He climbed the hill on hands and knees. The smoke flowed around him, laughing, whispering, screaming, filling him with sickness. He kept crawling, bleeding, as the battle raged above. He let the flower's glow guide him.
It needs me. I'll pass through this evil. I'll save it.
The hills seemed endless, growing taller. Riff could barely breathe. The smoke kept filling his mouth, his eyes. The world spun. His blood kept dripping.
He fell.
He slid down.
Climb, brother! spoke a voice in his mind.
"Steel," Riff whispered, hoarse.
Through the storm, he thought he could see a tall, dark figure, wreathed in smoke, standing above. A glint of metal. Steel! A vision of Steel in armor!
Climb, brother.
Eyes burning, face covered in soot, his helmet shattered, Riff climbed.
Each meter was agony. Stones tore into his hands. Burning ash rained onto him. Fire blazed and the shrieks of battle stormed all around.
But the Dragon Huntress always flew above, his guardian angel. And the rose forever shone before him. Evil laughed all around, tearing at him, ripping his skin, but there was still goodness in the world. There were his friends. There was the memory of Steel.
"There are the Alien Hunters," he whispered.
He rose to his feet, climbed through the storm, and reached the hilltop.
The rose shone before him, so fragile, its last petals falling.
Riff fell to his knees.
"I'm here," he whispered.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR:
THE QUEEN AND THE ROSE
"You've come to me," the rose said, voice soft and high. "I've called you for so long."
She did not speak in words. She had no mouth. Yet still Riff hear her voice, a voice like chiming bells. As he knelt above her, the rose seemed even smaller than before. So frail. No larger than his hand. Her red glow cast back the darkness, a gleam like rubies in a cave.
"Who are you?" he whispered.
"I no longer have a name. Not one that I can remember." A petal tore free, fell, and turned to ash. "I've been trapped here for so long."
Riff felt her sadness flow into him. She was sharing it with him. He ached. So much sadness. So much despair.
"Why?" he said.
"The Dark Queen. Yurei. She needed life. Life from three dimensions." The rose wept dewdrops. "So she chose me, a flower to plant. A life to funnel all her will through. To use me as a portal, a link to the lower dimensions. I did this." The rose trembled. "It's through me that Yurei sent her armies into the cosmos. It's through my own body that her evil flowed."
Riff took a shuddering breath. "I can save you. I can take you with me. I can plant you on a faraway world."
He caressed the rose's stem, careful to avoid the thorns.
"For years, I dreamed of you coming here," said the rose. "I have seen your reflections through time. Digging me up. Taking me in your starship. For many years I wept in joy to imagine my roots seeking through soft soil, my petals rising toward a warm sun, the sky blue, no storm around me."
"Then let it be done." Riff dug his fingers into the ground, loosening the rose's roots. "Let me take you with me."
"It's too late," the rose whispered, trembling, and another petal fell. Only two petals now remained. "She's here."
Creaks sounded behind him.
The storm pulled back, revealing the stars.
Slowly, his hands still in the soil, Riff turned his head.
The storm was pulling inwards, coalescing, forming a crude shape that seemed carved of charcoal. The figure stepped forward, the size of a human, shedding ash, raising smoke. With every step, the figure solidified further, becoming more humanlike. Gleaming black eyes opened upon its head. Its rough body smoothed out, curved, grew limbs. Dark wings unfurled from its back.
Before Riff's eyes, the Dark Queen took the form of a woman. She walked toward him, carved of purest, polished obsidian, gleaming in the starlight. A woman of intoxicating curves, full lips, alluring eyes, temptation brought to life, nude and wreathed in nothing but smoke.
"Yurei," Riff said, still kneeling with his hands in the dirt.
She swayed toward him, the stars in her midnight eyes. Her dark, full lips smiled, a smile promising endless pleasures. Her hands reached out, tipped with claws. She seemed a demon of nightmare.
While Romy is fire and laughter, Riff thought, Yurei is a demon of shadows and sex and endless mystery.
"It is I," Yurei whispered, voice silken. Standing above him, she placed her hands upon his shoulders. She perhaps seemed carved of obsidian, but her touch was soft, warm, spreading her warmth through him. She leaned down, her lips brushed his ear, and her voice dropped to a whisper. "The Dark Queen. I have called you for so long, Starfire. You've come to me at last. To join me."
He dug his fingers a little deeper into the soil. "Actually, thought I'd just do a little gardening and be on my way."
Yurei's face changed. Her jaw unhinged, dropping halfway down her chest, lined with fangs. Her eyes blazed with red light. Her cheeks sunk in, clinging to bones, and her hair became living serpents.
As quickly as her rage had flared, it vanished. Her face returned to its former beauty, and her eyes softened.
"Riff." Her voice was soft, and she caressed his hair. "Remove your hands from the soil. Place them in my hands. Rise and rule this cosmos with me."
Riff glanced over her shoulder. The Dragon Huntress had frozen in time. It hung in the middle of typhoon, a thousand tesseract ships around it. Shades clung to its wings. In the windshield, Nova was crying out silently, frozen. The storm, the stars, the smoke—all hung perfectly still, casting out a dizzying array of reflections.
Riff returned his eyes to the Dark Queen. "And what if I pull out this rose and claim it?"
"Then we will both die," Yurei said. "Then I will perish, and this entire world will crumble, and the black hole we float in will swallow us all. It is this rose, nameless and ancient, that glues spacetime together. You hold the cosmos in your hands, Riff. How does it feel? To control the destiny of the universe? To feel that destiny in your palms?"
"It feels," he said, "like I got you by a very sensitive area."
For just an instant, that rage flashed again. Then Yurei knelt before him, her hands still on his shoulders. She smiled crookedly, and the starlight gleamed in her black eyes. There was no white to those eyes, no irises, just pure black orbs flowing with stars—tiny universes in her smooth face.
"Join me," she whispered. "Be my mate. My king. Together we will rule the cosmos. You will have power, Riff. Power not only to rule, to dominate, but to heal. To undo tragedies. Mastery not only over space but time as well. Join me, and we can travel back to save your brother's life. We can save your mother's life from the cyborg that took it. We can travel across time together, undoing wrongs, making things right. I know the pain that fills you. I know about all those you lost. Together let us rule over all spacetime! Let us make this a good cosmos."
Now his own rage flared. "Is that why you killed so many people? Is that why you destroyed the Earth? Only to heal it later?"
"I did." She nodded, smoke wafting from her hair. "I've always known you would come here, Riff. When you live in the fourth dimension, you can gaze forward through time. I knew you would come here, hurt, afraid, full of loss. I knew that you would want to fix the past. To heal things. To heal your own soul. And I knew that you would not resist me, that you would join. That you would release this rose and become mine."
Riff looked around him. He saw a thousand futures spreading into the horizons. In some the last petals withered and the planet fell. In others, Riff danced with Yurei, himself a god of smoke, made love to her, sat at her side, a king upon a throne of gold, his crown woven of dark fire. Other futures were vaguer, flickering in and out of existence.
"If you can see the future, why does it flicker?" he said. "If you know that I will join you, why is there doubt and fear in y
our eyes?"
"No doubt," Yurei whispered. "No fear. What you see is lust."
She caressed him, moving her hand across his thigh, then between his legs, her fingers long, tingling, shooting warmth through him. She leaned forward and kissed his lips, and her kiss was like a blooming universe, a thing of electricity and wonder and endless space. No wine, sunrises, or the splendor of stars had ever filled a man with more awe and joy than her kiss.
"Be mine." Her lips touched his ear. "My king. My mate. Release the rose and rise to rule."
And stars . . . he was tempted.
He hated himself for it . . . but oh, by the old and new gods, he was tempted.
I could have her kiss me every night, he thought. I can make love to her, explore her secret pleasures. I can rule the cosmos. I can save my planet. My mother. My brother.
His hands, still buried in the soil around the rose's roots, trembled.
And why shouldn't I? Why shouldn't I take her offer? I can become an emperor! A ruler of infinite power! All of time will spread before me, and I will be its master. Able to heal all hurts. To have everyone bow before me. No longer the captain of one ship but a god.
He began to pull his fingers out from the soil, leaving the rose where it was.
Yurei's lips parted with an eager smile.
Another petal fell, leaving just one red petal upon the rose.
Riff looked into Yurei's eyes again, at the stars within them, the stars he would rule . . .
And he saw the stars he used to fly among.
The stars he used to explore in the Dragon Huntress. With his friends. With Nova, the woman he loved—the only woman he loved.
I can save you, Steel, he thought.
His brother smiled in his memory. A sad smile. A smile full of old pain. A smile that made the knight's brown, hound dog eyes fill with light.
And Riff knew then how to save his brother. Knew what Steel wanted from him now.
"For you, Steel," he whispered. "For you, Nova. For you crazy Alien Hunters in your crazy ship."
He took a deep breath, shoved his fingers deeper into the soil, and plucked out the rose.
* * * * *
Riff lifted the soil in his hands, the rose growing from the crumbly pile. The flower trembled.
The Dark Planet shook.
The ground cracked. The storm came back to life with rage, deafening, spinning like a typhoon. The Dragon Huntress tumbled above. Boulders fell from the sky.
"What have you done?" Yurei shrieked. The Dark Queen's face cracked, leaking red light. Her jaw opened like a python. Her eyes burst into flame. "What have you done, fool? You've doomed us!"
Her fingers cracked and fell. Her body split open. She broke apart into smoke and rose into the sky, screaming, tugged in a thousand directions.
The black hole churned around them, sucking them deeper. The distant stars outside began to fade.
Riff ran.
He vaulted downhill, holding the rose in his palms. The flower shuddered, seeming ready to lose its last petal.
"Hold on, little buddy!" he said, then hit the communicator on his wrist—he had to use his chin. "Piston, you hear me? Need a lift! Now! Now!"
The Dragon Huntress was spinning madly above, dipping, rising again. The shades upon its wings fell, sucked into the distance. Tesseract ships whirred, pulled into tailspins. Shards of stone thrust up from the planet. The storm pulled backward like water into a drain.
"The black hole is closing," the rose said. "It's going to crush us all."
"Not just yet," Riff said.
A crack drove across the earth, a meter wide. Riff leaped over the canyon.
The Dragon Huntress's airlock popped open, and Piston lowered a cable.
"Hang tight, little one!" Riff said to the rose, holding her in one hand. With the other, he grabbed the cable.
The Dragon Huntress soared, pulling Riff with it.
"Look!" the rose called out. "Below!"
Dangling on the cable, Riff looked down to see tesseract cages shattering. Scientists spilled out from the cubes onto the trembling surface.
The scientists stolen from Kaperosa, he realized.
"Piston, more cables!" Riff shouted. "Fish 'em up."
As the world rattled and the storm raged, the Dragon Huntress dipped again. Men and women grabbed the cables. The ship rose higher, carrying the survivors with them like a boat tugging fish on lines.
The black hole tore up boulders, mountains, ripping the planet apart. Tesseract ships fell into its depths. Shades dispersed into smoke. Piston spooled up the cables, pulling Riff and the others into the ship.
"Get me a vase!" Riff cried.
He raced through the ship, placed the rose in a container, and ran onto the bridge. The others were waiting there. Outside the cracked windshield, the storm was raging. The stars were fading.
"Get us out of here!" Riff shouted.
"Happy to comply!" Giga said. "Kicking engines into maximum speed."
The Dragon Huntress barely seemed to move. The engines roared. The ship shook. The ground collapsed beneath them.
"Why aren't we moving?" Riff said.
"The black hole is tugging us back, sir," Giga replied.
"Give us more juice."
"Cannot compute, Captain. Engines at maximum capacity."
Riff's heart sank and his belly lurched. The planet shattered into boulders. The ship rattled.
"Engage hyperdrive engines."
Giga tilted her head. "Dee's four-dimensional Euclidian engine is still running, sir. I cannot compute what will happen if we turn on hyperdrive engines as well, bending spacetime while in the higher dimension."
The black hole was now yanking them backward. Riff could barely see space outside.
"Do it," he said.
"Happy to comply!"
"Fragging aardvarks," Nova muttered. She stepped toward Riff and clasped his hand.
The hyperdrive engines hummed. The black hole began to warp around them. A crack raced across the wall. The hull bent.
With a blast of white light, the Dragon Huntress charged forward.
Like a cork from a Champagne bottle, they burst out of the black hole. The stars spread into a million lines. As the Dark Planet disintegrated behind them, the Dragon Huntress streamed through the darkness.
"She's gone," Riff whispered, sinking into his chair. "The Dark Queen. The shades. Their world. All gone." He wiped the sweat off his brow.
And so is Steel. Gone. I could have saved him. I chose not to. I . . .
Riff rose to his feet.
"Wait," he whispered.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE:
THE WAVES OF TIME
Riff stared out the windshield. Both space and time were warped around him—they flew not only through a curved fabric of spacetime but a higher dimension. The fourth dimension.
"Time," Riff whispered. He spun toward Giga. "Set our course to the desert planet Athemes. We're going back to the pyramid."
"Happy to comply, Captain!"
The door to the bridge slammed open, and Piston barged in, his hair in disarray.
"Captain, the engine room is going bonkers, sir! Pieces falling off in a rain of bolts. We cannot keep the fourth dimensional engine on much longer, sir. It's tearing us apart."
Riff stared out into space, barely comprehending what he saw. It seemed as if they flowed through a tunnel of swirling light—the stars not only warped but showing their entire orbits, reflections in time, a cocoon of light.
"Keep that Euclidian engine in top shape, Piston," he said. "We're going to need it when we reach Athemes."
Piston's eyes looked ready to bug out. "Planet Athemes, sir? We've done our task! We defeated that Yurei lass. Even if I turn off the Euclidian engine now, sir, there's no guarantee I can fire it up again."
"Then keep it running." Riff nodded. "We're not leaving four dimensional space until the whole ship collapses."
"Which might not be far off," Piston muttered, tuggin
g his beard. "Aye, sir. I'll keep our engines running for as long as I can, sir, but no promises it'll be much longer. Not with that wrench the clod dropped into them. Twig! Twig, you clod, where are you? Help me calibrate that Dee lad's engine, or we're likely to shatter into a million pieces of space debris."
The gruffle lolloped off the bridge, muttering and calling out for Twig.
Riff returned his eyes to space. Darkness and light, time and space, swirling all around him. Inside him, his reality spun just as madly.
Yurei said I can rule space and time with her. I don't need to rule them. I just need to fly through them for a bit longer.
Nova walked up toward him. Her catsuit of golden kaija fabric whispered with every step. She placed a hand on his shoulder, and her eyes were soft.
"Maybe we should listen to Piston," she said. "The ship is breaking apart. Steel would not want us risking our lives for him."
"The ship will stay together." Riff nodded. "We haven't survived so much—the blasts of skelkrin fire, the fleets of the Singularity, and a goddamn black hole squeezing us—to disintegrate now. I have to believe that."
Nova placed her arms around him, holding him close. "I miss him too, Riff. But even if we can reach Athemes, even if we can travel along time . . . we don't know if we can change things. And even if we do change time, we don't know how it'll affect our present. Twig explained it to me. Paradoxes. I didn't understand her then, but I think I do now. If we save Steel . . . none of this might have happened. Not us flying into the black hole. Not you killing Yurei and saving the rose. Not us flying back to Steel. A loop in time. A paradox."
Riff placed his arm around her waist. They stood together, facing the windshield, staring out at the tunnel of light.
"My father explained to me once that time is like a beach." The memories of the kindly old man filled his mind. "Always changing. Sometimes the waves are high, sometimes the water is calm. Sometimes the sea is golden in sunrise, and sometimes deep green, sometimes gray in a storm. It's always changing. Fluid. And we can navigate through the sea of time. We can find our way home."
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