Evocative

Or at least, that's what I intend. An inflection point in the current WIP, Maroli Tango, hot off the author's desktop.

Blustery weather conditions over the South Atlantic had moved across Ruksa Zila’s course an hour after sunrise. By midmorning, gusts were strong enough to bend trees.

At the owner’s residence, top of the hill above RZ’s hospitality village, cloudy skies loomed, great room patio doors shook. Five hundred meters below, turbulent seas churned.

Downslope from the house, across thick turf and overturned lawn furniture, the bow of an airborne upside-down mountain weaved back and forth as if a rudder had come loose.

Upslope, sheltered behind a row of Armor Light sliders with a 180-degree view forward, Glenn Mehrenholz called up a RealSide widget, a virtual mahogany pedestal festooned with brass levers, antique dials and spoked wheel.

He was steering into the wind when Anuraga ship’s master and celebrity yogi Tom Bjornson showed up ahead of the crowd.

Tom said, “I looked up our visitor’s InfoSpace account. The registrant is an anonymous message drop.”

Glenn turned RZ to starboard. “Someone on Vidura knows more than they’re telling.”

Arya Mehrenholz breezed in from the foyer with Mason Fowlkes, Marie Jourdaine and Guru Orsa in tow.

The avatar of the maroli Zeze Yudhvan instantiated in augmented reality. He told the hostess, “You have a magnificent home.”

Guru Orsa summoned the meeting to order with a prayer. Colonel Clarke crept in, murmuring apologies for tardiness. Everyone took a moment to silence phones.

A sense of gravity and purpose seeped into the room. Zeze Yudhvan dithered, gliding behind a sofa, lesser tentacles braided into a rope pattern, primary ungula flexed as though to grapple with something large, heavy, and hard-to-balance.

He said, “I was six years elevated when my patrons won a berth on the fleet by way of lottery. And so, I went along with the youngest daughter as guardian and companion.”

Zeze tugged a tiny goatskin pouch out from between bioform plug and cavity. “I carry her image wherever I go, but in this moment, I dare not gaze upon a toothy smile, round little ears, a shaggy ruff, the one I loved more than any.”

He cupped a heart-shaped locket in a curl at the end of a tentacle, open for the benefit of a camera drone.

“I would cry if I could; pour my sorrow into your oceans to join the tears of all who have grieved, but it would go against a habit cultivated during an era in which aberrant labor appliances were judged defective and destroyed.”

Arya Mehrenholz said, “That is so sad to hear.”

“I blame no one. My patrons understood what I was and welcomed me into their clan. When it became impossible to hide my condition aboard ship, I sought out the chaplain, and was assigned to the emergency brigade.”

Zeze tucked his keepsake away. “I was not in our quarters the night of the attack. I was asleep on Deck Zero, to serve as the last one standing in the event of disaster, and so I have long wondered if I could have saved her; and wished I had been by her side, that we could have survived or died together.”

The sky outside grew darker. Lightning arced from cloud to cloud, followed by deep rumbles, sheets of rain on patio glass, flash-flooding on pavement.

Colonel Clarke said, “Stone Harbor was observed fighting the enemy after the attack.”

“Not on my account.” Zeze mimed the act of scratching one’s head. “I was quantum-glued under a console, waiting for the next shock wave and then, when the engagement was over, the ship’s Oma shut everything down to prevent fires.”

Clarke stood. “Were you trapped?”

“And so rattled it didn’t occur to me that I could call for rescue. By the time I figured it out, it was too late. Azna said it would take a week to let me out, so I flew a lifeboat to the planet.”

A virtual display instantiated in the workspace, flashing images of vast destruction. “Dust had not yet settled from the effects of Upanaya’s bombardment. Forest fires raged across the surface. Survivors were coming out of underground habitats, discovering they couldn’t breathe, and going back in. None of them appeared to understand what happened, and I was moved to pity.”

Orsa cleared his throat. “The Eeka were your enemy. You had no obligation to intervene.”

“That was for others to decide. I called home. The SagGha Prefecture organized a committee. After Azna was sufficiently restored, a mission was launched to spread the faith among the Eeka, promote the ideals of Zirna Zapha, and seed the planet with Azna’s agricultural bounty.”

“Does that committee exist today?”

“No, but it remained active longer than I expected. I then took it upon myself to time travel through N-Space, emerging every hundred years to renew the work.”

He drew a circle on the floor with the lower bout of his capsule. “The Eeka are good citizens. Zirna Zapha prospers. All was well until a belligerent state uncovered a cache of legacy technology, and now things are not well at all.”

Colonel Clarke said, “Almost had it sewed up, didn’t you?”

Zeze performed the maroli nod. “Almost.”