by AJ Super
Nyx narrowed her eyes. The two women wore almost the same exact clothing she was wearing, a white tunic over white leggings with white shoes. They were from the Engineering cohort.
The woman with the grumbling voice pulled at the booming woman’s sleeve. “Come on, we have a couple other crates to move into storage before they assign a manager, then we can’t just dump stuff anymore.”
The kitten batted the drive to the edge of the crates and charged after it.
The shadow of the person with the grunting voice slapped the pad next to the door and the hatch slid open. The two women sauntered out.
Nyx let out a hissing breath. The kitten was going to be a handful if she didn’t have some way to contain it.
Behind the desk in the corner were boxes of motherboards for console displays, boxes with clipping lids and a handle on top. She squatted next to one and began stuffing motherboards from one into the others, emptying it. She needed something to carry the kitten in. She couldn’t worry about having it run off again.
Nyx stood and turned to the Sias, all staring at her with wide, glowing, gold-encircled eyes.
“I need you to take the kitten to the Thanatos.” She bent over and picked up the grey fluff and held it out. Nyx looked at the kitten and realized she hadn’t even checked its sex yet, or even given it a name. The kitten stretched its little paws open and mewed. She lifted the tail, smiling. She. The kitten was a she. She tried to roll over in Nyx’s hand, and Nyx set the yellow-eyed kitten puddled in lavender energy in the vented motherboard box and clipped the lid shut. “If I don’t make it, make sure Sarama takes the helm of the Thanatos. And make sure she takes care of...” The kitten’s glow reminded her of the color she had made the peace lily in her white space when she kicked Erebus out of her code. “And make sure Sarama takes care of Lily.” She gave the box to the green-eyed Sia at the door.
He stepped out of his docking station. “Is she infected?”
Nyx nodded. “It was an accident. Now I’m responsible for her. Get her to Sarama. Get the Thanatos crew to safety. That’s all I want.”
The Sia nodded. Lily meowed in the box.
Nyx bent over the desk and picked up one of the solid-state drives that Lily had batted around. She straightened and put the drive in her waistband.
The green-eyed Sia by the door put a hand on Nyx’s shoulder. “Survive this.”
Nyx grimaced. “I’ll try.”
The door whisked open and Nyx trotted down the corridor towards the main lift with a gun banging on her thigh and a chip-carving knife rattling in the holster, towards the queen.
36
In the quiet of the locked lift, Nyx’s breath sounded like a roar. Wires from the door pad sat dangling around her feet. She squared her shoulders. She was the god of gods. She could do this. She turned to the lift door and slapped the pad. It glowed red. She slapped it again. It flashed red.
Locked.
Nyx ground her teeth. She didn’t expect that she would need special access to get into the Hall of Stars. She yanked the face of the door pad off the wall. This better not be next to impossible. They obviously didn’t want unauthorized people on the same level as the queen’s throne room, in the hall filled with doors etched with star-maps.
She paused and stared into the distance for a moment. Then, she pulled the power actuator from its setting and crossed the manual override switch’s input and output. She shoved the actuator back in the socket, flipping the override twice. If that didn’t work, she’d have to find an air duct or something.
The door slid open.
She put a hand on the grip of the pistol at her waist.
She hoped that the lift was the only door with permissions on it, that she would be able to get into the big black door at the end of the hall without having to rig any more wiring. Wiring doors was easy, but she wouldn’t have a whole lot of time if there was someone in the corridor.
Nyx stood to the side of the lift door and peered out.
The hall loomed, tall windows to the star-scape on one side, star-map etched doors on the other. A faint echo of voices down the chrome-buttressed corridor whispered, but no one was immediately nearby in the hall. Nyx walked out.
Her soft-shoed feet glided silently over the white marble floor. She glanced out of the thick windows. The star-scape was hauntingly familiar, yet, foreign. She stepped to the thick glass and peered outside, kneeling on a white settee surrounded by Elysion’s white ficus, massive rectangular metal door etched with whirling galaxies and star patterns behind her.
A blue and green planet slipped into view, hovering under the horizon of La Terre’s lower grey levels. White clouds danced across the surface of blue water and green and gold land.
“Putain,” Nyx muttered and sucked in a breath. She didn’t expect to be here.
In the distance, small craft flew from the surface of the planet to meet the palace ship. An anchored space station, dwarfed by the city-ship, rotated with the orbit of the green and blue globe.
Nyx closed her eyes. Earth. She was at la reine’s stronghold, in the middle of the Queen’s Navy’s staging grounds. She had no idea how to get the Thanatos from this place. If they left the hangar, they would either be pulled back in by the city-ship, one of the many Battle Stations floating in space on Earth’s horizon, or one of the rotating space stations, or they would be destroyed by one of those on the spot.
Nyx gripped the back of the settee. It was a problem for the future. She glanced down the empty hall through the ficus to a row of six white-armored guards and a white and gold-clad Queensman in front of the simple black door. She had other problems. Those problems had noticed her get off the lift and were walking towards her.
The Queensman looked at a datapad strapped to his wrist. “No one is allowed in the Hall of Stars unless summoned. You are unescorted, and I have no record of there being a summons for an engineer.”
Nyx crawled off the settee. She put a hand on the gun in the white patent-leather holster at her waist, then glimpsed the energy rifles that the guards carried. She scanned the hall. No cover, one gun. She wouldn’t be able to get more than one shot off before they had her in their sights. Her hand traveled to the chip knife. She would be able to deal with the white and gold capeleted Queensman, but not the armored soldiers.
She would have to kill him. He would be too troublesome otherwise, and she had already determined not to leave the queen any immortal soldiers. She bowed her head. She was becoming an executioner after all.
The trick would be the white-armored soldiers. She could see the pulsating whorls of Erebus’ emerald code swirl around each of the soldiers. Wherever there was a signal, Erebus would be swimming through the tech, stagnant because of the queen’s gold virus, but there. A smile twitched across her face. She could control Erebus’ code, and Erebus was so ingrained in La Terre’s functions, she should be able to control the soldiers through their armor. She gripped the blade of the chip knife and sliced her palm with a bare sting.
“Excuse me,” the Queensman growled. “What is your business here?”
“I’m here for my sisters,” she whispered and stepped to the Queensman.
“What was that? Speak up, girl,” he demanded.
Nyx strode to the white and gold clad man. “I’m here for my sisters.”
His eyes narrowed. “Who?”
“Erebus. And the queen.” With a sweep of her arm, she grabbed the man by the neck. Breaking into a run, she made him stumble back, clawing at her hand. She let him go.
The Queensman stutter-stepped to catch his balance, choking.
Nyx sprinted forward towards the six soldiers lifting their weapons and sent her white tendrils winding through the man’s deep coral branches behind her. She gripped the wisps tight and ripped the energy from the Queensman’s body, extinguishing the white flame that barely had time to blossom. He sunk to the ground behind her as she grabbed the rifle of the guard in the center and yanked them to her, pulling them off balance
. Planting her hand squarely on their chest, she willed her tendrils to braid with Erebus’ code. The whorls of emerald code dotted with bits of gold swirled around the guard, around all of the guards. She locked their trigger fingers.
Nyx skidded to a stop in front of the black door. She turned to face the line of guards raising their weapons to her. Nyx raised her hands, her short hair plastered across her forehead. “Do you know who I am?” She twitched a finger.
Her white wisps swirled with the emerald code washing across the code-powered armor.
“Hold it right there. You’re under arrest,” the center guard echoed through his helmet.
“I’ll tell you something that’s been a secret for a very long time.” Nyx leaned forward. “I’m the Star of Nyx. Your queen is the Star of Phoebe. And she’s holding the Star of Erebus hostage. We’re all sisters. Are any of you religious?” Nyx chuckled and stepped forward.
“Stop where you are,” the guard shook his barrel at her. “Our orders are to shoot hostiles.”
Nyx nodded. “You could do that.” She tightened her white mist around Erebus’ emerald whorls. “Or, I could do this.” She twitched the code.
The guards turned and faced each other, guns aiming at one another.
Nyx pursed her lips. “Next time you should listen when someone tells you that they’re a god.”
She gently tightened their fingers around the triggers of their guns, manipulating Erebus’ code-energy infecting the suits of armor.
“Stars, no. Stars, no.” The soldier trembled. “Les Étoiles nous préservent.”
“Les Étoiles nous préservent? Stars preserve you? No. I think not.”
Nyx flicked a tendril through the green whorls of code and shut off the guards’ air intake in their helmets. She loosened her grip on their weapons, and they, one-by-one, dropped the guns and tried wrenching off their helmets.
Controlling Erebus’ code was so easy. She was the operating system, and Erebus was merely a program she was running. She was only running it at half-power, though. What would it be like to have access to all of Erebus, one without the limitations of a virus, one that was downloaded directly within her? Nyx easily clamped down the locks on the soldiers’ helmets.
The guards clawed at their necks, their faces, falling to their knees, silently gasping, writhing on the floor, bodies slowing, until they all stopped.
Nyx flickered through Erebus’ code and opened their air vents.
The soldiers gasped as one distorted body. Nyx let go of the locks and a few, lethargically, pushed off their helmets, their faces red with the return of oxygen to their blood. She stared at the writhing bodies on the floor as they struggled to catch their breaths.
Blood was blood, but she wasn’t going to be a mass murderer today.
Visions of the gasping commandant of the Kokou flashed through her memory as she glanced down the hall at the man splayed on the shining white floor. She had executed him. Bare threads of humanity stopped her from executing these soldiers. If she could still call herself human.
Nyx turned sharply and walked to the door.
A blue light scanned across her body.
“I can open the doors myself,” she whispered. “Or you can open them for me.” She held up the chip-carving knife and prepared to cut her healed hand again.
The black doors rasped open, the center splitting, warm yellow searing through the crack.
The queen was poised over a pile of white and gold in the middle of the enormous, black, glass-domed room, the platform rising behind her, and a man standing beside her. The queen straightened, her amber skin glowing, matching the shimmer of the liquid gold dress she wore that draped off her shoulders and dripped at her feet, black tattoo drawn up her left side from wrist to jaw.
The black-haired man at her side wore familiar ochre robes, showing his muscular chest. His head was draped in a hood. He padded forward on bare feet as the doors closed behind her.
Nxy’s mouth drew into a thin line. “Liu. Coeus.” She drew the pistol at her thigh and pulled the trigger.
Coeus stopped. The shot splashed off of the shimmering blue barrier at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the platform right in front of the ochre-robed man. The vaulted glass ceiling echoed the ping of the shot. He raised his hands and looked back to the queen. “Que Les Étoiles soient avec toi.”
Nyx looked at the monk in disbelief. “The Stars be with me? Va te faire enculer. Bordel de dieu, how are you here, Liu?”
He smiled broadly and looked back at Nyx. “When la reine took the Thanatos, she realized I was just a helpless hostage and graciously took me in as her religious advisor.”
Nyx glanced past the ochre-draped monk at the shining gold queen. Phoebe stared down at her, a sneer painted across her face.
Nyx glanced to her left. At the top of the platform, on a smaller throne next to the queen’s exquisitely etched cathedra, Erebus perched, a bird in red velvet. The dress left her shoulders bare, exposing the whirling black tattoo climbing up her left shoulder to her jaw and down her arm, terminating at the back of her hand in broken spirals. The stiff, sharp top of the dress floated away from her body, making her look like a blood-red calla lily as it hugged her waist and hips.
Coeus inched down the rest of the risers of the platform and past the blue force-barrier.
“Don’t move,” Nyx warned, raising her stolen pistol higher. “I have no desire to take off heads, but I will.”
Coeus bowed. “Yes. Of course. That’s why you killed the poor man outside in the hall. And whoever else you killed to get here.”
“I…” Nyx stared at Coeus.
“You did what you had to.” He smiled.
Nyx’s face turned to stone.
“What do you want?”
“I want my sister back,” she growled.
“She can’t be your sister. She’s a Star. Just like la reine. You are just a human mortal. You are nothing compared to them.” Coeus peered at her through his black brow.
Nyx shifted her weight. “Phoebe, did you not tell him who I am? For being so gracious and letting him be your religious advisor, how discourteous of you not to give him a full family history. Why not tell him I am, apparently, the head of the pantheon?” She stared at Coeus and tromped forward, pressing the barrel of the gun into his forehead.
He simpered.
“I’m Nyx. The Star. Your precious god,” she announced. “And people should stop making me prove it.”
“You-you can’t be,” he stuttered. “You’re a damned pirate.”
Nyx nodded. “I’m a damned pirate. Welcome to the new world.”
She reached back with the gun and cracked him across the skull with the butt. He tumbled to the ground, unconscious. The man was a cockroach that kept coming back, but Phoebe wanted him around for a reason.
Nyx pointed the energy pistol at the queen. “I could kill you right now, Phoebe.” She put her finger on the trigger. “I imagine a hole in your head would be as dangerous to you as it is to me.”
The queen smiled sweetly and stood. She walked down the steps of the raised platform. “You won’t, though.”
“Try me.” Nyx squeezed her finger on the trigger as the queen crossed the barrier-line.
“Virus!” Erebus screamed. “Virus! Don’t!”
Nyx stared up at the crimson vision struggling to stand, and loosened her grip on the gun. She hadn’t thought that the virus would go on if the queen was destroyed.
The queen snorted. “That’s right. If I die, you have no way to control the virus. Erebus stays hobbled. Forever.”
The gold code entwined itself in emerald whorls, embracing and twisting together in a macabre dance of aurora across Erebus’ body.
Nyx’s hand tightened around the pistol’s grip, and she pulled the trigger. Three shots splashed against the blue energy screen behind the queen. A low roar rose from Nyx’s chest. She pulled the trigger again, storming forward. The shots glowed gold against the blue shield. She stopped
with the gun pressed against the queen’s forehead. Phoebe had her. She couldn’t do anything without freeing Erebus first.
Phoebe grinned, laughing.
Nyx screamed and threw the gun across the room. She grabbed the chip knife from her holster and sliced her palm.
The queen’s smile melted.
“I know how to use this, salope.” Nyx swung her bloody hand.
The queen grabbed her wrist, blood running towards her hand. She pushed Nyx backward.
“Now you’re afraid. Like you were afraid of my maman.” Nyx sprang forward, brandishing her bloody hand. The cut was healing fast, she needed to infect the queen before her blood dried.
The queen snatched Nyx’s hands and twisted her around. She shoved Nyx away, her long, body-hugging dress hampering her movement. Nyx lunged at her again, and the queen slid to the side. Nyx caught her with one arm, and Phoebe stepped back, onto her puddling gold train. The fabric wrapped around the queen’s foot, and she toppled over, Nyx landing on top of her, hand hovering above her face.
“Don’t do this,” the queen begged. “There are consequences that you don’t know about. You are just a shadow of what we are. If the god of gods infects us all, if you have power over us all, we become something else. This is just the first step. You can’t.”
“I want my sister back.” Nyx grabbed the queen by the neck with her bloody hand. “You’re going to give her back.”
The queen’s jagged gold code skittered, hard lines of geometric art sparkling. Nyx fished the solid-state drive from her waistband and forced the queen’s head to turn. She moved her ebony hair aside and plugged the drive in the port behind her ear.
The queen whipped her head out of Nyx’s grip. Face bloody, she glared, cedar eyes burning, gold ring around her irises glowing. “You’ll never get me in that,” she hissed.
Nyx sat up, hand around the queen’s throat. She closed her eyes, twining her white tendrils with the queen’s jagged gold code. She gripped it and pulled it toward her, inward.
The queen gasped. “No. You can’t.”