Starbearer

by Rock Forsberg

  The connection between Henning and Belinda lasted for about ten seconds and broke off as Sofia fainted. It was too brief to fix her completely, but by the feeling in Henning’s hand, he had been able to stop the internal bleeding, and even formed some connections in the bone tissue.

  ‘Is she going to be all right?’ asked Jill.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Henning said truthfully. ‘She needs medical attention.’

  ‘Yes!’ Berossus shouted, as he downed yet another enemy ship.

  ‘Great shooting, son,’ said Oberen, from the pilot’s seat. ‘Let’s round up with the others.’

  Berossus heaved a sigh, and a smile rose on his cheeks. He had really been a great shot, and best of all, his father had acknowledged it. They seemed to have the enemy under control, and not a moment too soon: their shields were blinking red.

  Then, as if out of nowhere, more slithering enemy ships appeared.

  ‘There’s dozens of them! And more on the way, they’re overpowering us.’

  Oberen grunted. ‘If this is the way we go, this is the way we go. But we’re not giving up without a fight.’

  ‘No, we’re not!’ Berossus shouted back and fired at the enemy.

  Back in the Shuttler-shop garage, Evie looked after Jilius Dal’s withered body. She made way for the medics who ran from a shuttle. They ran their devices over him, but Nenetl’s magic had rendered him dead beyond repair. Seeing it as a fact on the diagnostic tool took away any hopes she might have had left, and another wave of tears burst through. She had lost a mentor and the nicest person she knew.

  The medics put a black blanket over his head and lifted him up to carry him to the med-shuttle. Naido comforted Evie, putting his arms around her shoulder as she cried.

  Just then, Daler ran through the door. ‘Where’s Gus?’

  Evie glanced at the medics carrying Gus’s body onto the shuttle. A fresh fall of tears came out.

  ‘Oh,’ Daler said, and opened his arms. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  Evie clung on to him and sobbed against his shoulder. ‘I don’t know what to do without him.’

  Daler comforted her. ‘I know it’s hard, but besides Gus, you’re the only person who could do it.’

  ‘Do what?’ She sniffed.

  ‘Use the codes I gave you. Cyborgs and Remolan cyborg hybrids control Nenetl’s spacecrafts. Puissance gave me a backdoor code to disable them, but I need someone to get it into their systems.’

  She wiped her tears. ‘Perhaps…’

  ‘Let’s get the codes in. It’s what Gus would have wanted.’

  Evie agreed. But she had no idea what to do. She had all of Gus’s systems around her. He had said something about a secret door. But how could she transmit a code to cyborgs out in space?

  ‘You’re right, but I’m not sure if I can.’

  ‘Listen, sis. If anyone can do it, it’s you.’

  ‘But—’

  Daler raised an index finger. ‘No buts, let’s get to it. Let’s do it for Gus.’

  ‘I will try,’ Evie said. ‘But I can’t promise anything.’

  Evie sat on Gus’s chair and turned on the screen in front of her. Everything from the chair to the desk to the login screen reminded her of him. Images of their time together inside Momentum 6 flashed in front of her eyes and turned to tears that blurred her vision.

  This is not helping, she thought. I will have to mourn later.

  She wiped her face with the back of her hand and tapped in her login details.

  She opened the hacking software. It was a highly sophisticated package that Gus had customised with self-made cracking arrays, gateway augers, and wall-breakers. She had used the software in a few training tasks, but never had she started from scratch. First, she needed to find the right channel and format; the cyborgs were based on the Dawn Alliance Navy tech, so she picked method 504, and ran a scan.

  The result: a group of five cyborgs in Spit City. Just as she expected, they were of the navy, and the cyborgs running Nenetl’s ships were out of reach for the standard method Gus had devised.

  A droplet of sweat came down from her temple. It wasn’t going to be easy. Before she could even connect, she had to modify the method Gus had created. She sighed and got to work.

  She had no idea how much time had passed until someone tapped her shoulder.

  ‘How’s it going?’ Naido asked. ‘I’ve no idea what those…’

  His voice faded into the background as she copied the codes she’d received from Daler to Gus’s mainframe. The contents made no sense to her, but they were probably as they should be. She had to create a quick script to feed them into the cyborgs’ programming, but to gain access, she needed the internal gateway pass.

  Blast! Where do I get that?

  There were about a hundred billion options, but it was impossible to try them out without someone seeing, and even then, it would take a lot of time. The passes were in the form of eight letters.

  She tried the default, BLUESTAR, and pinged the cyborgs through their comms channel.

  A red sign flashed in the middle of the screen. It didn’t go through. No surprise that they had changed it. Evie clenched her jaws; even one failed attempt ran the risk that someone would notice.

  ‘Something wrong?’ Naido asked.

  ‘They don’t respond to the default internal gateway pass.’

  ‘That’s the flower?’ Daler said.

  ‘The flower?’

  ‘Bluestar. It’s a flower, very popular on Runcor.’

  ‘Flower,’ Evie said. Shosana’s last words sprang to mind. It’s aconitum; you must tell Evie. The purple flower made perfect sense. A smile crept on her face. ‘Thanks!’

  ‘OK,’ Daler said.

  Evie was already punching in ACONITUM as the gateway pass and sent it as a ping.

  It went through. She raised her arms in victory and yelled, ‘Yes!’ as her feelings for Shosana overcame her. With her vision blurred by tears, she finished the script.

  Once it was done, she swiped the code container on the screen over to the transmit script. ‘I hope this works…’

  A progress bar appeared. It moved at an annoyingly slow pace. Evie stared at it in silence. Behind her, Daler and Naido waited in silence. There was nothing to say. Either it worked or it didn’t.

  On screen, the progress bar was replaced by a single word: Complete. It meant the script had run successfully. Whether the cyborgs had received it, let alone been affected by it, there was no way to know.

  ‘Did it work?’ Naido asked.

  ‘If it didn’t, we all die today.’

  Tredd hit the armrest of his chair. ‘There’s too many of them!’

  A droplet of sweat broke on Eddie’s temple, as he did his best to avoid the enemy fire. The Rutger, even with its additional armament, was outgunned from the start, and now the best they could do was to stay alive, and to reach the Shades.

  It had become an all-out warzone between Spit City and Grangar. The Dawn Alliance Navy and the Noir fought an overpowered enemy of Remolan cyborg clones and their crooked ships, which seemed to multiply in numbers by the minute. Navy ships pinched into the war zone, too. A massive battle cruiser spewed hundreds of fighters, and frigates blasted heavy plasma pulses, tungsten bolts, and laser beams at the dark enemy. Powerful as they were, the sheer number of alien ships filled the space and pushed back hard.

  ‘We have to pull back,’ Eddie said. ‘That is, if we can.’

  Their shields were at fifteen percent.

  ‘If we go now,’ Tredd said, clenching his hands, ‘Grangar will crush Spit City, and the Remolans will cascade over our universe. We cannot let it go!’

  Their ship shook—another hard hit—and spun out of Eddie’s control. As he stabilised it, the shield indicator showed five percent, and many of their systems, including weapons, had gone offline. Smoke was seeping through the panels.

  ‘The next one will break this ship,’ Eddie said, and turned them away from the battle. ‘We’re no
use to anyone if we’re dead.’

  ‘We’re dead if Nenetl gets her way.’

  An enemy fighter was trailing them. It had disengaged from the pack, and its intentions were obvious.

  ‘Turn around,’ Tredd said. ‘I’ll give it all we’ve got left.’

  Eddie did as he was told and turned the Rutger as quickly as he could. Tredd got the enemy in his sights, but the gun was damaged, and the aim was jumping all over, sometimes passing over the enemy, but not locking.

  Tredd wished he could pause time. Instead, he focused on the enemy, waited for the right moment… and when the aim overlapped the enemy ship, he fired a missile.

  The missile screamed towards the enemy, which was flying straight at them, ready to shoot at any moment.

  The missile flew over the alien ship. He had missed.

  That was it. There was nothing he could do. The alien ship was running straight towards them, and the only thing left was the final push of the trigger.

  But it never came. Instead, the ship was about to run straight into them.

  Eddie made a quick manoeuvre to dive under it.

  The alien ship scraped the top of the Rutger’s hull and destroyed all the shields, jolting the ship down faster than the inertial dampeners could react. A nasty creaking sound pierced their ears.

  That’s it, Tredd thought. It was good while it lasted.

  But the hull itself remained intact.

  ‘It didn’t fire—’

  Maybe its main weapons had malfunctioned. But it had other armaments ready to deploy. Tredd expected the enemy vessel to turn, but it seemed to continue on a straight path.

  It was out of control.

  Oberen called them through the radio. ‘I don’t know what happened, but it seems all of the alien ships have become unresponsive.’

  Tredd confirmed it by looking at the screens that showed the battle. The navy was shooting down alien ships as if they were target practice for new recruits. The alien ships didn’t fire back, or even evade. The inbound flow of them had also ceased.

  ‘Let’s get back,’ Tredd said.

  ‘Wonder if the Shades beat Nenetl?’ Eddie said, as he ran checks on the Rutger’s systems.

  ‘They’re still fighting.’

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Jill sat by Belinda’s bedside in the infirmary. According to the ship’s medic, her condition was stable, but she wasn’t out of the woods yet. A sedative kept her in motionless sleep, and she was hooked to a machine that would alert should there be any changes in her condition. Her heart was thumping along a steady beat on the screen behind her bed.

  The alien ships had been neutralised, but there was no word from Nenetl. Somehow it was similar to before, and Jill could relate to her old self who’d wanted to get as far from the navy as possible, and live as a normal person on a quiet planet. Seeing Belinda like this brought those thoughts back, but it wasn’t the same as last time. They wouldn’t retire to a sleepy planet, no, they would travel the worlds.

  If she got away from this, she would continue to dance. She would train and get better. Her troupe down on Nanira and Tredd never believed in her. Belinda did, she knew, but it was Nenetl who had made her believe in herself.

  She remembered dancing for her. While consciously understanding that she had been under her spell, the feelings of freedom, expression and unadulterated pleasure of her body’s movement in that moment lingered in her mind like a spiritual awakening. Paradoxically, Nenetl had rekindled her passion for dance and strengthened her feelings for Belinda. Because of Belinda, and her Re-Stem application, her body was young again while her mind was free of inhibition. She wasn’t a timid young girl anymore. She was a woman who knew what she wanted.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the opening door. Sofia appeared in the doorway, panting.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Jill asked.

  ‘The Shades need all of us. Come with us to the bridge,’ Sofia said, and beckoned Jill to join her.

  Jill leaned beside Belinda, kissed her on the cheek, and whispered, ‘Rest and heal, love. I’ll be back for you.’

  She got up and hurried behind Sofia. She followed her through the tight corridors, and on to the bridge, which was more like a small space behind the cockpit where the pilot and the co-pilot sat. Henning waited for them there, but it was the view outside the ship that drew her attention.

  Grangar glowed deep red on the backdrop, obscuring almost of the view. In the foreground flared two bright shimmers of light: a small white one and a larger purple one. The two were connected by a ray of flashing colours. A ship flew close by, and was instantly connected to the white glimmer by a thin blue beam of light.

  ‘That’s Tredd and Eddie.’

  ‘And those are Berossus and Oberen.’

  Sofia referred to another ship that was drawing closer. Jill understood what was going on: the Shades were in the middle of a tug of war. Nenetl was pulling Grangar towards Spit City, whereas the others were pushing it away. Still, it was moving towards the city moon.

  ‘They need our help,’ she said. ‘Pilot, get us closer.’

  The pilot turned to look at her, then said to Henning, ‘Sir?’

  ‘Do as she says, we don’t have time to waste.’

  The pilot nodded and engaged the ship’s engines. As they moved closer, Oberen’s ship stopped by the white flare, opposite the ship with Tredd and Eddie. A stream of red came from their ship and hit the white cloud, making it shine even brighter.

  Grangar’s speed slowed significantly, almost coming to a standstill. Their ship also slowed down as they got closer to the pale glimmer that now dominated the view. It was but an abstract pane of light, but when she stared at it, faces seemed to appear: Aalto, Efia, Shinzaburo, and Warrigal. With determined expressions, they were channelling energy against Nenetl in the purple haze.

  ‘Now’s our time,’ Jill said. She glanced at Henning and Sofia and extended her arms. They grabbed her hands.

  The flashing stream between the purple and the white was mostly purple now. Nenetl was overpowering the rest of the Shades.

  Jill focused inward, on her own energy. As she did, she thought of Belinda, her beautiful face and soft skin, her alluring voice and sensual touch. She wanted to feel her on her skin again. She was doing it for her. The energy gathered at her core increased by the second. Earlier, she had been a slave to it, unable to control its explosive powers, but now she knew better. She could direct the power, even if it was explosive. She drew in more power from Henning and Sofia through her hands. Their vibrations met at her core, and, mixing with her energy, created an explosive self-enforcing spiral inside her. In moments, it expanded until the point she was about to burst.

  She let the energy take over and released it.

  A blue-and-white glimmering stream shot out of her chest and through the ship, directly onto the glowing shield. As it hit, the white blaze increased in brightness and size.

  Also, the brilliant stream of light grew thicker, almost engulfing the purple one.

  ‘It’s moving away,’ someone said. The only thing Jill could do was focus on drawing, generating and directing the energy.

  She was one with the light.

  Space and time meant nothing.

  Without warning, she found herself hovering in space. Breathing was not a problem, she just floated. Around her, everything seemed to be suspended: the spaceships, Grangar, the white flare, the streams—static like a still picture of flowing water—and the purple blaze right before her, and at the centre of it, Nenetl. But unlike everything else around her, Nenetl was moving.

  Jill tried to understand what had happened. Perhaps she was dreaming. It was all surreal.

  Nenetl floated towards her. Unlike the long dress she had worn before, this time she wore a light purple robe, loosely tied at the waist, revealing a lot of skin between her breasts and down to the belt. She stopped just out of arm’s reach.

  ‘You could still join me,’ Nenetl said, in the sw
eetest voice.

  Jill shook her head. ‘No…’

  ‘Perhaps you would like me better this way?’ Nenetl said, and her form morphed to that of Belinda’s. ‘I could exist in this form too. And that is but a start: there’s so much more I can offer you.’

  ‘And what would that be?’

  ‘You wanted to dance? I will make you become the dance.’

  ‘I don’t need you for that.’

  Nenetl looked at her, with Belinda’s face tilted to the right. ‘You don’t need me? What about when you said, I want you just the way you are?’

  ‘I don’t know what you did, but you’re not her,’ Jill said, trying to sound strong, but deep inside feeling for Belinda, and wanting her to be all right. ‘We’re going to stop you, one way or another.’

  ‘Even if it means killing the one you love?’

  This time Jill wouldn’t let Nenetl manipulate her, so she said nothing.

  ‘I’m already fractured,’ the form of Belinda before her said, and lifted a hand to the back of her ear. She gasped, and pulled it back, now all bloody. She stared at her palm, sobbing.

  ‘You’re not her.’

  The image of Belinda in front of her flashed a wicked smile through the tears. ‘No, but I can kill her.’ She extended her arms. ‘Consider it, dance with me.’

  A faint music started playing; a familiar, slow melody, becoming more nostalgic in its tone as its volume increased. Without Jill noticing, Belinda was holding her against her body, their faces centimetres apart.

  And they danced. Belinda’s soft body against hers. Freedom of movement. It felt exhilarating. Until the music stopped.

  Jill wanted to continue. The joy she experienced in the weightless movement with Belinda as her partner—

  But it wasn’t her. It was Nenetl, and it was wrong.