Ashes on Backworld

Sturgill had grown pushy in his old age.

Time was, he wouldn’t let anyone near a job he could do himself -- Doris included. These days, the wrinkled old codger seemed to do nothing but relax in the shade and demand a drink every time Doris passed him by.

Not that she minded too much. She liked caring for her boys.

“That’s it, dear,” Doris said as Sturgill sipped from the morning’s beverage. A bit spluttered up and she patted him reassuringly. “Not too fast, now. That’s it.”

The morning sun picked its way through the emerald leaves overhead as the day’s heat rose to chase it. Only the barest purr of wind disturbed the stillness, and beyond the garden the rusted wasteland baked like a hot cake. The scent of soil and roots was in the air as Doris moved on to her son’s side.

“Sterling,” she murmured. “How did you sleep? The nightmares didn’t come back, did they?” She offered him water, and he accepted gratefully.

Summers on Backworld were stifling. Doris was used to it -- she’d lived her whole life on these toasted plains -- but the boys got irritable with the heat.

“Relax, my son. I’ll not have you worrying, not about the heat or the war or anything. You just rest, y’hear? You’re safe here.”

Sterling had no argument against that wisdom. Doris hugged him tight and he squeezed back.

Sure, the air was miasmic, and it hadn’t rained in a week. No denying it -- summers on Backworld were hard -- but it was all leaves on the breeze to what waited out there, in the rest of the system.

“You’re safe here,” Doris murmured, clutching her son close.

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The wooden chair creaked in that comforting way as Doris settled in before the table. She extended the broadcaster’s antennae, then cranked the brass knob on its side to fill the cottage with a confused jumble of static. She twisted it a bit more, a touch this way and that, and voices pushed through the static like sprouts poking through mulch.

“-- sources report Insurgency forces have more than doubled since the battle of Solus Prime. The Core has responded with a series of brave strikes against Insurrectionist battle-training stations across the Cluster -- carried out, of course, by the heroic conscript soldiers of the Solus Cluster. Vick Wilkins is standing by on the bridge of the lumenspeed cruiser UCNF Thompson, in Backworld low orbit. Vick, we’re hearing some very concerning stories about these Insurrectionist stations, can you tell us more?”

Doris pulled her bowl of nectarmelon closer. The fruit was a lavender sphere just smaller than her own head, cased in a dimpled rind. Sturgill had grown this one for her. She cut carefully through the peel with her old wooden knife and frothy pink juices bubbled out over her hand. She inhaled deeply of the creamy, floral scent.

“Thanks Horace -- you heard right. I’m here with Captain Everett Roseheart of the UCNF Thompson, who recently led a stunning assault against an Insurrectionist battle-training station hiding in the shadow of Backworld’s moon. Captain, some of your men are coming forward with what can only be called ‘horror stories’ from the interiors of these stations. They say you single-handedly saved several children from a torturous...”

Doris let the tinny voices wash over her as she carved the nectarmelon into little cubes. It was all the same tired news, these days. Some battle had been won, or some dark Insurrectionist secret had come to light. The conflict trudged forward at that peculiar pace of interstellar warfare, with only a few major battles fought every decade. UCNF soldiers zipped around the Cluster on lumenspeed ships and hardly seemed to age, as those they left behind faded into dusty shadows.

“...pass it over to Constance for updates on the Core’s hottest new trends, including ‘lumenspeed breakups’. Can’t get away from a clingy lover? Hop on a lumenspeed cruiser and your lover will move on in no time! Constance, over to-”

Doris clicked the brass knob to the Off position. No use listening for what wasn’t coming. The war wasn’t ending, and the filthy Insurrectionists weren’t going anywhere. She’d check in again tomorrow, and the next, to see if anything had changed, but it never would.

Better to listen to the wind.

The nectarmelon shivered with flavor as Doris bit into it, ruptured into thirst-quenching juices as she chewed, filled her body with a gentle, nourishing energy as she swallowed. Fruit like this only grew in the dustbowls of Backworld, and only in the most lovingly nourished gardens, far from the smog and fancy tech of bustling cities. It was so rare it was virtually unknown offworld, and for that Doris was thankful.

She could still remember the moment everything had changed. For twenty years, she’d lived here with Sturgill, watching Sterling grow.

Then the sound of engines, so visceral Doris thought she could almost hear them now. The red glow as a UCNF starship descended upon their cottage, singing the top of her garden, and took her boys away to fight in the war.

After that, Doris had spent forty years alone. As Sturgill and Sterling shot around the Cluster on lumenspeed ships and didn’t age a day, Doris grew and bloomed and faded away like a flower in a dusty wasteland garden. Once, years passed where she didn’t hear from them at all. Years, and when she finally reached them they thought they’d only been gone a long weekend.

It had been two decades since Sturgill and Sterling came back from the war to find their wife and mother become an old woman. Two decades. Truth be told, only these little cubes of nectarmelon kept her going anymore. She popped another into her mouth, closed her eyes and savored the warm vitality it brought.

Then she froze.

She did hear engines, a low hum that grew as she rose from the table and left the cottage. She squinted up through the leaves and saw it again -- red lights, descending from the sky.

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The object that settled down in the plains beyond the garden was like no starship Doris had ever seen. It wasn’t the cold gunmetal grey of the Core lumenships, and it wasn’t the white-and-blue painted stripes of the Backworld Officiary who stopped by the cottage every few years to check on them.

This ship was a rusted umber, the very color of the dust plains surrounding. Boxy and angular, it touched down upon protesting landers that hissed and popped with steam as they flexed against the ground. Flaps of metal dangled from random angles, wires sending occasional showers of sparks down over the scarred hull. The cannons on either side of the main cab indicated that it was a warship of some sort, but Doris didn’t see the tungsten emblem of the Core on any of the fins, nor the jackal of the Officiary, and that could mean only one thing.

The young man who emerged from the rear airlock was not what she expected. Soot-smeared and baby-faced, his legs didn’t seem suited to holding his weight, and sunken wet eyes darted about wildly before they found Doris. He took a staggering step toward her, opened his mouth as if to speak, then collapsed to the ground.

Doris shuffled back, half-turning toward the cottage. She could use her old dialer to reach the Officiary in a matter of minutes. They’d want to know who was landing on their planet. They'd send a ship. It might take a couple of hours, but --

“Wait...” The young man’s voice was croaky, broken, and it reached Doris like the whisper of wind through a parched canyon. “Please… help me...”

There was something in that voice. A quiet, pleading fear that held her in place.

“You’re an Insurrectionist,” she said, not quite sure whether it was a question or an accusation.

The young man, pushing himself up to his elbows, only managed a weak nod.

“And just why would I help you?”

“Please… I’m hurt...”

“Maybe you shoulda thought of that ‘fore you became an Insurrectionist, eh?”

He was on his knees now, pulling in shallow, ragged breaths.

“Why are you here?” Doris demanded.

“They…” He found the strength to look up at her then, and Doris was taken aback by what she saw in his eyes. “They bombed my… my home...”

“You’re from one of those ‘battle-training stations’, eh? I heard they were horrible. Torturin’ children and the like.”

“Torturing…?” Even half-dead, the disbelief was apparent in his voice. “It was my home. My… family…” His arm gave way, and his cheek smacked against the caked earth.

In the far distance, Doris saw a dustdevil spin up, twisting across the low hills, straining to reach the sky.

“I don’t owe your kind anythin’,” she found she had said. “Don’t much care who bombed you, or who you lost. You took everythin’ from me, y’know that?”

“I… just… some water…”

He really was young. As young as Sterling when the Core came to bundle him away for the war.

“They killed… everyone…” He pulled himself one crawling foot closer to Doris, his face dragging in the dirt. “No warning… just… just ashes…”

Just ashes.

That dustdevil had swept off into the wastelands, now just a cloud on the horizon. The sun beat down overhead, baking the ground and smothering the air, and Doris was reminded of the last communication she ever received from Sturgill. She’d stood in the kitchen window and looked out at the dust as his baritone broke across the irregular static of the dialer, her own voice so frail she thought it might not make it through to him. He’d been somewhere far away, in a part of the Cluster so remote it stretched her mind to think about.

“I hate them,” she’d said. “I hate them for taking you from me.”

“Know that. But truth is I’m not sure who's rightly to blame for that. Were the Core what took us here, weren’t it?”

“Maybe so, but there’d be no war without the damn Insurrectionists.”

“I’ve fought ‘em, Dori. They’re no different than you and me. Only trying to hold on to what’s rightly theirs, I reckon.”

“How can you say that? Sterling shouldn’t be out there risking his life. He should be here, like you, helping with the garden and--”

“Know that, Dori. Know that. And I’ll bring him back, soon as we end this war.”

“And how many more decades will that be?”

“Dunno. I’m starting to think we won’t end anything just by fightin’ more battles, but it ain't my call. Look, I gotta go. I love you. One way or another, we'll be comin' home soon as we can, y’hear? We will.”

And they had come home. Sturgill and Sterling, in two wooden boxes each the size of a loaf of bread, handed to her by a UCNF Officer who looked like he had better places to be as he explained that their cruiser was hit by an Insurrectionist torpedo off Foreworld. This was all that was left, just...

Just ashes.

“Please… water…”

Doris looked down at the Insurrectionist, heart somehow frozen solid and pumping like an engine all at once. They’d taken everything from her, hadn’t they?

Something thudded to the ground by her side. A nectarmelon, round as her head, pink and ripe.

Doris scowled up at the tall tree spreading above her, green light filtering down through the leaves. “Pushy old codger,” she muttered, and the tree rustled with sly laughter. Behind it, a younger, greener tree shook its boughs with approval, and more plump fruits rained down.

Doris sighed, then turned back to the fallen Insurrectionist. “Just a tick while I grab my knife. We got somethin’ better than water, ‘round here.”