Stars Asunder

by Tao Wong

  “Ali? Are we ready yet?”

  “Nearly there,” the Spirit says. His face is scrunched up, his body invisible to most. He’s flying beside me, staying out of sight because most is not all. And he’s got more important things to do than dodge Mana missiles.

  I watch, in the lee of the roaring, ripping energy dragon, as the guards are thrown aside, their wall torn apart. The two Master Classers are attempting to stop Bolo, but the dragon fights alongside him, stymying their efforts.

  It’s only when the dragon turns a deep, dark purple, that Ali shouts, “Go.”

  So I go. Blink Stepping, leapfrogging, my way out of the encirclement. Into the city itself.

  Behind me, Mikito triggers a last-minute Skill, covering herself and Bolo in a protective bubble as the dragon explodes. The energy contained within Bolo’s Skill, absorbed from attacks, tosses apart earth and bodies, shattering equipment and force shields. I just hope they can hold out long enough for me to do what I need to do.

  I keep Blink Stepping, heading deep within, dodging any attacks that chase me, thankful that Ali managed to figure out a workaround the Spatial Locks. Given enough time and effort, any lock can be broken. If you’re willing to take the pain, pay the cost.

  ***

  I expected Master Class defenders in mass numbers. Maybe even a couple of golems or a mecha ready to stop me as I Blink Stepped past the outer walls of the final settlement structure onto its main grounds. Located in a tetrahedron of a building, I Blink toward the front door, past open ground, ready to punch my way in. I expected resistance.

  Instead, there’s Bob.

  “This way, sir.” The protocol droid bows, its rotund black-and-white body guiding me through the front doors and down the corridor to the settlement sphere.

  I look around warily, concerned that this is a trap. But nothing in my map—and nothing that Ali can find, even darting through walls and ceilings—shows that there is anything else. “Where is everyone?”

  “Greeting the other guests, sir,” the protocol droid chirps happily.

  We come to the main doors and they slide open without a problem. I glance at them, eyeing their thickness, their density, their enchantments. And mentally wince. Would’ve taken me at least a couple of minutes to break through. Unless I trigger something like Army of One.

  “And Lord Ucald?”

  “The Lord has left. A rather hasty departure,” Bob informs me, spinning its head all the way around.

  Seeing no danger, I walk into the room, still expecting to be assaulted. Nothing. Carefully, I place my hand on the settlement sphere, beginning the countdown for takeover. I eye the entrance, wondering if they’ll appear now.

  Instead, I get a call.

  “Baka. They stopped,” Mikito’s voice is a little incredulous.

  “Who stopped? Stopped what?” I reply.

  “Attacking us. They are pulling back. All of them.”

  I blink, then call up their information. Linked to her own armor and Bolo’s, I can see the truth for myself. I also note that they’re both a little bruised and worn, their health and Mana only now recovering from the quarter level. “Why?”

  “I don’t know, but I’ll take it,” Bolo says, breathing a little heavily. “This was more of a workout than I expected. Those Master Classers were pretty decent.”

  I grunt, then turn my attention to the only thing that might have an answer.

  “Lord Ucald left orders that if you were to reach the inner keep, to allow you to take the sphere. According to him, he did not want his city destroyed.” Bob pauses, flickers, then a recording appears, video and audio of Krenmock Ucald.

  “So. You have made it. I hope you didn’t destroy too much of my keeps. If you did, I’ll have to take it off your head,” Krenmock says. I snort while the man glares at me. “Do not think this is over, Paladin. You and your worthless impostors are a thing of the past. A useless, defunct past that has no place in Erethra’s future. We will have your head. Yours and your initiates.”

  “Blah, blah, blah,” Ali mutters, making himself fully visible. He waves at Bob, who shuts down the recording.

  “Hey, I was listening to that!” I protest.

  “Really?” Ali raises an eyebrow.

  “There might have been something useful in there…” I say. After all, people who felt the need to monologue might give away something.

  “Whatever. We can listen later. For now, maybe you should take the settlement?” Ali says, pointing out that I’ve got a waiting notification.

  I sigh, then mentally acknowledge the prompt.

  And just like that, I take away his seat of power.

  And create a whole new set of problems.

  Chapter 19

  Once I got back, after dumping the Lordship onto poor Saimon to deal with, I’d been literally jumped by the young lady. We’d had quite a vigorous welcoming party, so common after death and lost.

  Dark green hair leans against my chest, a fingernail tracing down my body. A glittering ring of dark gold with a small inset ruby gleams on it. I eye the ring and the individual the finger and hair belongs to. She’s shifting slightly to get the corals around her head to settle better.

  We’re both naked, and I feel the pleasant warmth of her body pressed against me as we lie in post-coital happiness.

  “And you never found him?” Catrin says sleepily.

  Our conversation has been lazy, filled with small intimate details at first, before moving on to my recent foray into the universe.

  “No. We tried to track him down, but he’d taken enough Portals and teleportation that locating him was too difficult. He’s got a Skill running so that even the Shop’s information dump shows him in one of three locations,” I say, shaking my head. It’s a pretty neat Skill, to be able to split information like that within the Shop.

  Of course, we could still break it if we threw more money at it. But all three of those locations had significant political implications if we went in. So for now at least, we’re going to let him stay. I might not care that much about politics, but starting a new war or restarting two cold wars is a bit much. Even for me. Anyway, it’s better to let Lord Braxton and Saimon try the diplomatic option first.

  And if that fails, when I do kick in the door and drag him out, it’ll cause a lot less problems.

  “You sound disappointed,” Catrin says softly.

  “I am.” I try to shrug, realize I have her on me, and just kiss the top of her head. “We killed a lot of people and still didn’t get the guy on the top.” I chuckle softly. “Was easier when we were just bounty hunters.”

  Catrin shifts, sliding along my body to put her chin on my chest and look back up at me with those slitted cat-eyes. “You don’t like leaving things undone, do you?”

  “No, I don’t.” I smile, meeting her gaze. “And you? What do you think of what I’ve done?”

  Catrin laughs, hair spilling across her eyes as she shakes. “What does an Administrator know of these matters?”

  “Mmmm… we used to call secretaries the gatekeepers to those in power, so I’d say… a lot,” I say, tapping her on the nose.

  She opens her mouth to object, then, seeing how serious I am, rolls off me and sits up, pulling the blanket with her. “You’re a strange one. Asking the thoughts of one like me.” But when I wait, she brushes her hair out of her face. “I think what you did was right. The nobles have taken to running their fiefs like their personal empires. The Empress—May the System Guard Her—is too busy holding the borders to divert our legions to deal with them. If she could…”

  I raise an eyebrow, and she offers me a wry smile. “The nobles produce the weapons and the equipment our armies rely on. If a General was to act against a single noble, he’d find himself cut off.” She shrugs. “And even with the Shop and the System, the shipping delays, the additional cost, it would harm them. No General, not even Brerdain, would upset the nobles for such a minor matter.”

  “Tens of thousands of immig
rants, lives enslaved for decades… that’s a minor matter?” I say with some heat.

  “To them who fight on the borders and lose as many soldiers in a year?” Catrin asks rhetorically.

  I clamp my mouth shut, once again remembering how big the Empire really is. It’d be unwieldly without the System. Or maybe it is unwieldly even with the System.

  “Not a fan of the wars?” I cock my head, having heard something in her voice.

  She turns her head to the side, and I watch the lines of Society’s Web pulse and flash, watch as she considers what to say. How to say it. Picking at truth and lies, or truth and partial truths.

  “I understand the need. I understand why we do it.” Catrin falls silent, then shakes her head. “But I grew up on the border. Near the Forbidden Zones. I knew we would one day be swallowed. We had monsters spawning all the time. And we could have used the armies there, fighting them. Instead, we had to rely on… on Adventurers.” The last word she says with some distaste. “The Guilds and the nobles who ran them, they were our best hopes. Because any guard, any individual who had any talent, was snatched up.”

  “We?”

  “My family.” When I make a noise, she shakes her head. “Nothing to worry about. I have no older brother looking to protect my chastity. No family left to worry about me.”

  I frown, then sit up and wrap my arms around her. She might make it sound light, but I hear the pain in her voice. The loss. It’s an old loss, much like some of mine. But that kind of pain doesn’t really go away—it’s just forgotten. Until you remember it again, and it hits you like a truck.

  I hold her in silence until she pushes away. “Are you going to continue then?”

  “Continue?”

  “Cleaning up the nobles, sorting out their… their mistakes.”

  I pause, then shake my head. I catch the flash of disappointment in her eyes, the slight turning down of her lips. It’s gone in a blink, but still remembered. “Nah. I got to get the kids going onto the next stage. And sort out the funerals.”

  She sucks in a slight breath as I remind her why I’d been so passionate only a short while ago. Death and loss is a good reminder that life is worth living.

  A lesson the apocalypse taught me.

  One of many.

  ***

  The funeral is held in space. We stand in the docking bay of a space station not far from Pauhiri’s primary sun, staring at the baleful glare of the star and protected by the energy shields of the station. Solar collectors spread from the wings in a thin halo of monomolecular sails, absorbing energy to power the station, to be collected in batteries and beamed off to feed other stations.

  Within the docking bay, we stand in lines, facing the pair of caskets. The remnants of the initiates I’d led to battle, or what we could find of them. On one side of the caskets, we stand, my team and me and the remaining initiates. On the other side, we have their families. I see tears, blood and hair torn asunder, the ravages of grief.

  And my stomach clenches tightly. Bile rises in my mouth as I realize I have to say something, the Erethran equivalent of a chaplain slowly droning to an end. I have to say something, and I don’t know what. Because of all the funerals I’ve been to, all the loss I’ve faced… it’s rare that I had to speak. And even rarer have I been a direct cause of the loss.

  They fought on my orders, for a cause I chose for them. Not like on Earth, where we fought for our lives, for our own planet. These people, these deaths… they might have walked away. Might have refused if they had a choice. But I never gave them one.

  And now, they’ll never have a chance to choose again.

  Maybe my understanding, my feelings on this isn’t exactly logical. Loss. Grief. Guilt never is.

  If I’m also mourning the lives of the guards I killed, the people I murdered who were just doing their jobs, no one else needs to know.

  “… and to the System and the flame, we consign the bodies.”

  “To the System and flame,” echoes the voices of those in the building. Bolo and Harry do so without a problem, while Mikito and I are left stunned, catching up a second after everyone.

  At the chaplain’s and everyone else’s regard, I smooth out my grimace and take the place the chaplain has vacated. I let my gaze travel along the initiates for a second, stopping on Kino. We found him locked away in a cell, unharmed if annoyed.

  Then I turn to look at the families as I speak. “Ropo Dhagmath and Gheisnan of the Two Palms were… good soldiers. Brave Grimsar and Pooskeen. They fell finishing the tasks that I set out for them.”

  Out of the corner of my eyes, I see Bolo grimace, even as the Grimsar family of Ropo straighten. He’s got a big clan, multiple children and their grandkids. All of them paid to be Portaled over. There aren’t many tears there—maybe because Ropo was that old. Even so, some beards look a little more bare, their roots torn off.

  On the Pooskeen side, there’s a lot more wailing and gnashing of teeth, fur torn out and long bloody scratches left on their skin. While I wanted his whole clan here, when I realized it literally numbered hundreds, I cut it down to immediate family only. Even then, they’re double the size of Ropo’s group. My gaze is drawn to the small clutch of grandchildren who stare around mutely, eyes full of unshed tears as they’re caught up in the emotions without truly understanding the cause.

  “John…”

  I shake my head slightly, dismissing the message from Ali. “They were great soldiers and would have made great Paladins.” A lie. I was about to fail Gheisnan. He didn’t have what it took to survive, not with his Skills. Not really. I should have failed him before. That was my mistake. “I would have been proud to fight alongside them.” Truth. “I know that they fell doing what Paladins do. Fighting for the Empire.

  “For everyone in the Empire.” My gaze falls on the families, shifting from adult to adult. “Not just those who have the luck, the fortune to be born in the right place, at the right time, to the right parents. But for those who are crushed under the wheel of progress, who just want a chance for something better.”

  I draw a deep breath, seeing the echo of understanding in their eyes. Because, and I know it’s true, they understand. They’ve seen it. Experienced it.

  “And they succeeded.”

  I turn slightly and gesture to the ceiling. Notification windows appear, visible for all to see. Videos of Ropo and Gheisnan. Taken from news feeds, from their suit cameras, or from above, via the drones they used. So many videos, so many scenes. A prison cell thrown open, Ropo standing in the door as the individuals within shrink away in fear, then approach in wonder as he calls to them. Another of him standing on top of the smoking form of a mecha tank, enslaved miners staring at him with wide eyes, some falling to their knees. Grubby, emaciated, broken individuals seeing a glimmer of hope.

  Gheisnan gets much the same reaction in the half dozen windows showcasing his own victories. Ushering the captured out of the “merchant” ship, receiving thanks from a transport vessel’s Captain. A more savage video as, fangs bared, he tears out the throat of the medical scientist while the research subjects cheered.

  Freedom, hope, justice. Vengeance and punishment.

  They deliver it, as Paladins were meant to do. And I let their families view their successes. What they managed to do. I let them stare, to remember, and if there are a few more tears, there are also straighter backs. Grim smiles.

  “They died doing what a Paladin should do. And for that, they have my gratitude. And that of a thousand others.” I pause. “They have my gratitude and my promise—I will have Lord Ucald’s head.”

  My last words bring forth a baying from the Pooskeen clan and a heavy thump of fist to chest from the Grimsar. I get approving nods. And then I’m done and I step back, letting others speak. Letting old friends, the other initiates, their old commanding officers talk.

  I let them speak, and I try not to think about what I didn’t say. About my own failures. And my own regrets.

  ***
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br />   In the distance, the coffins float to the sun in a slow and stately progression. Not really that slow in actual velocity terms, but slow when viewed on the projection of the solar system that is being shown at the wake. Part of the ritual is the watch as friends and family mingle, waiting for the coffins to be drawn into the sun. Depending on how much time there is, the thrust set upon the coffins vary, making some wakes take days and others, mere minutes. Ours is a little more reasonable, a couple of hours long.

  We’re hosting it in one of the viewing galleries at the top of the station, the stars displayed in clear glass windows. Of course, much of the sight is dominated by the sun taking up a large portion of the starscape, but there are sufficient windows to glimpse other, non-gaseous views.

  Floating between the attendees are droids, plying both station personnel and funeral attendees with the Galactic equivalents of alcohol. There’s a wide variety of drugs and poisons on hand, all of which will bypass System regeneration. It helps that the entire viewing gallery is blanketed by a debuff, lowering poison and toxin resistances of those within by 50%.

  From the second floor of the gallery, hiding in the shadows, I watch the group below as I nurse my drink. I did my duty, spoke with others for the first hour, shaking hands and offering words of consolation. But now, I glower at them all, wondering if I should have overruled Bolo’s recommendation of a few hours and gotten this over with.

  “Not much for parties, are you?” Anayton asks as she walks over and leans against the railing beside me.

  She’s got a glass in hand, the drink reminding me of a lava lamp more than something I’d consume. I could try to figure it out, but I’m not that curious. I do note though that rather than needing to drink it, the grip in the center allows the liquid to slowly absorb through her skin itself.

  “This isn’t a party.” I say.

  “True.” Anayton pauses. “Your speech wasn’t horrible.”

  “Not good either.”

  The initiate shrugs in reply.

  “So are you here to tell me you’re out?”