The Star Mother

by J D Huffman

  William wrote, too, in the new chronicle that Fred had started and Sasha had continued. His writing was not as poetic as Fred’s nor as contemplative as Sasha’s. He found himself surprised at the thoughts she shared there, in the several pages she’d written since Fred first turned it over to her. Though it began with a brief list of those who’d died while fighting in her rebellion, it quickly turned to her inward thoughts, to recollections of her childhood, wistful memories of life with her father, and brief outbursts of rage against the Totality, and Cylence in particular.

  Just as he was about to finish outlining their current predicament, Elena came into the office with the confident strides he’d already come to expect from her, even if he couldn’t get used to the casual nudity. He tried to keep his eyes focused on hers.

  “Is there something I can do for you?” he asked, closing the chronicle and putting it back on the desk, setting the pen down next to it.

  She folded her arms. “One of our Seers provided me some information that might be of interest to you. She claims that Sasha is being held in the Totality headquarters—the Dominix Totality Centrality.”

  William, not terribly familiar with Totality Seers, was uncertain how skeptical he should be. “Do you believe her?”

  “Even if I do, what does it matter? We can’t attack the Dominix.”

  “That was Sasha’s plan, before we detoured to your planet because of Angel.”

  “Then she was a fool,” Elena declared coldly. “They call the Totality Fortress a fortress, but to assault the Dominix truly is suicide. Our best course of action is to find another habitable planet, out of the way, with enough life on it to sustain us for the rest of our days. We stand no chance of survival out here, jumping from star system to star system in search of food, risking encounters with Totality fleets. Anything bigger than a scout ship would make short work of us. Do you want to die?”

  “Not anytime soon, no. But I can’t just leave Sasha to Cylence. Why did you even tell me what your Seer said if you didn’t want to act on it?”

  “I wanted to be fair to you. Arkady was not a man who kept secrets, and I try to follow his example. If we are to trust one another, there must be honesty. But I’m sure you realize that my responsibility to these people is paramount. It would be senseless to risk all of us one for one person.”

  William knew she was right. “What if we found a planet for you and set you up there? I could leave with anyone who wants to go with me, and go after Sasha myself. Maybe it’s suicidal, maybe not, but then I wouldn’t be risking the rest of you.”

  Elena offered the slightest hint of a smile, the first one he thought he’d seen from her. “You’re a curious man, William. Does she mean that much to you?”

  William smirked. “I don’t know what you’re suggesting. We’re in this uprising business together. She’s been our leader. The least we owe her is to try to get her back, don’t you think?”

  “I think she would understand if you didn’t risk it. Isn’t your survival more important than any one person? Wouldn’t she want you to spread your revolt to other worlds?”

  “I don’t know.” That was a lie. He knew she would have preferred the movement survive than have William risk everything to save her. But he couldn’t let it go, not with the prospect that she was still alive. She’s led this thing from the beginning. I could never replace her. “I just have to try.”

  “I suppose I admire your persistence, even if it’s bound to get you killed. Obviously, I can’t stop you from doing whatever you’d like once we’ve been resettled. In fact, I might be inclined to join you once I’m certain my people are safe.”

  That piqued William’s interest like little else could have. “Really? I thought your people were pacifists?”

  “Arkady is—was?—a pacifist. The rest of us have our own feelings on the matter. Violence was unheard of on our world. There was no crime. Even so, when you arrived on our world and we surrounded you, you must have known we were prepared to kill you. That’s always been a requirement for my scouting teams. Should our enemies arrive to harm us, we must be prepared to strike first, without mercy. Arkady understood this as a necessary evil even if he was unwilling to raise arms himself.”

  “That seems a bit cowardly,” William accused, although he knew it was unfair to speak that way of Arkady when the man wasn’t there to defend himself.

  “No one was forced to do this,” Elena reminded him. “It was our choice.”

  “And you don’t have any problems fighting your own kind? Other Totality?”

  She shocked him with the way she laughed out loud, as if what he’d asked was unimaginably bizarre. “Are you serious? Cylence’s cronies aren’t ‘my own kind.’ Not at all. For one, we aren’t created the same way. I was born Totality, remember? Even those who weren’t—the Totality who had been with Arkady from the start—don’t feel any special attachment to those led by Cylence. Entirely different cultures, and no love lost between them, as far as I am aware.”

  William grinned, enjoying the melting of her icy attitude. He wondered if this was what she was normally like, when she wasn’t charged with patrolling for outsiders or monitoring someone like Angel. Where is she? he asked himself, once again aware that he didn’t know her status in any tangible way. He finally put the question to Elena.

  “I couldn’t tell you exactly where she is,” Elena admitted. “She has been spending much of her time with Nuesh, who has worked to introduce her to the nuances of Totality life. Nuesh is one of Arkady’s original rebels, you see. He is a highly adept Burner. We don’t yet know what Angel is. In fact, we’re only calling her ‘Angel’ because she has yet to settle on a new name.”

  William didn’t know how easily he would adjust to Angel having a new name. Probably as “easily” as I’ve adjusted to her being a completely different person. “When we have some time—and who knows when that will be—I’d love to sit down with her and get to know the new person in there,” he said as if it was something he was expected to say, and not entirely certain that he meant it. Angel had been there for him, after all, saving his life on Actis and looking after him during his convalescence. They shared jokes, personal stories, and the intimacy of being under her direct, tender care when he couldn’t care for himself. He feared that getting to know the being inhabiting her body represented a betrayal of some kind, and perhaps that’s what had put him off. But if this is who she is now, what else can I do? Just pretend she doesn’t exist? The thought was tempting.

  He was about to ask Elena to give Angel his regards when the lights in the office dimmed and an alarm sounded. It was the signal for general quarters. William knew it couldn’t be good. He immediately excused himself and rushed out to the command deck. Once he arrived, he noticed Elena following him, no doubt curious as to what was happening.

  Janus, Fred, and Duna were already present. Fred had sounded the alarm. “We are surrounded,” he announced worriedly.

  William assumed they’d been located by the Totality, finally, that whatever reprieve they’d enjoyed when fleeing Arkady’s world had since been rescinded—perhaps a capricious Cylence voting for mercy one day and vengeance the next.

  But it was not the Totality. A monotonous voice buzzed through the communications speakers on the consoles. “This is the Order flagship Relentless, to the unknown Totality cargo vessel. You are ordered to depower your engines, disarm your weapons, and prepare to be boarded.”

  William leaned forward, depressing the button on Fred’s console to allow him to respond. Fred moved aside while William spoke. “This isn’t a Totality ship anymore. We’re carrying former slaves. Just let us be on our way and we won’t trouble you further.”

  “Your vessel is to be boarded. You will comply immediately.”

  William released the button and looked to Fred. The troll shook his head. “It is an entire fleet, William. All their weapons are prim
ed and trained on us. There is no hope of escape or a combat victory here.”

  Elena stared at him and he couldn’t help but notice that her face, which had only minutes ago been smiling and laughing, was now creased with desperate worry. He had no idea what Arkady’s people knew of the Order, but if they knew anything at all, it was at least that the two peoples were mortal enemies.

  But what choice do I have?

  William sucked in a deep breath, paused, then depressed the communications button again. “Please, disengage your weapons. We surrender. I repeat: we surrender.”

  Once again, this was not how William expected his command to end.

  Chapter 33

  Deconstructed

  Sasha did not see Cylence or Arkady again after they left her cell. Arkady reached a point where he refused to say anything more, and Sasha followed his lead. Cylence clearly disapproved, but he could not force them to engage in discussion, so he had Arkady put back in his cell and left Sasha by herself. She found this agreeable—solitude was preferable to interacting with that monstrous creature in the shape of a man. She waited, not knowing what to expect when she arrived at the Dominix. She had no mental image of what its interior would look like, whether cramped or expansive, modern or retro, brightly lit or dank and dim. She did her best not to think of it, and also tried to avoid contemplating what fate Cylence had in store for her. He’d enslaved her once, and perhaps enslaving her again was all he intended—she could endure that. She’d told herself before that she couldn’t, that she would rather die, but now, as the reality began to close in on her, she accepted this destiny. She had survived the slavery of the Totality once. She could survive it once more.

  Absent a clock or calendar or solar cycle, Sasha counted meals to mark the passage of time. It was the protein blocks, the unpalatable nonsense she’d eaten her entire time on Actis, before the revolt. When she took her first bite, she expected the vague comfort of familiarity. It did not come right away, but it did not keep her waiting long, either. She was uncertain how to feel about that—whether evoking anything other than disgust was a betrayal of all she’d worked for. She reminded herself that others were still out there. Fred and William and the others on the ship, they have to have made it off of Arkady’s planet. Cylence said they did, assuming I could believe a single word out of his mouth. Arkady’s people, too. On my ship. Maybe it’s better that I’m not there. How could I handle a ship full of Totality? She hated herself for asking the question, and hated herself more for not knowing the answer. None of this had turned out as she’d planned. She envisioned a revolution spreading like fire from planet to planet, the Totality falling everywhere she went, slaves rising up and taking their lives into their own hands, some for the very first time. In her mind, it was a beautiful image, the black stain of Totality oppression cleansed by the passionate flames of freedom—a freedom she was once again denied. And if Cylence had killed everyone from the other cargo ship as he said, and nearly everyone on her ship had died as a result of his peculiar “weapon,” what did that leave but a handful of humans fighting a lost cause, saddled with hundreds of quasi-Totality refugees? She could not have imagined a more alien scenario, and she felt her own failure too keenly. What I wanted was so romantic, but so impossible. It was always impossible, wasn’t it? Just a dream I wished would come true. Now, I’m coming to the Dominix, closer to the heart of the Totality than ever—and if I only had a knife, I could cut it out for good. She fantasized about that, too, seeing Cylence as the beating heart of the Totality, and to pierce him would be to sap the vitality of all his people. She thought about what he’d said, the merits of despotism, and why it appealed to him. Unspoken was its greatest failing: that to hinge an entire civilization on the personality and whims of one individual was to forge a massive chain with a glaring, all-too-obvious weakness. If Cylence dies, the Totality fall, she believed, and it pained her to think that he was so close and yet out of her reach. He’d been right there in the cell with her, and she’d wanted to lunge at him, to strangle him, to bash his head against the metallic floor until his brains were pulp and his blood flowed out like black ichor in the dim red light. She knew that was a dream, too. He’d have never let her get so close, and perhaps he might have killed her for trying—how much did he value his prize, really? Not over his own safety, she was sure.

  By the counting of meals, it was five days from her capture to her arrival at the Dominix. The ship began a series of disconcerting shudders and lurches that signaled docking maneuvers. Soon, her cell door opened and dispassionate, uniformed guards roughly led her out. Looking around as she went, she did not see Arkady. Whatever Cylence intended for her, she expected something worse was to come for Arkady. How do you torture an immortal? she wondered. Of course, Arkady wasn’t immortal in the same way as Fred. Totality could be killed, even if they would otherwise live forever. Fred had assured her he could not. As the guards took her through the ship with their hands firmly gripping her biceps, she thought about, of all things, those discussions she had with Fred about the different natures of their lives. It occurred to her that the deepest crime of slavery was not the denial of dignity, nor the labor induced on pain of torture, but the theft of one’s limited time. Every moment spent in bondage was a moment not spent free. This made her ask, then, if Fred’s enslavement meant anything at all. What is temporary slavery to someone who will live forever? Just another curious episode on his life? Whatever happens, he will survive. There’s always the possibility of something more agreeable or more interesting. But we don’t have that. We only have this finite amount of time, and then we’re dead. And that’s what the Totality take from us. Suddenly, it made more sense to her why Fred seemed so rarely bothered by anything. His support of her revolt was, perhaps, merely academic—something interesting and different for him to do, and not a cause he cared about in any direct way beyond generally favoring principles of freedom over enslavement. Not too far from that was the question of whether he cared about her—or anyone—at all.

  Her mind swirled in such thoughts as the guards handed her over to the staff of the Dominix. Everything was bright and shiny, slick and angular, the interior aesthetic one of cream walls and ceilings with light blue trim and floors. Far from the dirty facilities on Actis, everything here was spotless. If slaves brought to the Dominix tracked in dirt, someone or something must have made short work of it.

  She was stripped of her Totality rags, which didn’t bother her so much with the way they hung so loosely from her body. Then, she was passed on to a couple more men. One of them stood behind her and held her arms immobile across her spine. The other held a blade in his hand, and her heart began to palpitate as she thought Cylence had lied and simply intended to have her killed right here, stabbed through the heart or throat slit or some other quick, vicious death. Instead, he grasped her hair by handfuls and worked the knife back and forth across it until it cut free, falling to the floor. She’d been pleased to let it grow after the revolt on Actis, one of her quieter rebellions against the stringent dehumanization strategies employed by her captors, and they would take that from her, too. Once the bulk had gone, a handheld razor took the rest, leaving her head entirely bald. He did not stop there, sliding the razor along any part of her skin that boasted obvious outgrowths of hair. This he did with a disturbing lack of emotion, as if he’d done it hundreds of times before. They weren’t people to him, she knew—how else could he look at her and not see the fear in her eyes, or the silent pleading that he stop, that he leave her with a little patch somewhere, anywhere at all? As he took the final few stragglers down near her ankles, she felt naked in a way she’d never thought possible, stripped of herself in a fashion she couldn’t quite articulate. Before she had time to puzzle over it much, she was passed along yet again. This time, three men took her and led her silently through several corridors and around a few corners. All the hallways looked the same, and the markings next to each door she saw were illegib
le to her, possibly some written Totality dialect that wasn’t used as far afield as Actis, or maybe used only here so that anyone who tried to escape wouldn’t be able to figure out a viable route. It all looked the same, which was why she was surprised at reaching Cylence’s throne room.

  The very concept of a “throne room” was foreign to her, something completely outside her experience. She could internalize the notion of one man ruling over so many, but how that manifested in the customs and appointments of that man remained unimaginable until she saw this room. She entered at the far end, noticing immediately how long it was, with a ceiling so high it would take ten men standing on each other’s shoulders to just barely touch it. A deep purple carpet, wide enough for three or four people, led from the entrance to a large sculpture at the far end. They walked toward it, and as she drew closer, she realized it wasn’t a sculpture, but an elaborate chair. Cast in a gleaming, platinum-gold metal with colorful, ornate cushions resting on it, it sat atop a set of curved, tapering stairs. The dais was large enough for much more than the big chair, and to the left of it was a squat, dull gray box made of narrow vertical bars. Cylence was nowhere to be seen, but the men led her up the stairs nonetheless. As they drew near the throne and veered toward the box, she realized their intentions and tried to plant her feet, jerking her arms away from them. They only gripped tighter and tighter, enough that it hurt substantially and she felt what would later be bruises. They shoved her feet-first and naked into the box, then quickly affixed the solid top, closing several latches which didn’t offer even the slightest give when she pounded her fists against the lid.