Star Keepers: Digus

Star Keepers: Digus
by
Paul Adams

The planet Hedes is the seventh planet in the Delver system, twelve systems over from Earth’s solar system. It is famous for its two hundred and eighty-four moons forming an intricate system of orbits around it, the highest number of moons around an inhabited planet on the records of the United Worlds. The gravitational pull of the moons impacts conditions on the water-covered planet, creating tidal storms that blanket the skies with perpetual gray. The amphibious people of the world have constructed enormous floating cities that drift aimlessly, tossed to and fro on the turbulent seas, with enormous walls that protect them both from the storms above and the terrors of the deep below.

On the outer walls of one of these cities, a small hatch opened onto a service balcony, and two members of the Hedian race stepped out. The younger of the two, Digus, glanced up at the open sky above him. Endless gray in all directions, with exactly twenty-three moons looming silent and uncaring beyond the clouds. Not a single star in sight. As usual. Digus’s pale eyes tightened with bitterness as cold rain spattered his face.

A mountainous black wave of water rose up high above them. One hundred feet, Digus calculated. Two hundred. Three hundred. Three hundred fifty-eight . . . point-two feet. The wave crashed down against the side of the city two hundred feet to their left, throwing Digus back against the wall behind him. Digus’s webbed hands clenched around the loose metal scraps he had been fiddling with. He didn’t know what he’d been doing with them yet, just connecting the pieces and reshaping to see how they’d fit together. Now they were crumpled and broken. Maybe they could still work, but his options were limited.

“Hey, kid,” his older companion grumbled. “Quit daydreaming and put that junk away. We got work to do.”

Digus looked away from the wave. “Sorry, Tasher,” he said, scowling and putting the scraps back in his workbag. Tasher looked nearly identical to Digus. Identical to almost every Hedian, Digus thought. He had the same pallid, yellow skin, the same crest rising just an inch or two above the skull, the same gills at the back of the neck. Thanks to their shared job, they even shared the same light blue maintenance uniform. The only difference between the pair was the wrinkles and sagging skin marring Tasher’s older face, and the special yellow badge on his shoulder that allowed him clearance to enter the higher security areas of the city.

Tasher handed Digus a set of arm and leg braces. “Let’s hurry this up,” he said, squinting through the rain at the dark waves. “I don’t want to be out here longer than I have to.”

Digus took the braces and started fixing them around his wrists and ankles, glancing over the balcony railing. The slope of the wall curved away from him, down to the water below, at a curvature that was not quite pi, but very close. Maybe off by a hundredth or so. The water below kept shifting closer to and farther away from him as the concentric circles that made up the city’s walls did their work to keep the interior city balanced. As he looked, the outer wall dipped, bringing the water level almost up to the edge of the balcony, causing him to tilt forward slightly, with the inner wall rising hundreds of feet behind them.

Digus fastened his final leg brace around his right leg and moved on to his right arm brace. He pushed up his sleeve, revealing the thin, silver armband he wore. He rubbed the band’s smooth surface and tapped at it. The metal glowed green at his touch. He smiled at the band, fixing the brace around his arm above it so as not to cover it up. The fit was tighter, but Digus didn’t care.

“I wish you’d take that thing off,” Tasher said, glaring distastefully at the band. “Placing your brace that high up makes it difficult to work quicker.”

Digus shrugged, pulling his sleeve back over the brace and band. “This band’s going to be the galaxy’s greatest invention someday,” he said.

“Yeah, sure, kid,” Tasher said. “Assuming you could actually find someone to care about a scrap of metal made by a leech.” Tasher swung his leg over the railing and dropped over the side. Digus followed his lead. As he fell, the braces around his wrists and ankles lit up with pink light, magnetically latching him to the steel wall. Tasher hung beside him, hands and feet splayed against the damp metal surface. “Come on, kid,” he said. “Hopefully we won’t be out here all day.”

Tasher cast a wary eye out at the thrashing waves behind him, now several hundred feet below. Digus followed his gaze. “You think there might be eels out there today?” he asked.

Tasher didn’t answer for a moment. Finally, he shook his head. “No. No. Probably not. Their migration doesn’t pass through for another month or so. I mean, there could be loners, I guess. But . . . no, I’m sure we’ll be fine. Come on.”

Digus and Tasher worked their way down the curve of the wall, their braces keeping them latched to the wall, but hovering an inch or two from the metal itself allowing them to speed down the side of the wall smoothly. Here and there, they stopped at a spot or two of green, growing patches of rock-hard muck and spent about ten-point-five to twenty minutes scraping them off so they wouldn’t wear down the metal. Every now and then, they would find small spine-covered crustaceans burrowed in the muck and would collect them in their pouches. Tasher didn’t keep track, but Digus knew that after the first three hours, they had collected ninety-seven: thirty-two for Tasher, sixty-five for himself.

At random intervals over the course of the day, Tasher would yell “Brace!” He and Digus would both stop what they were doing and press themselves against the wall as the turbulent water rushed toward them and enveloped them in chilling blackness. Most of the time, Digus would start working again once they submerged, his gills opening up to let the water in. He’d like to say it felt good, but it was just more cold and dark, like everything else. He didn’t spend too much time lingering on it any more. Tasher took longer to get working once they ended up under water. Even when he did, he spent every other minute jumping at every shadow that moved past. Typically, their submersion only lasted a minute or two, but at one point it went on for over an hour.

After six hours and twelve minutes of work, Digus decided he had waited long enough. He glanced up at the sky, that bland gray prison, as if to tell the time. As if one could tell time on a sky like that, he thought. He worked his way over to where Tasher was working at a particularly large growth of muck.

“Remember how I said my armband’s going to be the galaxy’s greatest invention someday?” he asked.

Tasher didn’t look up, chipping at the muck with his pick. “Yeah, and I said you’d be lucky to find someone interested in that piece of junk.”

Digus started chipping at the muck. “Well, what if I told you I’d already found a buyer?”

“I’d say you were crazy.”

“And what if I told you my buyer was willing to get me passage off this stormcloud as long as I gave him a demonstration.”

“Oh, yeah,” Tasher said, pulling a crustacean loose and tossing it in his bag. “And what exactly does this guy want you to do?”

“Sink the city.”

Tasher paused in the middle of clasping his bag. He glanced up to see if Digus was kidding. Digus simply stared back. Tasher chuckled and turned back to his work. “Good luck with that,” he said. “How’s that little thing supposed to pull that off?”

Digus rolled up his sleeve, showing off the thin strip of silver. “Did I ever show you everything this ‘little thing’ can do?” he asked. He tapped at a spot on its surface, making it light up green. Three of Tasher’s arm and leg braces flashed red and shut down, leaving Tasher hanging by only his right arm.

“What are you doing!” Tasher yelled, his arm and legs flailing as he struggled to get a grip on the muck beside him.

“Brace!” Digus shouted, as the water’s surface rushed to meet them. He pressed himself against the steel as the water slammed into them with tremendous force. Tasher was thrown against the wall, his head cracking against the steel. Once under, Digus moved closer to him and pulled the yellow badge from his shoulder. He tapped at his armband and a small glowing circle separated from it. Digus clasped the circle and attached it to Tasher’s uniform. He then pressed the surface of his armband to Tasher’s bleeding forehead. Two-point-three seconds later, their heads broke the surface as the wall carried them into the sky again.

Tasher sputtered and blinked at Digus, blood leaking from the wound on his head. “What . . . what are you doing, Digus?” he said. “What did you do?”

“Just collecting a few of the things I need to pull the job off,” he said. “You’re right, of course. My armband can’t pull off the job. On its own at least.” He held up the yellow badge. “This should help it along.”

Tasher stared at the badge, blinking the water and blood out of his eyes and trying to comprehend. “What are you talking about?” he said. “They’re not just going to let you in because you have the badge. They’ll know you’re not me. Now, turn my braces back on!”

Digus turned the band around his arm a quarter of an inch. It sent a shiver of electricity up his arm. The skin on his face started to develop wrinkles and sag in places. His crest got a little thicker, his arms felt a little heavier. Tasher stared in wonder as his own doppelganger stared back at him. “Holy moon spirits,” he said.

“That tag I stuck on your uniform should attract any eels in the area to you,” Digus said. “Sorry, Tasher, but I have a much better chance of pulling this off if people think I’m you and not me.”

Tasher stared at Digus, processing his words. “You—you’re going to kill me?”

Digus smiled. He glanced down. “Oh, look,” he said. “We just might have our first customer.” Tasher followed his gaze. An enormous, black shadow slithered through the murky water far below them. A glistening, red fin broke the surface.

Tasher grabbed at the muck, desperately struggling to get some footing. His breathing sped up and he kept his eyes locked on the shadow below him. “Digus! Digus!” He shouted. “Come on, kid! You can’t do this! We’re friends. Please! I’m sorry for calling it junk. Please!”

Digus held his finger over his armband, but hesitated. He glanced up at the sky again. For a fleeting second, he thought he saw a star peeking through the moons and clouds. But before he could look again, the clouds shifted and it was gone. Digus’s eyes hardened. “Goodbye, Tasher,” he said. He tapped his armband and shut off his partner’s remaining brace. Tasher fell, screaming, into the dark depths below. He fell so far that Digus couldn’t even hear the splash when he hit. Four seconds later, the water erupted in frothy havoc.

Digus breathed deeply, his gills opening and closing. His brain was already calculating how far the drop must have been. Two hundred, three hundred feet. Tasher likely wouldn’t even have had to worry about eels. Digus shook his head. Time to work. He tapped the surface of his armband and his braces pushed away from the side of the wall while keeping him aloft, repelling him but still attracting him enough that he didn’t fall to his death.

Digus pointed his armband at the wall, pressing two fingers against it. Bright green light built up along its edges as Digus clenched his fist. A blinding green light blasted from the tiny armband, forcing Digus to close his eyes. He counted to seventeen and a third before removing his fingers. A gaping hole, glowing with green radiation, now took up a twelve-foot span across the city’s hull. Not deep enough to pierce even the outer wall, but enough to look like something big had attacked it. Digus rubbed his armband’s surface. “Well done,” he whispered tenderly. Digus tapped the armband again, returning to the wall just outside the blast radius. He could feel the heat coming off the melted steel.

“The ship came out of nowhere,” he rehearsed to himself, Tasher’s gruff voice coming out of his mouth. “That poor kid. He got caught in the blast. Nothing I could do.”

He sped up to the service balcony high above him. The clouds and moons roiled above him, mirroring the sea below. There were no stars to be seen. There were never any stars.

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