

It sounded human, but threaded with static, as though it had travelled too far. Cael figured it was an Acolyte in a control room somewhere.

Solé responded without hesitation.

'Remnants: Caelum Solari, Vetch Harrow, Seer Nomi, and Syndicate Member Solé Vanth.'

A broad-beam, low-intensity laser swept across their faces. It was deliberate, scanning each of them in silence. To Cael, it felt as though it lingered a beat longer on the left side of his face.

'Confirmed,' the voice replied immediately.

Beside him, Nomi stiffened. Her filaments flared a sharp, restless amber for a second. It wasn't quite fear, but recognition tinged with anxiety. Whatever she heard in that voice, she didn't like it.

Solé must have spotted it. She extended one hand, not to comfort or threaten, but simply as a signal.

Relax.

Solé handed each of them a briefing pad. Palm-sized displays, thin as paper, packed with recursive streams of text.

'Six months ago, one of our Lectors detected a signal from deep in Drift Space.' She paused. 'My techs wanted to discard it. It was non-repeating, with no return signature. But the Lector was insistent. Kept flagging it as top priority.'

She pressed her thumb to the inside of her palm, beneath the fourth digit.

A subdermal trigger.

A single note sounded.

Discordant. Wrong.

Something inside the Resonator unlocked violently, like a seized engine suddenly turning free. His right eye flickered, and his iris seemed to fracture like a cracked lens. His vision pixelated, breaking into fractals of colour and form, then reassembled just out of alignment.

In his fractured vision, light bled from the thin arc of circuitry behind his skull, and the low pulse he'd been hearing for months became a storm. No longer content to sit in the background.

For a moment, it was as though he could see through the walls of the bay. Tendrils of structure flowed into other parts of the Helix. Shadowed figures froze mid-conversation. Layers of encrypted data bled from hidden terminals. Threads of conversation whispered through his skull.

Then it shifted again.

Sharper now.

He tasted an old memory, iron-rich and warm: dust brushed from a relic, a dead body, a glint of silver.

He hadn't thought about that day in years, not until last night. It was too painful. But after surfacing twice in as many days, the memory felt intimate and wrong.

There was something deeper there too. More fundamental.

The memory spoke to him, whispered, made promises.

It could have been anyone.

Wrong place. Wrong time.

That's what Remis had told him.

But the Resonator now seemed to whisper the opposite.

His Gift.

He gritted his teeth, forcing back nausea and the invasive thoughts. The implant pulsed rhythmically with quiet insistence. With each reset, it became almost comforting in its intimacy compared with what he'd just experienced.

Beneath the known rhythm was something new.

Cael gripped the hard edge of the table until it hurt. This frequency was too insistent, too personal, too familiar, and it was already burrowing deeper.

His breathing hitched. He could feel their eyes on him, sharp with concern.

Nomi was staring, her head cocked as though listening intently. She looked pale but gave no sign that she could see what he had seen.

Vetch placed a firm hand on Cael's shoulder and squeezed, as if Cael were merely showing the effects of last night's drinking.

Solé, for her part, stared down past her feet and into the black, where a cleaning droid worked through its routine.

Unaware, uninterested, or waiting?

As she waited for Cael to recover, Nomi broke the silence. Her voice felt distant, as though she were speaking from the other end of a long tunnel.

Cael swallowed hard, trying to wash away the taste of the memory. On his display, the briefing pad's recursive menus blurred into a jagged smear of light.

'Archaic, but non-repeating?' Nomi said, keeping one eye on Cael. 'Likely a death scream. Centuries ago.'

'That's what my techs believed too. We still hear them sometimes,' Solé said offhandedly, her attention returning to the trio.

But there was a new tension behind her eyes. She poured herself a drink. When she looked back up, glass in hand, she leaned back and crossed one knee over the other.

Composure restored.

'The Lector kept flagging it for immediate attention,' she continued, waving her free hand conversationally. 'Whatever it is, the Lector considers it to be of incredible value. Eventually, it gave us a location and tagged it with Omega priority. There's no higher.'

'Omega priority?' Nomi whispered, her voice tight.

Cael looked to her for more detail. He'd never heard of an Omega-class object.

'That's not just a pre-Collapse artefact designation,' Nomi said, her eyes rapidly scanning her pad.

'The signal didn't repeat,' Solé said. 'But the Lector submitted it seventeen times. Back-to-back.'

'No commentary. Just escalation tags?' Nomi asked, not looking up.

Solé gave no answer.

'That's not standard metre for Collapse-work,' Nomi murmured, more to herself than Solé.

She turned to Cael.

'A transmission like this isn't Rem work, Cael. It's absurd.'

Then back to Solé, her face grim.

'It feels off-tempo. This is Acolyte work.'

'I assure you, we know what it means. You're overreacting,' Solé insisted, clipped and precise, inviting no further questions.

'Well, you had me at goldglaed,' Vetch said, cutting through the tension.

Vetch was easy-going, but not foolish. A tightness behind his eyes betrayed his concern. Even he knew no run ever came without strings that couldn't be cut.

Solé's eyebrow rose ever so slightly at the strange word. Vetch was from an isolated agrarian world, and Cael thought he had most of its language translated by now.

'It means "treasure worth its weight",' Cael clarified, trying to be useful even as he bit out the words.

The Resonator still hammered at him, rhythmic, low, insistent.

He stared at the pad, hoping that doing something normal would be enough.

'We'll be going deep into Drift Space,' he said, his voice still tight. 'Thirty light-years?'

'We'll cover expenses up front,' Solé cut in quickly. 'Reward for a clean run of pre-Collapse tech from this site: seventy-five million credits, split however you want. Plus standard rates for additional material. You know where the value is.'

Vetch let out an involuntary low whistle. Cael answered with a tight-lipped smile.

This job would be a score like no other.

'That's a long trip,' Vetch said. 'You'd better reckon in what the years'll do to that sum.'

'Do you know what we're supposed to find?' Cael asked.

Solé nodded. 'On the first question, agreed. On the second, all we know is what's in the report. Omega, long distance. I can't lie, you will be gone a long time.'

'The Song doesn't carry that far for nothing,' Nomi said. 'I don't like what that implies.'

Solé tensed.

'You're right. But Omega isn't unprecedented,' she snapped. 'Contracts this deep? They go once a generation.'

Her mask slipped, but only for a moment.

'My superiors made the call. They want you, and they're willing to pay for it. My instructions are explicit. But if you're not interested, I'll find another crew.'

She gestured dismissively, but there was more than a hint of frustration in her tone.

This wasn't going the way she wanted, or she resented having to do it. Cael couldn't tell.

Even once a generation, they should have heard of one of these runs returning.

Surely?

Cael saw the lie in the way she held the gesture a half-second too long.

She wasn't thinking of another crew. She was thinking of ways to make this one say yes.

Cael knew the crews of Drift's Edge. There was no one else who could, no one else who would, take a blind dive into Drift Space.

He glanced at Nomi and saw trouble in her eyes.

We're not valuable, Cael realised. We're just desperate enough, just capable enough.

Just expendable enough.

Nomi's discomfort mirrored his own. Yet the signal pulled at something deeper, something buried.

Like it was meant for him.

It wasn't the money talking, not entirely.

Cael hesitated, logic delaying instinct. His mind replayed the last few months: the impounding of the Nadir, the tightening grip of new debt while they waited, his dwindling reserves.

That many creds would be life-changing.

But something else was there too. Something was calling to Cael, synchronising with the rhythms of his body, like it had already chosen him. Like it had already chosen for him.

An ever-shrinking part of him wanted to say no.

And yet, what choice do I truly have?

'I'll take it,' Cael blurted. 'But I trust my team to choose for themselves. I can't ask them to do this for me. And I can't do it without my ship.'

Solé merely stared at him, nothing behind her eyes betraying her thoughts.

Cael had no doubts about Vetch. There was a steadiness in him Cael had always trusted, gravity-worn and honest. The Nadir had become as much Vetch's home as his.

Nomi was different. She'd had a reputation when he brought her on. Mercurial, intense. But since she'd come aboard, she hadn't let him down once.

He tilted his head slightly in her direction.

'I've never met anyone who knows Choir intelligences better than Nomi, but we'll discuss it and confirm the full crew later.'

Nomi gave the smallest of nods.

Vetch sat back with one leg crossed over the other, his smile lopsided, exaggerated and relaxed. It seemed, unspoken, that he already had his answer.

Everyone knew this was their ticket off Drift's Edge, away from the Vaults. They had no history to hold on to that wasn't forged between them. Ahead lay the freedom of the Nine Worlds. Work on their terms.

The price was steep, but risk was the trade.

The moment Cael spoke the words I'll take it, the pressure behind his eyes shifted.

Not an easing.

A shift.

Since he'd heard that single tone, it had become a hum, playing itself over and over within his neural framework, repeating, morphing, keying in, pushing.

Something about the shape of his acceptance, the declaration of intent, fed it, and Cael's vision rippled again as the signal twisted further into his neural pathways.

It was no longer just sound, but an invasive pattern slipping between his thoughts so easily that he couldn't tell where one ended and the other began. He sensed rather than saw geometric forms glimmering at the edge of his sight, spirals and electric vines, beautiful in a way he did not trust.

His heartbeat began to synchronise with the new rhythm, and when he tried to slow it, it seemed to pull against him. Each pulse carried the promise of answers, perhaps even clarity, if only he would let the pattern all the way in.

He resisted, or thought he did, but he couldn't shake the feeling that this was exactly what the Resonator had expected.

Then a satisfaction Cael hadn't felt in months settled through him.

Months.

When did Solé say they first heard the signal?

Can't be. Just a coincidence.

The pressure changed, and suddenly he could think again. He blinked, cleared his throat and forced his eyes back to the pad.

But the rhythm didn't settle completely; it had merely switched to something quieter, as though the signal relished his recognition.

Cael caught Nomi watching him carefully and, for the first time, felt something in her answering something in him. Were her implants catching echoes of whatever was tormenting him, or had he begun to imagine signals everywhere? For the briefest moment, he wondered how much passed between them beneath conscious thought.

Solé started to speak.

'I need to make a call about your sh—'

The voice from the booth spoke again.

'Caelum Solari. Thank You For Your Cooperation. We Are Pleased To Work With You. Warranted Survey Vessel Nadir Has Been Cleared For Release. Good Luck.'

Solé's calm mask slipped. Her gaze snapped past the booth and out into the black.

'I trust the terms are clear,' she said quickly through tight teeth.

She looked down at her pad as text streamed across it, her eyes racing over the scroll.

'You will depart in twenty-four hours, or you will miss your window. My team are already loading everything you will need aboard your ship. This window is unique. Miss it, and we will not get this chance again.'

She glanced at the pad once more.

'Do not miss it.'

Another line appeared.

'Do you already have sufficient support droids for this journey?'

A pause.

'No. I do not expect you to. I will ensure a full complement.'

It felt to Cael as though she were resetting a script rather than making a decision.

His thoughts caught on the word window.

There was no one else out here. Drift's Edge was an isolated vestige, and the nearest surviving colonies, the Nine Worlds, were still months or years away. Not hours.

Nothing about the urgency was earned.

Yet it felt real.

He couldn't shake the suspicion that Solé herself wasn't in control of the release. If not her, then who?

The Syndicate would never willingly surrender its leverage. He had long suspected they'd locked his ship down for something more than paperwork.

His thoughts returned to the Lector, to the inexplicable urgency of the Omega tag.

He felt like a piece being moved according to rules he couldn't yet read. For a moment, the lingering hum of his implant felt like quiet laughter, taunting him with its hidden knowledge.

Solé gathered her things and moved to leave the booth.

'Any final questions? No? Anything you need should be on the pads.'

She gave them no time to answer. A sharp flick of her wrist dropped the privacy field, and the sounds and smells of the Helix assaulted them once more.

She turned to leave, but stopped and looked back over her shoulder.

'Good luck. Given the time involved, I likely won't be here when you return.'

She took a step, then stopped again.

Without turning, she said, 'For what it's worth, goodbye.'

With that, she was gone.

Leaving just the three of them and the black.

Her perfume lingered, its tang bright, synthetic, and impossible to forget. They sat in stunned silence, the magnitude of their decision pressing down with the weight of years.

Cael stared into the black through the frame of his hands, imagining the decades that would slip away as they slept, everyone they knew ageing beyond them.

Nomi looked pale and unsettled, wrestling with a truth she hadn't yet voiced.

Even Vetch was quiet, flexing his fingers as if counting the years he was about to sacrifice.

'What did we just agree to?' Vetch murmured, breaking the silence at last. 'Feels like we're being fattened for the pot. Too much for free.'

Nomi shook her head, not to disagree.

'Cael, she isn't telling us something. An Omega tag? That's not for Rem work. The Burn-Lens run only got a Sigma tag. I've never seen higher than that for a clan.'

Cael understood that it didn't make sense, but something in him answered to it wilfully all the same.

'It could be she can't tell us. It could be she's lying. Or it could be that this is bigger than her.'

'Can't say I like any of that,' Vetch murmured.

'Besides, let's not discuss it here,' Cael continued, gesturing to the open Helix around them. 'Unless you can get that field back up.'

But even as he said it, he wondered whether the field had ever really kept anything said here secret.

Not from anything that mattered.