The Ties that Bind Read online

  Welcome Back to the Abh Empire!

  Welcome “back”?

  Yes — to fully enjoy Banner of the Stars, you need to read the three-volume Crest of the Stars first. (It’s soon to be out in print omnibus form!) It explains the ins and outs of the fictional future MORIOKA has crafted, as well as our protagonists’ backgrounds and shared bond. More to the point, it’s a great story, and worth your time.

  For those of you who have read Crest, but would like a refresher:

  Whenever a vocab word of the Abh language, “Baronh,” appears, it will be in italics (with the English meaning in parentheses). Whenever that particular word appears again past the first time in the original text, it will be replaced with its English-meaning counterpart in bold (but won’t be bolded if the word didn’t have the Baronh for it next to it in the original text). This is to make sure the book is accessible without losing some of that lovely “conlang” (constructed language) flavor! That being said, if a Baronh word has already been introduced in the English version of Crest, it won’t be reintroduced in Banner. This translation assumes you have read Crest.

  Baronh words are spelled weirdly. The character whose English-language spelling is “Lafier” is spelled Lamhirh in Baronh (“mh” makes an “f” sound, and the “rh” is actually a rolling “r”). Ghintec, meanwhile, is pronounced “Jint” (as the “c” and “ec” at the ends of many nouns are silent). This translation will largely be making use of accessibility-spellings for character names. Having to constantly remind oneself “Lamhirh” is pronounced LAFEERR would probably prove a tad immersion-breaking for some readers.

  Banner of the Stars is ongoing (its sixth volume having been released in 2018), and according to MORIOKA, Crest of the Stars was something of an introductory primer to this, the “story proper.” Each volume of Banner is its own episode, a snapshot in the lives of our protagonists at a certain point in the grueling decades of galactic warfare. As such, please know that unlike the individual volumes of Crest, Volume I of Banner is a self-contained story in addition to being a part of an overarching saga. Pick it up and read at your leisure!

  We join our protagonists three years after the main events of Crest, in the year 955 I.H. (Imperial History)...

  Once, there was a traveler stricken by illness, suffering by the roadside. A man passed by, saying unto the traveler: “I see that you are sick.”

  The traveler, for his part, had not yet made any indication he desired aid, yet the man said thus. He continued: “You don’t need to say anything. Leave everything to me.”

  And so the man proceeded to sermonize at length, the gist of his sermon being that a man had only to lead a life of discipline so as not to fall ill. Satisfied with his one-sided exhortation, the man left the invalid in the dust.

  That man’s name was the United Humankind.

  The traveler’s condition, meanwhile, grew worse and worse. Eventually, his consciousness was beginning to fade. Suddenly, in a moment of lucidity, he was greeted with the sight of a stunningly beautiful lady squatting over him, her eyes shining with curiosity.

  “Don’t just stare; help me,” rasped the traveler hoarsely.

  “You’d like me to help you?” said the beautiful woman, as though she thought him strange for it. “You’d really, truly like me to help you?”

  The traveler earnestly insisted that lying sprawled on the floor was not, in fact, a hobby of his, and that he was ailing sick. He even told her outright that he desired salvation from the bottom of his heart.

  The woman, having taken some time to hear him describe his troubles, nodded, stood back up, and left. Soon enough, she returned with a veritable hospital’s worth of doctors and nurses. (Don’t ask how she’d been able to pull off such a feat; she simply could.)

  The beauty’s name? The Humankind Empire of Abh.

  Excerpted from a political fable circulated on the planet Midgrat.

  BANNER OF THE STARS I: The Ties That Bind

  Synopsis of CREST OF THE STARS

  Jint, a boy who (through no volition of his own) became a noble of the vast interstellar empire of the Abh when his home planet became a territory of said empire, boarded a spaceship headed to the imperial capital in order to fulfill his obligation to serve as a starpilot in the Abh Star Forces.

  On that spaceship, he got to know a girl named Lafier, who happened not only to be a Star Forces starpilot, but also a royal princess of the Empire. After narrowly escaping several ordeals and incidents, they managed to return to the capital safe and sound. Three years of student life later, Jint now finds himself back alongside Lafier, having been appointed to her ship as a quartermaster linewing starpilot.

  Characters

  Lafier (Lamhirh)

  ... Captain of the assault ship Basrogrh, and the Empress’s granddaughter.

  Jint (Ghintec)

  ... Clerk on the Basrogrh, and the Count of Hyde.

  Sobash (Sobach)

  ... Navigator on the Basrogrh.

  Ecryua (Aicryac)

  ... Gunner and communications officer on the Basrogrh.

  Samson (Samsonn)

  ... Inspector supervisor on the Basrogrh.

  Atosryua (Atausryac)

  ... Assault Unit Commander, and Lafier’s superior.

  Doosanyuh (Dusanh)

  ... Crown Prince of the Abh Empire, and the overall Commander-in-Chief of the invasion fleet.

  Kenesh (Cénéch)

  ... Overall Chief of Staff of the invasion fleet.

  Sporr (Sporh)

  ... Commander-in-Chief of Fleet 1.

  Cfadiss

  ... Chief of Staff under Sporr.

  Neleth (Nélaith)

  ... Commander-in-Chief of the Aptic Defensive Fleet.

  Nefeh (Néféc)

  ... Chief of Staff of the Defensive Fleet.

  Prologue

  Fully absorbed in the task of examining his domain, sat he.

  At first, he did not much care for the pungently sweet odor hanging in the air, but once he got used to it, it was no big deal.

  He fancied taking a lap around his territory.

  No enemies in sight.

  He looked up at the door he’d departed from. Though to him illegible, it read: “GARICH DREUR HAÏDER, CASTLE OF THE LITTLEST NOBLE IN THE EMPIRE.” It was the Manor of the Count of Hyde.

  He sat in a well-behaved fashion, and urged for the door to be opened for him. He had been sleepy for a good while.

  Yet no sign came of the door’s imminent opening.

  Several times he prompted for it to be opened. At last, he resorted to growling in protest. But it opened not. It appeared the housemate was away from home.

  With nothing else he could do, he decided to once again commence patrolling the lay of the land. He had discovered a handful of lovely crevices. Surely he could simply enjoy a nice nap nestling into one of them.

  With his short fur, solid and sturdy limbs and torso, largish head, and relatively round face, he was the picture of a pedigreed and honorable Abh cat.

  One characteristic of so-called Abh cats was the variety of colors and patterns they came in. The Abh language of Baronh had many a word for feline fur patterns. He was a ctilüarh, a “striped.” That is to say, he was base-brown, with dark stripes all over.

  While his mother had sported a fetching stump-tail, his father hadn’t, so his own tail was long. Tail standing upright, he began ambling forward, his gait exuding the calm poise of a galactic overlord.

  It had only been 1,500 years since his breed had been dubbed deucec, or “Abh cat.” His lineage traced its ancestry to the housecats that lived on a certain arch-shaped archipelago on Earth.

  When the humans set off for the sea of stars, they brought along his ancestors
as a matter of course, and so they settled on more planets than one.

  On one such planet, they crossed paths with the artificially engineered bio-droids with blue hair and frocragh spatiosensory perception — the Abh.

  In some ways, that fateful encounter was actually a reunion. After all, the humans who had made the Abh also hailed from the selfsame archipelago the cats did.

  A few dozen cats had been handed to the Abh, who, at that time, were flying through space on an enormous city-ship. The largest interstellar vessel ever built by human hands, it proved to be nothing less than the ideal hunting ground to their feline friends, for rats and mice had long ago been allowed to come aboard.

  Of course, the Abh had had methods of thoroughly exterminating pests and vermin on hand already. The most often used means was to evacuate the humans before sucking the air out. However, though it was the simplest way to do it, it was also the most over-the-top, and came with its fair share of risks. Moreover, no matter how many times they implemented this solution, more would sneak their way in every time they engaged in exchange with a landworld. It didn’t take long at all for the Abh to conclude that letting their cats follow their instincts constituted the most elegant measure to keep the numbers of unwanted stowaways down.

  Even in this current age, long since the Abh obtained faster-than-light travel and constructed a mighty interstellar empire, their feline fellowship continued unwavering. Abhs even purposefully set prey rodents loose upon building new structures to dispel their cats’ boredom, (though obviously not every time).

  The Abh did keep other animals, but these little carnivores were the Abh’s favorite pet. Their most appreciated and welcomed trait was how they maintained a certain distance from their owners.

  Naturally, cats themselves had no concept of “owners.” To him, the human who lived and slept in his room was his housemate, and nothing more...

  He did rather enjoy his housemate’s company.

  The housemate did, at times, forget to prepare his meals — that much was true. Defending the realm from hostile outside forces was his end of the bargain; the housemate’s was fixing the food. Yet he was a magnanimous malkin, and quite capable of overlooking such shortcomings.

  There was another act of his housemate’s, however, that he could not abide by. The fiendish act of sudsing-up his beautiful coat with bubbles, and then to top it all off, dumping tepid water over him. That alone he was not magnanimous enough to forgive.

  Regardless, he found he could be at ease when his housemate was around. His throat felt good when the human stroked it.

  Furthermore, he’d become able to sniff out whenever the housemate was plotting soon to spring the vile sudsy act of villainy, so in that small way his life had taken a turn for the even pleasanter. When he was serious about keeping himself concealed, the housemate’s sluggish arm could never, ever take hold of him.

  The alluring crevice held its mouth open in invitation. It was just the sort of gap that could be hiding a mouse or two.

  In one refined motion, he leapt at the hole, and crawled through the narrow opening. In the wide space he found himself in, (or at least, wide in the eyes of a cat), there were no mice.

  There was instead, one human, seated in a chair at the room’s center. It wasn’t the housemate, but for some reason it smelled familiar. He purred and rubbed himself against its legs.

  “Dyaho.” He understood, albeit dimly, that this specific mash of sounds humans uttered seemed to be his name.

  Out of the blue, he was picked up by the scruff. Memories rushed back to him of his time as a kitten carried by his mother, and his limbs drooped languidly down.

  “It’s been three years, yet I see you still haven’t a stoic bone in your body.” The human peered at his face. He had a vague sense he’d been insulted somehow, but Dyaho cared little. Once he was curled in its lap, he felt the pull of his drowsiness return, and his eyes closed.

  After a while of nearly drifting off, the human who was offering him its lap spoke again, and so Dyaho’s ears pricked up. “Jint, your cat is here.”

  “Jint” was his housemate’s name. Dyaho looked up, and confirmed that that human standing there was his housemate.

  “Ah, my bad. Little guy been annoying you?” he spoke.

  “It’s no matter; my shift is rather uneventful,” responded the human named Lafier despondently. “I must say, however, that I’m shocked by your lack of sense. We’re about to head into the battlefield. Wouldn’t it be cruel to bring the cat?”

  “It’ll be fine. When all of the crew abandons ship, I’ll be responsible and take him with me.”

  “Must you say such foreboding things?” said Lafier, her tone barbed. “Besides, that’s not what I’m saying. It’s just that he has no romantic prospects here, nor mice to hunt. That’s why I’d feel sorry for him.”

  “What else can I do? My starpilot quarters on this assault ship named the Basrogrh (“BAHSROYR”) is the only ‘house’ I’ve got.”

  “You’d need to give it to somebody to look after for the time being.”

  “It’s not against military regulations, is it?”

  “Only because no one with sense would do such a thing,” said Lafier sharply. “The atmosphere aboard ship would turn more... lax.”

  “Well, I hear Abhs used to take their kids onto battleships.”

  “That was during a time when there was no line dividing battle from everyday life,” said Lafier. “But that was then, and this is now... At least, for now.”

  “All right, all right. I’ll drop Dyaho off in Lacmhacarh when I get the chance. Only, I can’t think of a place to leave him. All of my quartermaster academy buddies are on the warfront.”

  “If you’re counting on my royal palace, why don’t you come out and say it?” Lafier teased.

  “You’re a life saver. I totally was counting on you.”

  The topic of their conversation was picked up by the scruff once more. His rest perturbed, he issued a light moan in objection.

  “C’mon, Dyaho,” said the housemate, holding him to his chest.

  Dyaho didn’t understand the first thing about this tendency of his housemate’s. A rational being would only say the words “come on” if they expected the addressee to do so of their own accord. Yet the human had vocalized that sentiment only after scooping him up, an action that took no account of his will.

  “Looks like your aunt doesn’t want your company,” said Jint, striking up a conversation (with whom, he knew not, for it clearly wasn’t aimed toward him).

  “Stupid,” pouted Lafier at Jint’s little dig.

  Though Dyaho was unaware, both he and Lafier were born in the same orbital mansion, the Royal Palace of Clybh. Dyaho’s lineage had lived there since his grandmother, Horia’s, time.

  When Lafier was very young, she’d once been made to believe that her genetic mother was Horia, the cat. The lie was her father’s doing — a silly little fib, he claimed — but she had been young enough to believe it, and the resultant trauma was no small affair. Of course, if Horia really were her mother, that would make Dyaho her nephew.

  “You’ll be returning home after three whole years, Dyaho. You psyched, or what?” said the housemate.

  But Dyaho had no recollection of the Royal Palace of Clybh. He was familiar only with the student dormitory of the quartermaster academy he and his housemate had lived in, and he remembered its every nook and cranny.

  That being said, any place was fine by him, so long as there were lovely little holes to explore. And if his new home housed chubby rats, all the grander.

  Dyaho nodded off to sleep in the housemate’s arms, and dreamt dreams of bustling droves of mice.

  Chapter 1: The Ciïoth Apticer (Aptic Star System)

  The star called Apticec (Aptic) was an ordinary yellow star, surrounded by twelve none-too-notable planets. The third of those planets was fit for habitation, its population just under 100 million.

  Though part of the United Humankind
, traveling a mere 5,000 cédlairh planar miles through planar space would take one into the sphere of influence of the power the UH was officially at war with, the Humankind Empire of Abh.

  It was no flight of fancy to call the planet’s position precarious. It was not, however, alone in that predicament, as many other star systems faced similar circumstances, which was the reason there was no fleet stationed nearby, and all that existed by the portal was an orbital fortress.

  When the Abh invaded, the fortress’s efforts were valiant and worthy of mention, but it was destroyed before their overwhelming firepower.

  When the fortress’s debris fell into orbit around Aptic III, the planet’s Premier, Macrit Tallas, thought to try speaking to the commander of the enemy fleet.

  “...As such, I shall take this chance to make our will clear to you. That is, not my personal will, but the will of all who reside in the Aptic Star System, as is my duty. I acknowledge that, given you and we are in a state of war, I perhaps cannot blame you for invading this system. But I say unto you, in this moment of soaring emotion, shaking as we stand, that it is the duty of a member of the United Humankind to bear such strife, and that we bear that duty gladly...”

  The Premier of Aptic’s speech reverberated through the Commander’s Bridge of the fleet flagship, the patrol ship Lachcaü.

  Listening intently sat the Commander-in-Chief, whose hair was a blue blaze. She stared at Tallas’s hologram, her red eyes burning, but the only real sign of her irritation was the way her fingertips were ever-so-slightly tapping at the armrests.

  Chief of Staff Cfadiss was surprised. She’s being so patient. He hadn’t thought patience was a concept his commander had ever heard of.

  “...It may be the case that our system hasn’t the power, alone, to break your nation’s blockade over our space. Yet we will not simply sit idly by, waiting for our Peacekeepers to passively taste defeat. This land is our land!” The Premier raised a fist. “When you Abhs touch down onto this surface, I promise you we will show you what we can do. We will fight, and keep fighting, until our Peacekeepers have expelled your fleet. You will never rule over the surface of Aptic III!”