?:?:?:? SIXFLAME ?:?:?:?

  It was night, and I was outside the hangar with a job to do.

  "Bring us water," Sister Gemheart had said, giving me a bottle. "Not from the Hub systems. We require natural water, untouched by machines."

  I didn’t bother to hide my confusion. "Natural water? Why? From where?"

  Those were all the wrong questions, and the Sister’s eyes flashed in triumphant irritation at my ignorance. "That is for you to determine," she said crisply. "We Torchers have learned to hear the world’s whispers."

  So there I was outside, hearing not worldly whispers but the normal sounds of a frontier outpost: hums and clicks, whirrs and purrs, the occasional hiss of an opening vent. The air was like a wet and mouldy sickbay blanket: thick, warm and smelling both sweet and slightly putrid. I took cautious breaths, drawing the moisture into my lungs. I had been assured that I had nothing to fear from the atmosphere, that we could breathe it without dying, but I wasn’t sure. The beady-eyed guy at the transfer node who had prepared me for interstellar stasis had said things like “standard vaccine package” and “latest immune boosters”, but I didn’t trust him.

  I inhaled carefully as I descended the stairs leading from the hangar and out onto the Hub’s main pad. My legs were still uncertain beneath me, and I walked slowly, taking my time to enjoy the sights of this new world. The Hub — a cluster of modular buildings and stocky silos on a large pad — was far cleaner and newer than our complex on Enclave II. It was also much smaller, and I could see the perimeter fence about 100 meters away. Beyond it rose a wall of vegetation, and above it all hung that enormous violet orb. Mosogon, apparently. A planet no feet could touch.

  The vegetation beyond the fence stretched into the distance, seemingly without end. A white substance wisped above it, tinged lilac by Mosogon's planetshine. I stared at it in confusion until I realized that this was mist, rising into the dim sky.

  Mist…On Kabus, water was so abundant that it lounged in the air.

  The thought gave me pause. When Sister Gemheart had sent me on a quest for natural water, was it because she thought I needed a lesson in its value? I almost laughed at the absurdity. She knew nothing of my home world, of the thirst that had plagued us on Enclave II. She’d never been there. In fact, as far as I knew, no non-corporate entity had come until Starcarver arrived.

  I remembered the day clearly…

  ?

  I had been hanging from the coupling that linked Enclave II's central reservoir tank to the remains of our water distribution system. Suspended twenty meters above the ground, my muscles burned as I tried to redirect flow through the emergency bypass. A company sentinel drone hovered just meters away, bleeping loudly as it recorded my atrocious vandalism. I ignored it as water flowed above my hands, precious liters that would have to last us until the next monthly cycle.

  The sudden shadow of a transfer craft had nearly made me lose my grip. From my precarious position, I watched the craft touch down on the cracked landing pad, its hull glittering as if coated in frost. When the hatch opened, the towering figure of a man emerged. He stepped onto the dusty ground and tilted his head back, shielding his eyes with one hand as he scanned upward.

  "That's a strange game you're playing," he called up to me.

  I didn't respond. Not because it wasn't a game, but because I was silently counting the seconds. The readers had stopped working long ago, and this was the only way to measure how much water we would have this month. So my focus remained entirely on the task, lips moving with the silent count. After a moment, the man seemed to lose interest. He turned away and strode into the complex, heading for the admin block.

  As if there would be someone ready to offer him administration.

  That evening, I put in my time on the Stand, slouched on the platform beside a crackly speaker that intermittently announced my transgression.

  "THIS COLONIST HAS TAMPERED WITH CRITICAL WATER INFRASTRUCTURE!"

  This sojourn in the cordoned-off area at the back of the canteen was supposed to be a shameful experience that taught me the error of my ways, but these things had never bothered me. And anyway, public shame requires the presence of others, and no one wanted to spend any more time in the canteen than they absolutely had to.

  But then I noticed the man from the landing pad standing at the canteen's entrance, close enough for me to see a slight smile growing on his scar-free face.

  "On some worlds," he called over to me, "water falls freely from the—"

  "THIS COLONIST HAS TAMPERED WITH CRITICAL WATER INFRASTRUCTURE!"

  The smile turned wry as he waited for the announcement to finish. "As I was saying, water falls freely from the sky."

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  I responded with a sharp, nasty laugh. "And on some worlds, food erupts from the ground."

  "THIS COLONIST HAS TAMPERED WITH CRITICAL WATER INFRASTRUCTURE!"

  "You speak the truth." His eyes were serious. "I've walked on worlds where food appears to form itself out of thin air and water is so common that people complain of it. Worlds where the challenge isn't finding enough of these things, but—"

  "THIS COLONIST HAS TAMPERED WITH CRITICAL WATER INFRASTRUCTURE!"

  "—keeping them out," he finished, his jaw tightening.

  I closed my eyes. I didn't want to hear of other worlds. I knew how to live on mine and that was good enough for me.

  "How old are you?" he asked after a while.

  I shrugged. Who cared about age? Who bothered to count such things? Who still understood the old units for measuring time that had no meaning on our dwarf planet deadball? I was young enough to have strength and old enough to use it well.

  "THIS COLONIST HAS TAMPERED WITH CRITICAL WATER INFRASTRUCTURE!"

  "My name is Starcarver," said the man, trying a different tactic. "I'm a Torcher—"

  "THIS COLONIST HAS TAMPERED WITH CRITICAL WATER INFRASTRUCTURE!"

  He sighed. "A Torcher Vanguard."

  "A Torcher?" I growled. "What is that? Do you set fire to things?"

  "THIS COLONIST HAS TAMPERED WITH CRITICAL WATER INFRASTRUCTURE!"

  "No," he said patiently, "a Torcher is someone who experiences worlds with his body."

  My body was already experiencing Enclave II, thank you very much.

  "I see you have good hands and strong legs," he carried on. "And a heart filled with stubborn will. These are qualities of a—"

  "THIS COLONIST HAS TAMPERED WITH CRITICAL WATER INFRASTRUCTURE!"

  "What are you doing here?" I got in the question before he could continue. "Why have you come?"

  "THIS COLONIST HAS TAMPERED WITH—!”

  The loud tinkling smash made me open my eyes. Starcarver was holding up the fragments of the speaker, examining them with deep disgust. He gently placed the pieces on the ground, then sat beside me on the platform. We had ourselves some silence, Starcarver and I, right there in the empty and blessedly silent canteen. After we had done that, he sighed deeply.

  “I have space on my craft for one,” he said quietly. “I was hoping for someone to join me on my next mission. An apprentice, like they did in the old days. A formal agreement would have been nice. But, to be honest, the administration of this place…” He shook his head.

  “Ha,” I snorted, but it was a lacklustre sound. Admin was nothing but whoever decided to spend the day sitting in front of an ancient terminal that spat out work assignments for a workforce that had never arrived and punishments for infractions against a company that no longer cared.

  "If you were a Torcher, you could leave this place,” Starcarver said. “Walk new worlds with me. Learn what others never will. Take a new name."

  I didn’t have a name. We had codes, and I didn’t want to tell him mine. But he was already leaning over to look at the stencil on my sleeve.

  “K-05T,” he read. “Not much of a name. Names are sacred gifts, you know, to be earned through trials and suffering. A Torcher can choose to change their name with every world they learn." He reached out a hand. "What do you say? Ready to try for something better?"

  ?

  The memory faded as I reached the fence circling the Hub’s main pad. Here, the manufactured materials gave way to the actual surface of Kabus, smooth and rubber, colour an odd grey-blue. On the other side of the fence, a few steps away, things protruded from the ground like sharp little fingers. Those are stems, I thought. Plants.

  I squatted down, my stasis-stiff knees protesting, and touched the natural ground. Tiny droplets of moisture clung to the waxy surface. It was water, yes, but barely enough to wet a fingertip. Not enough to fill the bottle Sister Gemheart had given me. Was learning to accept failure part of Torcher life? They needn’t have worried. Failure and I were already great buddies. I stood, ignoring the pain in my legs and wondering if I would get back in time to see Starcarver—

  Ah, of course. I understood. This wasn’t a lesson in water or failure. The Torchers wanted me out of the way while they discussed me with Starcarver.

  I stood there, caught between resentment and uncertainty. Part of me wanted to return empty-handed, to prove I wasn't cut out for this Torcher business. What did I even want from all this? Escape from Enclave II had seemed reason enough when Starcarver offered it, but now in the face of all this strangeness, I wasn't so sure.

  But the jungle beyond the fence whispered possibilities. If I returned with water when they expected failure, would that prove something? To them, or to myself? The job was likely pointless, but turning back felt far too much like surrendering.

  There was a gate in the fence. It was probably locked, but I pushed it anyway.

  It swung open like an invitation.

  Well, if I was going to fail at being a Torcher, I might as well fail trying.

  I followed a rough trail through the finger-like stems. The undergrowth became first patchy, then increasingly dense, broad leaves rising from the ground. They tickled as I brushed against them. The air grew thicker as I walked, until breathing felt like drinking. There was an eerie silence, nothing but my own slight rustle in the vegetation. There was a low thrum coming from the ground.

  Those'll be the hub systems, I told myself.

  I cautiously strolled down the path, occasionally stopping to look back the way I had come. I could still see the Hub complex, but only the taller buildings and silos. The vegetation ahead was getting bigger, and soon it would swallow up the sky above me. I wondered if I should turn back, but the ground was definitely damper here, with water gathering in little dimples on the strange surface. Perhaps if I went a little further, I might actually find a pool of some kind.

  I pressed on, and the vegetation grew taller and more bizarre. There were twisting spirals colored dark mauve and structures like frozen explosions of mint-green tendrils. Some of the plants boasted a faint luminescence. The deeper I ventured, the more the ground seemed to respond to my footsteps with subtle vibrations like the tickles of static. I couldn't tell if it was the Hub's systems anymore, and it felt different, almost organic. The air thickened further, becoming soupy with moisture that collected on my skin.

  I felt...watched.

  My uncomfortable stasis-sick legs soon began screaming in protest at this unplanned hike, and I so took a moment to rest, settling to sit on a rock. It was comfortable enough, as rocks went, and I stayed quiet to hear the silent forest, listening to clicks and rushes of moving undergrowth.

  “I wouldn’t sit there if I were you,” said a raspy voice.