In the Light of a Broken Moon: Episode One by Bri Spicer

Author:Bri Spicer [Spicer, Bri]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AB Spicer, LLC
Published: 2020-10-25T23:00:00+00:00

Over the next two weeks, the Way-Between-Worlds carries them steadily closer to Lillium. Demya lets the engines run low, and, each day, their gentle hum fills the ship with a constant, soothing song. A comforting reminder that the air recyclers and the water purifiers and the life-support systems are all functioning properly. If Demya wanted, she could sleep for the next two weeks without any worry.

But now that she actually has the time to rest, her mind races endlessly, playing out the very worst possible scenarios that she and Selena might encounter on Lillium and the most awful endings to their story. The peaceful silence on the ship does nothing to alleviate the slow spiral of her anxiety either. Never once in the last seven years can Demya remember such a long stretch of calm without even a hint of a crisis. Now, in the quiet, her instincts insist that she discover whatever catastrophe must have befallen when she dared to sleep, when she failed to keep vigil.

After three days, Demya decides that if she cannot escape the relentless rush of anxiety, she’ll try and burn it off with manual labor. So, although the starship’s systems all show gold, Demya makes a list of all the inconsequential repairs that she’s put off for months and descends down the maintenance shafts with her welding torch and her tools. At meals, she shovels down her food, determined to get back to work as quickly as possible. In the evenings, when she finally collapses into bed, she can only sigh with relief. Too exhausted for dreams or nightmares, she sinks down into a dark and heavy sleep.

But at the end of that first week, Demya finds her task list running short. At the kitchen table, over breakfast, she sorts through the ship’s system, searching for something to fill her time. Passing through the kitchen to grab one of the glowfruit from the woven baskets over the wash basin, Selena passes something into Demya’s data well. She brushes a kiss against Demya’s cheek and continues on her way back to her research in the starship’s data pool.

Gazing after her, mystified, Demya pulls up her holo. Inside, she finds a data sphere, dense with information and intricately woven together. When she expands the sphere, the information spills out inside her holo and all across the kitchen in brilliant pixels of golden light. As Demya sifts through it all, she realizes that Selena compiled tomes of information for her about House Obcasus and Lillium.

High-resolution renderings of the moon's terrain and the debris captured in orbit. Satellite photos of House Obcasus’s vital infrastructure and the layout of their estate. Maps detailing the underground tunnels that lead away from the estate and into the mountains to the east and west. Escape routes of last resort, with plenty of twists and turns, Demya realizes as she studies their labyrinthine structure.

Selena has also included architectural plans for the crumbling mansion from various stages of its construction. Documentary footage detailing the Imperial siege lines across the moon.

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