The Ballad of the Gods: Part 2 | Short Story
Yesterday gets ready to finish the heist all the while wondering if it was actually worth it
This is the second and final part of The Ballad of the Gods, a Scikera set short story. Read Part 1 if you haven’t already.
Part 2: The Noise
1.
This was why Yesterday had been hired for the job. Bast could have broken in here himself but he’d never be able to extract the kind of information needed. The kind of information you’d only be able to extract if you could see everything. Feel everything.
That, unfortunately for Yesterday, was her specialty. Her gift, as she’d been told by the few who knew what she could do. A gift that keeps on giving, she thought. One that turns time into an ocean, biding its time until she lets down her guard, ready to flood her brain.
Psychometry was the technical term. Seeing the history of an object through physical touch. Yesterday preferred to call it by a different name. Noise. An unceasing deluge of noise, like a billion whispers invading her mind and altering her perception of reality. The gift of noise.
She pushed open the office door to Valero Stracken’s office and stepped inside. The strange, ethereal glow of the atmosphere as Calibray passed by overhead looming large in the night sky illuminated the darkened office in brilliant flashes of blue and black and gold.
She glanced out at the Isa City through the curved panoramic windows that made up one wall of the office. A kingdom, she thought.
Stracken’s office was in keeping in decor with the rest of the facility. Paintings, golden lettering, wooden furniture, manufactured history. The obnoxiously oversized desk was exactly the kind of ostentatious display she’d expected of Straken. Even the Thousand Suns Confederation flag that draped behind the barely used leather chair felt bigger and more imposing. All by design, she was sure. All undoubtedly compensating for the man who occupied the room.
Beyond the outsized furniture and decoration and the uncanny artifice visible in their blatant attempt at making the building feel older than it was, the office held all the hallmarks of the Calonian elite. A drinks cabinet made of glass brought in from The Golden City, gilded metal cups no-doubt handcrafted by a metallurgist of the highest caliber and a decanter filled half way with a bronze whisky sat against the window.
A solid gold pen sat atop paper emblazoned with the Thousand Suns Confederation emblem. The desk was empty baring a small framed holo depicting Stracken in his military uniform during the height of the war. A picture of the man in his prime, the last time he was truly useful. The young Straken was tall and broad, the kind of man who’d look at home on the back of a sizor tank rolling through the wilds of Doraketh or Tameria.
She couldn’t help but get distracted by the city beyond the window. The streets flowing with life, the thrum of music and laughter and the pop of fireworks permeating even the plated glass of the building. She’d never seen anything like it. Isa City and all her millions all gathered with one common aim.
She pulled herself away from the window and approached the desk from Stracken’s side. His chair sat on an imperceptibly small platform that she tripped up as she approached. Time for the noise, she thought to herself.
With a sigh, Yesterday slid the glove off of her right hand, the cool air meeting her skin in an uncomfortable crawl. She nearly backed out, almost instinctively setting the glove back onto her hand. Deep breath. Hold. Exhale. Repeat.
The gold pen glimmered in the playful firework light, almost glowing against the dark wood of the desk. Slowly, she lowered her shaking hand towards the object grasping it between her index finger and her thumb.
The world around her melted away, time rolling back like snatches of a dream projected onto the universe. It moved so quickly that she nearly lost her footing. In a second she was watching the gold being poured into a mold and the machinery hammering away at metal until it formed the shape of the pen she held between her fingers.
She saw the face of the smith who levered the press down onto the newly formed shape, a boy obscured by a darkened face shield, wearing a leather apron emblazoned with the symbol of House Setia.
She could smell the forge, bitter and metallic, hot ash lingering and brewing. She took in a deep breath and the sounds of the smith fell away, time moving forward so fast that all but the object in her hand became a blur. That is until she saw the distinct shape of Stracken as he held the pen in his hand.
He was a glow, an afterimage flickering atop the distant reality her power had snatched her briefly beyond.
“Are you sure of this Sir?” a disembodied voice asked from across the vast expanse that was Straken’s desk.
“It is only fair,” he replied. “They haven’t yet seen Seris and I know that Tarl particularly has a fondness for the protectorate worlds.”
“Perhaps it would be better to bring them after the festival?”
“And miss the spectacle?”
He wrote onto the paper, repeating the words for the man stationed near the door to the office.
“Our ship will be arriving at the TSC Dock Seven at eighteen-past the hour,” he said, “I’ve made note of the itinerary here.”
He ripped off the top sheet of paper and handed it to the man.
“Ensure we have extra guards stationed at the Dock and my private transport setup. I want to give my family the Royal treatment.”
2.
She let go of the pen and stumbled back from the desk as time caught up with itself and the faded image of Stracken drew farther and farther from view.
“Bast you fuck,” she muttered to herself. She had her target. She had everything Bast had hired her for and more.
She knew enough about Valero Stracken to know that she wouldn’t lose any sleep over him getting blown to hell by Bast but his family? Yesterday liked to think she drew the line at having a hand in murdering children.
“You don’t look like you should be in here?” a voice asked from across the room. Instinctively, Yesterday reached her hand to her hip for her weapon.
“No need for that,” the voice said as it stepped into the light of the office. “I’m not one to sound the alarm.”
The man wore the clothes of the Thousand Suns Confederation but he seemed different. He walked with a casual sway and wore a half smirk on his face. The look of a man who was willfully participating in a farce just to see how it panned out.
He was handsome, the kind of man whose ability to wear a uniform better than most had likely gotten him far in life. In one hand he held a glass of something Yesterday was sure had to be whiskey. The other hand he held out to the side as if to reinforce the fact that he wasn’t a threat.
“You don’t look like someone who kills innocent bureaucrats,” he said.
“Looks can be deceiving,” she replied.
“Indeed they can.”
His smirk grew, briefly, into a smile.
“Stava,” he said, “and who might you be?”
“Leaving,” she said, taking out her weapon and aiming it at his chest.
“Now, now,” he said, “don’t you want to stay and watch the show?”
Ignoring the gun, Stava turned at looked out of the window towards Isa City.
“Some of my colleagues don’t much care for the protectorate worlds,” he said, “they prefer the lights and home comforts of The Golden City.”
“And you’re different?”
“I like to think so,” he said, “although I don’t believe we truly know who we are until we’re faced with an impossible choice.”
“Like what?”
“Like whether this new universe we’ve built for ourselves really is the best we can do?”
Yesterday lowered her weapon but stopped short of stowing it away in its holster.
“You’re not a fan of your friends?” she said.
“I don’t really know,” Stava said. “I know that we all started on this journey with the right end game in mind.”
A brilliant blue flash of light from a barrage of fireworks filled the room. Quickly, the sky began to calm, the lights of the city dimming just long enough to see Calibray and its moons fill the sky.
“You’d be shot for saying that,” she said.
“I won’t tell if you don’t,” Stava said. “Can I get you a drink.”
“I’d rather not.”
“Rain check, then.”
He watched the sky fill with the swirling red of Calibray, a beautiful and mysterious world that felt so close he could reach out and touch it.
“I’d take take the security exit,” Stava said, “patrols are passing through the atrium and offices.”
She nodded and made to leave the room.
“Do you know who you truly are?” he asked her.
Yesterday didn’t answer. Instead, she slipped her glove back onto her right hand and left the room.
3.
Stava hadn’t lied to her about the patrols. She’d worked her way back through the building the same way she’d entered, passing by three patrols on the way. She was so focused on making it out of the building without getting caught that she’d almost forgotten why she was there in the first place.
That thought snapped back to her like a bullet the moment she stepped back out into the crowd. The floor beneath her felt soft, her stomach heavy with each step. Calibray was closer now, the Ballad was beginning.
“It’s a beautiful sight, huh?” Bast said taking up a spot on the street next to Yesterday.
“Yeah.”
“I’m not a science guy,” Bast continued. “But something feels off about this to me. How can a planet get this close to us with out crashing?”
Yesterday didn’t reply. She stood watching the water from a nearby fountain slowly start to pull upwards as the two planets neared their closest point. She felt lighter, too, as though she might any second become untethered from the ground and drift off up into space.
Her mind snapped between the unfurling red canopy cast over Isa City by Calibray and the image of Straken’s child excitedly stepping foot on a new world for the first time.
“I guess it’s just one of those things that we ain’t meant to understand,” Bast said.
“Yeah.”
“So tell me, are you getting off this rock or not?”
She didn’t look at him. She didn’t break her gaze from the planet dancing overhead. The streets had become so enraptured by the spectacle that a strange sort of silence had fallen over the crowd. A low hum, pregnant with a kind of awe and fear and respect for their place in the universe.
“Valero Stracken is your target,” she started. “He’s bringing his family here to see this.”
“Smart man,” Bast replied. “Soldier like that wouldn’t go anywhere without a shield.”
“What are you going to do to them?”
Bast smiled, “now, now, that’s not of any concern to you is it.”
“His son is just a kid,” she said.
“Don’t much matter to me,” Bast said, “I’ve been hired to do a job.”
“Why?”
Bast took one step closer to the crowd and turned to look back at Yesterday making sure that she couldn’t avoid his gaze.
“Spectacle is a powerful thing, huh? Look at all these people here to watch something big happen,” he said. “Spectacle is big, all encompassing. It grabs attention.”
“Who’s attention?”
“Anyone who’s looking. All great changes need people like us,” he said.
“We’re not the same.”
“Sure we are,” Bast replied, “we’re the ones who muck down and spark the spectacle that everyone else can’t help but watch. We’re just smart enough to get paid along the way.”
He reached into his pocked and took out two rolls of coin, “as promised. Now where’s the good Intendant and his family going to be arriving and when?”
She felt it there and then. The weight of a defining decision. She was about to find out exactly who she was.
“TSC Dock Seven at eighteen-past the hour,” she said, without looking away from the planet-rise that filled the sky.
Bast smiled, “have a pleasant trip.”
He passed her the coin, turned and disappeared into the crowd leaving Yesterday alone surrounded by spectacle and noise.