A Space Girl from Earth (The Kyroibi Trilogy Book 1)

by Christina McMullen

  The scene faded again and Ellie found herself back at the arena… Rather, the Collus, as she now knew it to be called. This time around, she forced herself to watch and to truly see the scene not simply through her father’s eyes, but with his mind. Of course there was pain, sorrow, and regret, but absent, she noticed, was fear. Instead, there was an overwhelming sense of gratitude as El’iadryov thought not only about how he would be spared the slow and painful death from disease, but the comfort he took in knowing his wife and family would not have to bear witness to his wasting away either. Yes, he felt guilt for keeping his wife in the dark, but in the end, he knew he was protecting her as much as his people.

  This time, Ellie did not pull out of the memory as Julian neared. She waited, feeling the heavy weight of death sweep over her. The sensation was almost too real and just as she worried her own panic would overtake the memory, everything changed. She felt a lightness, as if her very being was becoming insubstantial. She no longer had form, yet she still existed.

  And just as quickly, the world extinguished.

  A moment later she opened her eyes and found herself standing in line with the automaton soldiers of the temple. She turned her head and saw to her surprise, Julian stood next to her. She felt her consciousness connect and gain command of the metal body.

  “Thank you,” she heard her father say as he stepped from the line and walked silently by Julian’s side. Before she could see anything more, the memory faded and her father pulled away.

  “Forgive me, Ellie,” he said quietly. “I did only what I could to shelter you and your mother from my pain, and yet, I still caused you to suffer.”

  “I understand,” she said, wiping away the tears that still streamed freely, creating beautiful, if not utterly bittersweet prisms as they splashed her diodes. “At least…”

  She blushed and turned away, willing her feelings of relief over Julian’s innocence to stay hidden, focusing instead on her father and all that he’d sacrificed to get to this moment. But her mind had other ideas as she tried to reconcile the loving woman in her father’s memories with the virtual stranger of the last few days. “Why does the Kyroibi turn people into power hungry lunatics?”

  “You just answered your own question,” El’iadryov said with a tight smile. “Power. Knowledge of the ancients.” He swept his hand out over the sea of blank faces below. “Command over the most powerful army in the galaxy. To be, in essence, the supreme ruler of the known universe. Is it so hard to imagine that one small taste of all that is possible would entice anyone to seek more?”

  “Right. Power corrupts,” Ellie said flatly. “So if the Kyroibi makes people mad with power, why keep it around? What’s to stop me from taking these… um… robots? And conquering the galaxy?”

  El’iadryov chuckled softly. “That you would question rather than accept the power that is yours to do with what you wish, is telling.”

  Ellie was reminded of Julian’s words about the purity of her heart and she blushed bright enough to light up the twilit temple. “I’m not exactly a saint, you know,” she said with an embarrassed chuckle.

  “Ours is not a peaceful history, El’iadrylline. This world once teemed with life. Life that eventually felt constrained by the boundaries of one insignificant planet and so, we left. In our search, we discovered life among the stars, but we were not happy with what we found.”

  “And what was it we found?”

  “Inferiority,” he said with a haunted expression. “Planets at war. Destruction. Greed. Concepts that had been so long forgotten by our people that they feared the consequences of allowing these civilizations to flourish. I could spend a lifetime relating to you our history, but it would be best for you to experience it for yourself. Come. You will want to be in the library anyway as I suspect the Kyroibi is now ready to fully manifest.”

  Where Ellie wanted to be was back in the ship, headed for Earth so that she could reunite with Julian and her family, but she did not express this. Already, the Kyroibi was going crazy and she really didn’t want to have yet another episode where she lost control of her body. Especially not while standing on the steep staircase, so she followed her father, climbing even higher until they reached a door set into the wall. Here, El’iadryov stopped and bowed his head.

  “Beyond this door is the library, an archive of sorts, the physical representation of that which resides within you. You will find, as I and all true masters of the Kyroibi before us have found, that proximity to the knowledge will aide in a comfortable transition.”

  “Transition?” Ellie asked, but her father simply stepped aside. At the same time, a small depression in the door’s stonework emitted a soft glow. Acting on instinct, Ellie placed her hand to the diodes and without a sound, the door opened, revealing a cavernous room unlike any she’d seen before.

  There were no books or ledgers, or any discernable records that would to her Earth-trained eyes denote a library or archive. In fact, there was nothing on Earth that she could compare it to except perhaps the impossible experience of being inside a lantern. All around her, pinpoints of light clustered, filling the room from wall to wall, floor to ceiling, and yet, nowhere she went felt closed in or crowded.

  She did, however, feel the enormity of it all. Each and every pinpoint housed an unfathomable knowledge base. To think that what she was seeing was also inside of her was a laughable concept, yet Ellie wasn’t laughing. Instead, she sank onto a dais that rose from the center of the room, unable to trust her legs as the swell of information reached the point of overflow.

  Chapter 15

  Julian quickly discovered that the true purpose of the cumbersome retrofitting on Svoryk’s ship was not simply for navigation, but enslavement. The ship’s crew consisted entirely of Eidyn who were not only forced into subservience, but thanks to the crude modifications, were physically bound to the ship, meaning any attempt to circumnavigate control would be an immediate death sentence.

  This discovery invoked new and powerful feelings of anger and disgust. Julian fought hard to keep his emotions from manifesting into a physical display. That he found this difficult was more than worrisome, it was dangerous. Especially as his momentary weakness had not gone unnoticed.

  Dryova stared at Julian with open curiosity and made no attempt to hide the fact that she was trying to figure out what she had just witnessed. After all, from her perspective, she should have been the only Eidyn aboard the ship with free will. Julian’s brief emotional display was a telltale sign that he was not under control as he pretended to be. Even if she was an ally—which was highly debatable at the moment—the observation made Julian uncomfortable as it was information that could now be extracted from her mind should Svoryk find reason to go looking. This sobering thought finally allowed him to shut down the irrational emotions. He would not give anyone a reason to be suspicious.

  Svoryk led his captives through the ship to the lower deck, which housed several holding cells. Julian stood silently and watched as Isaverlline shrugged off her captors and walked into her cell, head held high. He expected Svoryk to return to the ship’s bridge, but instead, he continued to the end of the corridor and motioned for Julian to enter a small cell.

  “Until I require your assistance, you will remain here. You may be loyal to me now, but that you were so easily broken by a simple Korghetian bisa proves to me that you are weak and easily manipulated. I cannot allow you to wander my ship unsupervised.”

  Julian had not questioned Svoryk’s intent, but understood that the needless explanation was nothing more than a display of dominance.

  “Very well,” he said and stepped into the small room, listening as the magnetic doors locked into place.

  Clever, he thought as he slid his hand over the smooth wall, examining the interior mechanism that held him prisoner. A buffer made from thin sheets of petroleum-based plastics lined the room, creating a static field meant not only to keep him inside, but also to keep him out of the ship’s computer. But not cleve
r enough.

  Julian released a small pulse of energy, enough to dissipate the electrons in just one of the many layers of plastic, but no more. He then placed his hand on the film and pushed, manipulating the electrical field through his body’s conduits in a way that gave the illusion the static field remained while in fact he neutralized its effect.

  He then reached into the ship’s info-matrix and was shocked to find that security protocol was nearly nonexistent. Not a single line of command code was guarded by anything more than a simple passkey. The same passkey that Svoryk used for all of his gadgetry. Overriding access was going to be easier than he thought, though much slower thanks to the retrofitting.

  The tedium of waiting caused Julian’s mind to wander back to El’iadrylline, bringing about a fresh torrent of uncontrolled emotion. The strongest and most obvious, of course, was guilt. Julian would never forgive himself the error that sent her to Ia’na Eidyn alone. He could not expect forgiveness, but he was bound and determined to rectify his mistake by any means possible, which meant reining in the errant emotions.

  And yet, as he tucked away the guilt and anger, Julian found that like a reverse Pandora’s Box, one emotion refused to be swept away. The most illogical and frivolous of feelings locked in and refused to be extinguished. An ache in his chest that seemed almost physical, despite the logic that told him such sensations were impossible, held fast, stubbornly refusing to move.

  The way she looked at him, as if he was a person of equal measure and not a weapon to be manipulated, affected him in ways that should have been impossible. Affection was a luxury he was never afforded. He existed merely to serve his master. To await the eventual order to lead the charge in saving the galaxy from the mistakes of the past. What distracted him now was an abstraction and Julian’s purpose held no use for abstractions.

  And yet, nothing, no logic or reasoning, had any effect against his errant emotions, so Julian instead turned them into motivation. The only way he was ever going to see El’iadrylline again was by getting out of the cell that held him and to do that, he absolutely had to shut away the part of his mind that could think of her and nothing else.

  He focused instead on the information the ship was slowly feeding to him. That the transference diodes were not properly synced after the retrofit made the transmission sluggish and muddled. Eventually, after what felt like several lifetimes, he had all of the recorded data. Julian quickly identified the simplistic code that held the enslaved crew and began to formulate the override, but hesitated, noting that just thinking of El’iadrylline was making him as impulsive as she.

  Freeing the crew would send up a red flag that he was in the system. Despite the ship’s lack of sophistication and security, Julian did not want to underestimate Svoryk or his aptitude for cruelty. After all, the Eidyn people may be strong and able to withstand a catastrophe, but not all innocent passengers were Eidyn. He would need to exercise patience.

  With the ship’s entire information matrix at his disposal, he searched first for Dryova. Finding and confronting her would be a risk, but necessary, given that her presence alone created an instability for any plan he might have otherwise put into action.

  But Dryova, it seemed, did not want to be found. After his third thorough sweep of the ship’s information matrix, Julian could not blame the anomaly on inferior maintenance. Dryova had been a Kyroibi master. Disgraced or not, Julian should have been able to feel her presence even without the ship’s feed. Even if she was not who she claimed to be, he should have sensed something. After all, he could easily identify Isaverlline’s presence.

  The uncertainty was both curious and distressing. Julian was unsure as to whether or not he could even locate her physically. After all, she’d easily slipped into the ranks of Svoryk’s soldiers. Worse, he could not risk a search of the ship. Getting out of the cell was a simple task. Getting out without drawing unwanted attention would take work. But wandering the ship without a clear plan was impossible.

  But any plan, clear or not, was put on hold when Julian heard movement in the corridor, but sensed no presence. A guard, most likely, but even the hampered info matrix should have informed him someone was coming. He managed to disconnect from the matrix just as the door slid open.

  The soldier who entered was featureless and indistinguishable in every way, yet Julian knew this was no random prisoner check. With the door securely locked and all traces of its opening scrubbed from the ship’s log, Dryova removed her mask.

  He would have found amusement in the fact that the one he’d meant to seek out found him first, but his mirth was lost to the chilling fact that even as she stood in close proximity, he could not sense her presence.

  “Dryova,” he nodded his head slightly in acknowledgement. “Deception has never been a practice condoned by the Eidyn and yet, one might argue that our very design seems intentionally specific to such shadow arts.”

  “You’ll not find my signature, Julian,” she said sharply. “I know you can disable the lock and I know you have already accessed this ship’s info matrix, for all the good it will do you.”

  “Understood. However, what is not clear to me is your motive.”

  “And as a weapon in the service of the Kyroibi, it is not your place to question,” she admonished harshly. “My granddaughter may believe you to be a loyal protector, but I’ll not leap so blindly.”

  “As you should not,” Julian agreed, adding, “Nor shall I acknowledge a disgraced master who keeps secrets and moves in stealth upon the Emperor’s vessel.”

  He was straining at the boundaries of civil discussion, but he would not back down. Whether Dryova was who she claimed to be or not, she’d already proven herself a dangerous complication to his already tenuous plan.

  “You’re quite the curiosity, Julian,” she said through pursed lips as she stepped around him to sit on the thin shelf that served as the room’s only furnishing. “But I daresay, there are many who said the same of my sister and me.”

  Julian said nothing. Certainly, she had a point. Twin births had never been a consideration to the Eidyn people. The theory that a single pattern could produce two unique individual lives was an archaic concept that had been long before proven inaccurate. That the phenomena existed naturally in some of the lower civilizations was a fascinating study, to be sure.

  “I cannot, of course, hold our parents blameless,” Dryova continued. Julian had to agree. Androyo and Essava were acting on reckless impulse when they purposefully split the abstractive root of their own offspring. Especially knowing that their child was to be the heir to the Kyroibi. “But neither can I blame them for the inquisitive nature that is inherent to our people. After all, the quest for knowledge is the very legacy we as a people have left upon the galaxy.”

  “And one might argue that willfully neglecting the destruction and violence of said legacy is how we have come to this moment.”

  Her expression hardened momentarily, but she could not argue the validity of Julian’s barb.

  “Yes, I suppose you are correct,” she said, turning her eyes to some faraway place that only she could see. “Had the governing collective known of father’s actions, he’d have been stripped of the Kyroibi. Andressa and I would still be outcasts, of course, but nothing more.” She brought her attention back to the present and narrowed her eyes at Julian. “I don’t suppose you remember when father brought Andressa and I to Ia’na Eidyn, do you?”

  Julian froze, hoping Dryova did not notice the reaction her question elicited. Androyo may have been a true master, but in Julian’s estimation, he was an even bigger fool than he’d previously thought.

  “No,” he said in a neutral tone. “My construct may have stood sentinel for countless lifetimes, but the birth of my consciousness was a mere twenty cycles ago. That Andressa was not my true master was unknown to me until she gave the command I was incapable of carrying out.”

  “The order to assassinate me.”

  Julian nodded. There was no emotion
in Dryova’s comment.

  “I’ve accepted that which was not mine to control,” she said as if to dismiss the notion as some sort of silly family misunderstanding and not a chasm that created turmoil for an entire federation of planets. “Had the Kyroibi imprinted itself on Andressa, no doubt I would have been the one to seek out pawns in my bid to take what was not mine to dominate.”

  “So you were selected by the Kyroibi over Andressa. Curious.”

  “Not really.” Again her tone was dismissive. “Andressa had always been the least concerned with moral consequences. The fracturing of our abstraction was a bit too balanced, I’m afraid. When faced with all that was ours to command, my sister had eyes only for your battalion. That she would return years later to abduct you for the purpose of setting up Svoryk as the puppet king of her domain was unfortunate, but not surprising.”

  And yet, Julian could not help but note that Dryova had been reluctant to relinquish the Kyroibi to her son. Yes, the damage had already been done when Androyo brought the fractured pair to Ia’na Eidyn, but covering her father’s mistake until after his death only allowed Andressa to grow stronger in her bid for domination.

  “I am curious, however, as to why you’re here.” If she was indeed telling the truth, the information was interesting and might be of later use, but Julian only had a finite amount of time in which to work and Dryova’s confession was keeping him from what needed to be done. He had to wonder if that was not the point.

  “I am here to help,” she said in a voice that betrayed nothing. “We are both working toward the same goal. I’d like to know what exactly it is my son hoped to accomplish by keeping from me his intentions.”

  “Forgive my skepticism,” Julian said bluntly, noting her word choice betrayed a knowledge that would have been difficult to acquire. “But to you, I am your son’s assassin. That you’ve not attacked or even accused me is interesting, but does not instill a measure of trust.”