Chapter Text
Hurling through space was a lonely moon covered in an ocean of blood. In the ocean there was a tree, and in the tree there was a man. The man was asleep, and it was a mercy because he was trapped somewhere between dead and alive.
Orbiting the moon there was a space station, and its hundred people spent their time studying the moon and the ocean and the tree. But not the man. They lost interest in the man the moment they realized that he had nothing that the tree could not provide itself. They left him there, asleep and half-alive, for five years while they studied.
At the end of that five years they had a revelation. There was a light, wrapped by the the roots of the tree at the bottom of the blood ocean, and that light was the answer to everything. It could bring back all they had lost. It could bring back the stars. It could bring back the planets. It could bring back the sun.
So they tried.
And they missed.
The sun they found was not theirs. It wasn't even a single sun, but one large sun orbited by a much smaller pair.
The planets they found were not theirs. Nor were the asteroids or the moons or even the space dust.
But they existed.
And while the space station orbiting the moon sent out probes to the local asteroid belt to find precious ice, the space stations orbiting the planet Erid went absolutely nuts.
Ryland Grace was not a diplomat.
His time teaching middle school had taught him how to keep his mouth shut, redirect conversations, and grab attention as needed. It had not taught him how to do those in a graceful way. Students weren't subtle and didn't ask for subtlety. Unfortunately, the rest of the world was and did.
The less said about the time he quiet coyote'd a room full of military leaders, the better.
But he was the only human on Erid, and the Eridians needed his expertise now that there were suddenly a lot more humans to deal with. The only experience they had was with Grace himself. Nerdy, confusing, occasionally frustrated Grace. And while they knew that not all humans were alike, Grade had dealt with far more of the mess that was the human condition. He'd handled angry parents. He'd handled scared and frustrated and occasionally hostile students. He'd answered a call that turned out to be a bomb threat that even later turned out to be just a student trying to get the school shut down before finals. He'd even been dragged into a presentation about astrophage with no time to prepare!
He could handle a space station full of very touchy people. Even if the information he had been given was, well...
Bad.
The Consolidation of Iron was proud. They were territorial. They were possessive. They were mistrustful of everyone that wasn't them (that they were at war with one of the other space stations seemed to be part of that.) They were definitely mistrustful of these rock creatures that to them had appeared out of nowhere and offered to help.
Eridani society, or at least the one that Grace was familiar with, had a gift economy. If someone was hungry, you gave them food. If someone needed help, you gave them your labor. And that amazing Eridian memory kept tract of every single exchange. People who didn't give quickly found themselves abandoned and ignored.
"Don't ignore us," the Eridians were saying. "We want to know you. We want to learn from you."
"I'm putting you in my debt," the Consolidation of Iron heard. "I want to exploit you, and you have no choice but to let me do that."
"This has to be frustrating you," their diplomat said during one meeting.
Beatrice wore a lot of hats in the COI: as well as being their chosen a diplomat, she was the captain and the prison warden and the quartermaster of Sail Station, which orbited the blood moon. She was a busy woman, so they usually spoke over radio instead of meeting in person. Being able to look each other in the face like this was rare.
"It doesn't frustrate you?" Grace asked. "To know that the Council is willingly throwing away an opportunity like this?"
"Delaying? Yes. Throwing away? No. They want to see what happens to the independents."
He supposed that made sense. Two unaffiliated space stations calling themselves Carnival and Metamorphosis had recently accepted aid in the form of food, water and, especially for the former, repairs. If the Eridians were going to take advantage of anyone (which they wouldn't, he kept saying), it would be them.
"And when nothing happens?"
"Then perhaps they will be more inclined to accept your help without looking for the bomb attached to it."
"There is no- we have no reason to be hostile like that!"
"You also have no reason to help." She raised a hand to cut off his protests. "Kindness is not a reason."
Grace wished he couldn't understand it. But when the nations of Earth banded together to save the sun, there had been a lot of people involved and a lot of money thrown around, and that hadn't been a good combination. More than a few companies had offered their expertise, only to turn around and ask for a share of the pie.
"It is for us." said one of the other diplomats, a stocky Eridian with a beautiful crystalline azurite carapace. Its name was the diminutive form of a mythical sky predator, but Grace had been out of his mind on painkillers and starvation at the time and had dubbed it Mrs. Peacock.
Beatrice sighed. "And now we're back to where we started. Look-" She spread her hands wide. "Just give me something I can work with. Something they'll understand."
Grace thought for a moment. Maybe- no, the Eridians would have tried mutual benefit already, and the COI was so protective of the one thing they could give that they would reject it out of hand. But- wait, there was one very human thing they wouldn't have thought of.
"Spite."
"Go on."
"We made the same offer to Eden." He raised a hand to cut off her protests. "They told us that the devil offers many pleasures, and then they tried to steal one of our ships."
The incident report went into cold, clinical detail. How one of Eden's raiding vessels had intercepted a trio of scientists on their way back with samples from Threeworld. How the raiders had magnetically latched their ships together. How they cut through the hull, unknowing that the other side held an atmosphere of high-pressure, superheated ammonia...
There were no survivors.
"We want revenge."
"Now that," Beatrice said with a smile, "Is something they'll respect.
Prisoner 36 worked the processors, turning blood into food and water so the COI didn't have to waste real food on the dozen or so convicts that lived on AT-5. It was a disgusting job and the skin on his right hand was peeling where blood had seeped under a glove, but it got him more rations and a larger cell with a view of the Blood Tree and that was all he needed.
They'd finally done it. Finally, the sons of Eden had given enough, sacrificed enough, killed enough to come through to the other side of the Quiet Rapture. The COI didn't deserve the Blood Tree; it belonged to Eden. But the COI was, he begrudgingly thought, doing a decent job of tending it. They kept it clean. They kept it pure. And it rewarded them with bone flowers and meaty fruits the size of a severed head.
But the fruits were sterile, he had picked up from guard chatter. They lacked seeds, they lacked life. They didn't grow. Drop them into the ocean, and they sank. Water them, and they rotted.
Prisoner 36 knew why. The Last Son slept within its embrace, and the Blood Tree would not be complete until he awoke and committed the final sacrifice. Three of his brothers had helped the only way they could, their blood joining that of the ocean, but it wasn't enough, and the cowardly COI had responded by banning Edenite prisoners from the Tree.
Some of his brothers were impatient. They wanted to take the Last Son from the tree themselves and have him lead them to death and glory. Prisoner 36 talked them down when he could; haste benefitted no one. But time was running out. The schism in Eden was worsening, and not all of the growing number of prisoners meant the Last Son well. Eventually, someone would try and succeed at freeing the Last Son, and it wasn't a guarantee that that someone wouldn't immediately call him a heretic and drown him in the ocean.
So the next time Prisoner 36 turned in a batch of fresh rations, he called in a favor.