Chapter 11 — The Off-Orbit Stargazer

The day after the black storm, Emberfall Camp.

In the camp's deepest room — a star-observatory converted from an old-era starship charting-bay — hung a unique clean scent of old parchment, high-purity metal lubricant, dried herbs, and mineral silver-powder. At the room's center stood a bronze celestial telescope built on a rusted mining-drill base; the four walls were papered thick with silver-penciled star-track deduction diagrams, dense and complex.

This was the private domain of Lyra, the camp's intelligence officer and stargazer.

"Come come! Sister Vespera, sit in this old leather chair! Don't be shy — for a new companion of our outpost, this lady reads your fate-phase free of charge!"

A bright, clear, warm-breeze-lively voice rang in the quiet observatory.

It was Lyra herself.

She wore that oversized Deep-Space Observer jacket hung with every sort of engineering pocket and constellation patch; her just-ear-length black hair swayed light with her lively motion. Her star-bright eyes shone with unhidden curiosity and warmth, and when she smiled a small, likable canine tooth peeked — lively as a shaft of brilliant sunlight falling straight into this cold underground waste.

Across from her, Vespera — the mortal alias of the supreme Dark God Umbra — sat quiet in the leather-seated chair.

"Thank you, Lyra." Vespera inclined her head; her voice was level and elegant, no ripple of emotion.

"Ah, what thanks! Having a sister this pretty to chat with, I'm thrilled!" Lyra grinned wide, bared her clever little canine tooth.

She rolled up her jacket sleeves with practiced ease, pulled on a pair of half-finger tactile-feedback gloves. Then she turned briskly and laid her slender palms on a complex bronze instrument glowing faint blue on the table.

That was her personal off-track wonder — the Off-Orbit Astrolabe.

Built from three scrapped starship navigators, a dozen-plus high-purity energy-crystals, and ancient star-gears, it could sense the faint physical phase within a living thing and reverse-deduce its native trajectory on the LinBoo Astrolabe.

"All right, relax, don't move! Let this lady have a good look at your native phase on the LinBoo Astrolabe… huh? What's this?"

Lyra's bright tease caught, without warning, in her throat.

Her bright eyes widened; she stared, shocked, at the several wildly jumping bronze orbit-needles on the Off-Orbit Astrolabe. The needles spun a few frantic circles on the disc carved with constellation runes, then, as if they'd lost some vital gravity-magnetic pull, drooped listless into a deep phase dead-angle, and went still.

The observatory fell into a deeply eerie dead-silence.

"Strange… really strange…" Lyra scratched her black hair, fine brows knit, muttered puzzled to herself. "The astrolabe can't read any native star-track fluctuation from you? How can that be? Every living thing born within the LinBoo system — even a mutated wasteland sand-rat — from the moment of birth has its life-law forcibly logged in the central Astrolabe… how are you 'not on the Astrolabe'?"

Across from her, the depths of Vespera's eyes contracted, imperceptibly.

As the supreme Dark God enthroned in the higher-dimensional Divine Court, her true divine body stood above the fragile Astrolabe-ledger of the lower mortals. A measuring instrument cobbled from scrap-iron and mortal wit, trying to deduce her native phase, was no different from a mortal's bamboo sliver measuring the depth of the boundless Void.

"Probably the overdose waste-radiation shock when my escape pod crashed," Vespera gave, unruffled, an utterly flat explanation.

Yet under the black cloak's cover, Umbra's slender fingertip gave the faintest pinch.

A barely perceptible higher-dimensional law-fold formed at her fingertip from nothing. She controlled the flow with precision, forcing a wisp of simulated low-dimensional suffering-refugee fluctuation, silent along the air-current, into the Off-Orbit Astrolabe across from her.

Click! Click!

The jammed astrolabe needles suddenly lurched hard, the tiny inner gears gave a crisp scrape, then slowly swung to a far, remote phase — a dim outer sector marking barrenness and calamity.

"Whew—! Scared me half to death!" Lyra patted her full chest, breathed a bright, relieved laugh. "Knew it! If even a big living person like you weren't on the Astrolabe, this lady's proud Off-Orbit Astrolabe would be nothing but scrap copper! See, it read you — an 'outer calamity sector.' No wonder some world-ending disaster flung you to this godforsaken blind spot."

Though it had produced a "result," the brilliant, sharp-minded Lyra still felt, in her heart, a certain wordless strangeness.

She shrugged, peeled off the gloves and dropped them on the table, blinked her bright eyes and leaned close to Vespera, lowered her voice playful and curious:

"But seriously, Sister Vespera, you're calm enough. Any other refugee in camp, hearing their fate landed in a 'calamity sector,' would be bawling and praying to the gods — you didn't even wrinkle a brow. Back home, weren't you some well-traveled, high-born somebody?"

"I don't remember." Vespera's tone stayed flat as water.

"All right all right! Forgetting's fine — in a place like Emberfall Camp, a full belly and a good today beat anything!" Lyra grinned bright, bared her cute canine tooth, waved a careless hand. "You rest in here; I'll go see how that stubborn kid Elias is cleaning his gun!"

Before the words were out, the lively girl had slung her coat and slipped briskly from the observatory.

A moment later, the camp's rear armory workshop.

The place reeked of scalding metal-spark and sharp gun-oil. Elias knelt on one knee on the cold gravel, a thick cotton rag soaked in heavy machine-oil in hand, cleaning with utter focus the inner barrel of an old-model high-pressure pneumatic gun. His motion was steady as a statue; deep in those lake-green eyes sat a cold, focused light, ready at any moment to choose a victim.

Thunk.

The iron door swung open bright; Lyra bounced in like a lively gust.

"Hey! Stiff kid, still polishing that beat-up iron gun?" Lyra skipped over, hands behind her back, poked her little head out to peer at Elias, teased brightly. "The way you're scrubbing that gun, you'll wear the barrel down a layer!"

"Something, Lyra?" Elias didn't stop cleaning; his tone was flat.

"Course there is! This lady's got first-hand intel!" Lyra dragged over an old oil-drum for a seat, propped her chin, shared大方. "I just read the native phase for the new Sister Vespera… you know? At first, my Off-Orbit Astrolabe couldn't read a single star-track fluctuation from her! The needle jammed dead, like… like she didn't even exist in this universe's ledger!"

Elias's cleaning hand stopped dead!

He slowly lifted his head; those bloodshot, lake-green eyes locked on the lively girl. "Not on the Astrolabe?"

"Right!" Lyra blinked bright, went on. "Later the needle jumped to a remote phase, but I kept feeling that fluctuation was fake — like it'd been slapped together on the spot just to fool my machine. Weird, huh? But she's really pretty, and so quiet — right?"

Yet inside Elias, in that instant, a tidal wave rose!

Not on the Astrolabe…

In this cage-universe where all things, all myriad mortals' life and death, were strictly monitored by the Divine Court's Astrolabe and written into fate-tracks, only two extremely rare kinds of existence were "not on the Astrolabe"!

The first — was his kind: an "off-track Anomaly" who, by absolute physical chance, had dodged the Silent Strike.

The second… was the godhead itself, enthroned above the whole law-cage.

"Lyra," Elias's voice was heavy, solemn; he looked hard at the unguarded girl and warned, "this — besides me, tell no one in camp. Especially not Caleb."

Lyra froze, saw the unprecedented seriousness and wariness on the boy's face, dropped her playfulness. Brilliant as she was, she caught at once the great danger hidden beneath, and nodded hard:

"Okay okay, I know what's at stake! This lady's mouth is famous for being sealed! Don't worry — I won't breathe a word of it, not even to that old hide Caleb."

She reached out,大方 clapped Elias's shoulder, her eyes full of real care. "But don't push yourself so hard either. Your wounds just scarred over — if you collapse, this lady's got no time to nurse you daily."

"I know. Thank you, Lyra." Elias looked at the bright, open girl; a flicker of long-lost warmth crossed his cold heart.

After Lyra left, the workshop fell back to dead silence.

Elias gripped the gun-barrel again, his gaze through the broken window-gap fixed hard on the direction of Vespera's room.

A woman not on the Astrolabe… a body whose dark-energy resonated with his in mystery…

That woman who called herself amnesiac, named Vespera — her true face was step by step tearing off the veil of disguise!