The Star Mother

by J D Huffman

  “Don’t bother with that,” one of them said. “You’ll never get out.”

  They left her there in the cage as they casually strolled away, following the purple carpet to the other end of the throne room. Shutting off the lights on their way out, she was alone in the darkness. She found that she could crouch and she could lay down on her side if she balled herself up, but sitting normally or standing were completely out of the question. The cage’s design forced her to contort her body in some manner or another. This is how Cylence thinks he’s going to break me?

  She awoke later when the lights came up and found she’d fallen asleep with her body bent, head nestled between her knees. The slightest bit of hair growth on top of her head chafed against her legs as she moved to reorient herself. She crouched in a way that required her to nearly stand on her tiptoes, holding onto the bars of the cage for balance. She squinted, eyes still acclimating to the brightness, trying to see if anyone was there. She soon recognized Cylence’s approach, with his flowing robes and arrogant posture.

  In the stunning lights of the throne room, his skin was so pale it looked downright sickly. She considered the possibility that he suffered some kind of nutritional or vitamin deficiency. Whatever else her life as a slave had given her, it was a solid grasp of human nutrition—knowing how to stretch what was given, and to detect dangerous deficiencies before they became life-threatening. But there’s no one to force Cylence to take care of himself, is there? She smiled at the thought of him dropping dead one day from lacking some essential nutrient. She didn’t know if such a thing was possible for the virtually immortal Totality, if they could still die from such a disease, or if they lingered perpetually in such a state. She decided she liked the idea of eternal suffering more than a simple death. It’s the least he deserves for what he’s done.

  Before passing her, he knelt on the dais in front of her cage, lowering his head so he could see her face-to-face. “How are you enjoying your new existence?” he inquired with a smile she soon recognized to be as false as everything else about him.

  She said nothing, knowing there was no answer that would not please him. To spit in his face would tell him he’d hurt her. To admit that she felt dehumanized would only validate what he’d done. To betray any emotion at all would put the success to his deeds. So she sat and stared, emotionless, at his vile face, the sunken eyes and obvious lips, a slight purple hue to them against his pale visage. She swore she could see the blood vessels just underneath the skin, blue and violet pulses racing at the edge of visibility right below the surface.

  He frowned once he realized no response would be forthcoming. “Have it your way,” he sighed, putting himself upright again. He moved to his throne and sat, sliding his hands idly along the arms of the thing. She saw how it nearly swallowed him, so absurdly large and imposing. She assumed it was intended to frighten any enemies who sought an audience with him here. I wonder what enemies he even has that he would bother to bring here. He can’t be worried about rebel slaves, can he? He wouldn’t let us come to him this way, I’m sure. There was the “Implacable Khazour” he’d mentioned. That was the only person who occurred to Sasha just then. The idea of Cylence respecting anyone intrigued her, and if nothing else, he hinted at a peculiar respect for this “Khazour” fellow. She wasn’t sure if that meant she wanted to meet him or not. Anyone who can get Cylence’s attention like that can either be a great ally, or a terrible enemy. Would I even get a choice in the matter?

  Cylence sighed again, flexing his hands and staring at his fingernails as each of his fingers stretched out as far as it could from its neighbor. He spoke without making eye contact. “If you aren’t going to entertain me, I might as well have you spaced.”

  “I can’t exactly sing and dance from in here,” she mocked.

  “So? Tell me a story.”

  “I don’t feel like it.”

  “Oh, you must have at least one good story to tell. That’s my rule,” he said, turning to dangle his legs over the arm of the throne so he could look at her more easily without getting up. “Everyone has at least one story that’s unlike anyone else’s. I’ve made a habit of collecting them, myself. I don’t like to execute anyone without learning their story, if I can help it. So, what’s yours? Where are you from? What is your world like?”

  She spoke as flatly as she could manage. “I’m from a planet you wouldn’t remember. You killed or enslaved everyone there. It’s a devastated ruin now.”

  “I wanted an interesting story, not the same one I could get from anyone else.” He leaned forward, grinning. “You stirred up a rebellion. Not many can say that. Fewer can say they sparked one that managed to move from its original planet. I couldn’t tell you how many uprisings I’ve had put down over the years. Only a handful ever spread to other worlds. It’s a shame I don’t see fit to put those tales to paper, as it were. I don’t want legends spreading around of even modestly successful rebellions, as you might imagine. Not something I want to encourage. Yours was fairly impressive, for what it was, and I would be interested in hearing how you did it.”

  She shrugged.

  “You are a disobedient pet,” he scorned with an annoyed face. “Fine, I will use you for my amusement in ways you can’t refuse to cooperate with.” He clapped his hands together to summon guards, whom he directed to pick up her cage. They roughly jostled her about as they began to take her from the throne room.

  She didn’t know what Cylence meant, exactly, nor was she eager to find out.

  Chapter 34

  Board Games

  William waited tensely for a response from the Order flagship. Based on what he’d heard of them, he would have considered the Order as nominal allies. Since encountering them, however, they’d only demanded immediate acquiescence. He couldn’t imagine what they wanted with the pathetic Totality cargo ship or its mass of huddled refugees. He hoped they just wanted to confirm that he and his charges posed them no threat, and would be content to let the lot of them go on their way.

  “You will immediately transmit your navigational logs to us,” the voice from the Order ship instructed. “You will also provide a full crew and cargo manifest. A troopship is being dispatched presently to board your vessel and assess these data.”

  “I can send you the logs,” William said, gesturing to Fred to send them across. “But we don’t have a crew or cargo manifest. This ship is full of refugees. We came from a slave uprising on Actis.” He wasn’t keen to mention that only a handful of the people on the ship were technically former slaves from Actis, and the rest were Totality of one kind or another.

  Elena eyed him anxiously, which he did not fail to notice. Having made it so clear to him that she did not eschew violence the way Arkady did, it was a very real concern that she might turn violent when faced with an imminent threat. It wasn’t as though he could have blamed her—few could be expected to walk calmly to their own demise—so he hoped he would be able to defuse the situation with the Order, before things came to violence.

  “In the absence of appropriate manifests,” the Order voice droned, “You will assist the boarding party with a manual inventory.”

  What could we possibly have that they would want? “We’re not in much of a position to refuse,” William acknowledged, then released the transmit button.

  “Are you out of your mind?” Elena hissed the second communications were shut off. “What do you think they’re going to do with us? The Order hate us. More than any group of people in the known universe, they are our most mortal enemies. Arkady was very clear about that. He may have been willing to live in peace with them, but it goes both ways. The Order have never shown our kind mercy. Arkady talked about the original war between the Totality and the Order, how the Order would obliterate ships full of us without a second thought. We fought defensively all the way to the Fortress, where Cylence and Arkady and their forces were finally able to make a stand a
nd drive off the Order, if only temporarily. That is our history, William. They would annihilate us, given the chance.”

  “I’m not going to let them do that,” William promised. “I’m going to assume they won’t willfully slaughter fellow humans. Do you have any reason to believe they would?”

  “Arkady never mentioned anything like that, no. He suggested the Order went out of their way to stop Totality slavery and liberate any slaves they found.”

  “That’s a good thing for us, then. If we stand with you, they can’t so easily kill you.”

  “They’ll try to find a way,” Elena said in a quieter tone, but didn’t argue the point further.

  William then went about the work of preparing the ship for “visitors.” He ordered Fred, Duna, Janus, and Elena to do what they could to manage the refugees in the main cargo bay. “Get the young children out of there. Take them up to the quarters. I believe Katerine is up there, sleeping. Wake her and charge her with looking after the kids. If things turn ugly, I don’t want children in the line of fire.”

  “A shrewd strategy would be to push them to the fore to greet the Order soldiers,” Fred suggested.

  William did his best not to explode at the troll for such an idea. “I’ll pretend you didn’t seriously advise me to use children as human shields.”

  Fred pressed on. “Put your sentimentality aside for the moment and think rationally. I know the Order better than you. They are not cold-blooded killers. They will not slaughter helpless children.”

  “Even if I’m willing to take your word on that, I’m not going to risk them.”

  “You are already risking everyone,” Fred pointed out. “The Order could destroy this ship and kill all of you, if they so desired.”

  William remained adamant, perhaps unreasonably so, but he couldn’t shake his memories of the gangs of Erzan who did the same thing. He recalled gang leaders even putting their own children in harm’s way to avoid being taken in by the Militiamen. That’s a line I won’t cross, William decided.

  Moving past Fred, he and the others entered the main cargo bay and started dividing the refugees into more manageable groups, moving them off to the sides of the bay, advising parents to keep their children near the back, and making adequate room for the boarding party. Elena put their minds at ease as best she could, addressing all of them. “We will try to get this over with as quickly as we can, and hope that no one is harmed. I ask that everyone remain calm. Your children will be protected in the upper levels of the ship. There isn’t room for everyone else—we’ll all stay down here, and we’ll show these people they have nothing to fear from us.”

  William didn’t have to see the fear and anxiety on their faces to know it was there. Some of these people probably have firsthand knowledge of the Order, from the original conflict. I wish we had time to identify them and get them out of the way, but I don’t want anyone to feel singled out. That’ll only make things more volatile. We’ll just keep everyone to the back and present ourselves—Fred, Elena, Janus, Duna, and me—as their representatives. If the Order want to negotiate, it’ll be with us.

  With the refugees concentrated toward the front of the bay, away from the access doors, the five envoys waited nervously for the telltale metallic clangs of another ship docking, and the louder banging and hissing of various locks and atmospheric pressure controls being engaged. The sounds came after what felt to William like hours, then one of the access doors swung open and several individuals in what he recognized as Order uniforms emerged, single-file.

  The intruders immediately formed a semicircle and approached William and the rest of his team. They didn’t look conspicuously armed, though they were clearly loaded up with equipment he didn’t recognize. Gloves partially covered their hands, and tubes running from them snaked around their arms and came together on their upper backs. Similar adornments crossed their faces, and he thought he spotted small, oscillating lights near their eyes. He suspected they wore some kind of monitoring equipment.

  One of the troops stepped forward, making clear that he was in charge. “Who is in command of this vessel?” The words sounded more like a demand than a question, and William was ashamed to realize he felt himself shrinking in the presence of this large, commanding, fearsome figure.

  Still, he didn’t back away. “I am,” he said, not with the forcefulness he intended, but loudly enough to be heard. “I am,” he repeated, just in case.

  The man fixed his gaze on William, as if to reduce him further with only a stare. He stepped slowly, methodically toward William, never getting too close. It was meant to intimidate, and William couldn’t argue that it didn’t work.

  The commanding officer nodded and spoke. “Yes, Admiral.” At first, William thought the man might have been referring to him with the wrong name or title, then he noticed the piece of kit wired around the man’s ear. Two-way communications.

  “I’d like to speak with whoever is in charge on the other end,” William said. His tone was careful—not aggressive, not meek.

  “You’ll have that opportunity soon,” the commander promised. “I assume these people are your command staff.” He moved his eyes over each one. “Names and ranks.”

  “We don’t have ranks,” William protested. He gestured to them, one by one. “Janus, Duna, Fred, Elena. I’m William.”

  “Understood, Admiral,” the man said through his communications equipment. “Yes, he says he’s in command. No one’s made any hostile moves.” He turned to William and spoke directly: “Sir, are you under any duress at the moment?”

  William smirked. “Only from you people. Were you looking for some other answer?”

  The man shook his head and raised a hand to his ear, touching the equipment encircling it with two fingers, and rotating his head slightly. “As you wish, sir,” he said, acknowledging whatever he’d been told.

  William couldn’t guess at what was said. Was he just ordered to kill all of us? Search the ship? What’s happening?

  The explanation was given: “We’ll need to test your command staff for bioagents, then everyone else on board. The process only takes a moment. It requires brief physical contact. Giving me your hand for a moment will do.”

  William couldn’t see any problem with that, so he gave the go-ahead. The Order soldier started at the end of the line, with Janus. Janus offered up a hand, the man closed a few of his own fingers around it, waited a few seconds, then released. “Clear,” he said with a nod.

  Next was Fred. The procedure went just as smoothly with him, as well. William was fascinated by how efficiently the Order could apparently detect dangerous biological agents with only a touch. His mind wandered around the many possibilities of such advanced technology—what it might be capable of, and what it signaled about the overall capabilities of the Order. It fascinated him, but also served as a dangerous distraction. He did not anticipate what happened next.

  It would be weeks before William could reliably piece together exactly what transpired in those moments, so quickly they unfolded. Tentatively, Elena raised her hand as she was next in line. The squad commander took it in his own, seemingly unfazed by her nakedness, waited the requisite few seconds, then reacted in a way William did not expect. Rather than signal that she was clear, he jumped back, raised the palms of his hands to face her, and shouted, “Totality!” This provoked an immediate reaction from the rest of his troops, who took a similar stance. It only took them a fraction of a second, and Duna’s reaction took only a fraction longer—far too brief for William to be fully cognizant of what was happening in the moment.

  Immediately, the hands of the soldiers glowed a brilliant blue. Duna reached around to her lower back, drew a hand weapon, aimed it right at the commanding officer’s face, and fired. The blue light from his hands burst forth as a force wave even as the bolts from Duna’s gun penetrated his skull. The wave of energy, redirected by Duna’s attack, flew r
ight above Elena’s head, then blasted a hole in the ceiling of the cargo bay. Later, William would recall the screams of children, but he was forced to acknowledge that the volume of energy discharges probably made hearing the children on the upper deck impossible, and so he likely imagined it.

  Before William could consciously register what was happening, Elena had already dived at the leader’s knees, knocking him to the floor even though Duna’s shots had almost certainly killed him. Fred shoved Duna to the side, wrestling her for the weapon. More blue waves sprouted from the hands of the remaining Order troops, and William instinctively threw himself down as he sensed their approach. Even if the screams of the children couldn’t have been heard, the wailing of the rest of the Totality on the ship was real enough, as they had nowhere to go with the approach of coruscating sapphire waves. Their bodies disintegrated as they were struck, which William still did not realize right away, with the sudden and intense chaos. He rolled onto his back, already in throbbing pain from having forced himself to the floor so violently, and saw Janus similarly preserving his bodily safety by remaining low and out of the way. Fred had become a particular target now that he held Duna’s weapon. Though he did not fire it, the Order troops focused their energies on him, and their eyes went wide as they saw their blue onslaught disappear into him with no effect at all. They had surely expected to see him vanish, to see his skin glow white hot for an instant, dissolve into a brief, blackened ghost, then evaporate into nothingness, as happened with the rest. Fred’s lack of utter destruction gave them pause, and they held their fire long enough for William to say something.