Star Brigade: Ascendant (SB4)

by C. C. Ekeke

  Aut’ala whipped his head in their direction, his eyes narrowing. Despite his short size, the menace in his presence chilled the air. “I have foreseen this fight ending one way,” he stated ominously. “And not in your favor.” His demeanor relaxed and his gracious smile returned. “But the Zenith Point wants to pursue another avenue that I’m open to.”

  Habraum’s eyes narrowed as his suspicion grew. “Which is?” He had no interest in poisoned fruits, but listening could buy more time to strategize.

  “This universe is one of infinite numbers. I could place you each in whichever you desire.”

  Habraum almost laughed in his face, but held his tongue as the Farooqua continued.

  Aut’ala faced Khrome first. “Khromulus. Imagine a universe where the Thulicans have eradicated the Cybernarr Technoarchy. Or a universe with no Cybernarr.”

  A strange closed look spread across the Thulican’s noseless face. To Habraum’s alarm, he was clearly considering this.

  Aut’ala’s gaze found Khal, and sympathy colored his smile. “Khaladin Al Abdullah. Would you accept a universe where your abilities emerged without so much duress? No one would need to suffer…or die.” That statement staggered Khal back a few steps. Habraum knew Khal’s maximal abilities had been latent before getting unlocked. But the specifics had remained murky.

  The Cerc had no time to ponder that as Aut’ala’s attention landed on him. “Habraum. Marguliese.” He clasped his hands, eyes darting between the two impishly. “Maybe a universe where both your lost children survived?”

  Habraum’s heart stuttered at the mention of his unborn daughter who’d perished so cruelly. His glowing fists lowered as his jaw dropped. Mind reeling, he glanced at Marguliese, whose golden face looked even more detached. No doubt her emotions, sparse as they were, had been shaken. Both Khrome and Khal gaped, just hearing now of Marguliese’s offspring.

  Aut’ala looked pleased at the mayhem his words had triggered. “A Cybernarr hybrid whose life was ended too early—by your own kind. An unborn daughter who never received the chance to live. I could give you the chance to revive them.”

  All four Star Brigadiers said nothing, lost in private torments over such irresistible offers.

  “Choose your next words wisely, Star Brigade. I only make this offer once.” Aut’ala’s glow took a more sinister tinge as he waited.

  Habraum stared at the ground to collect his thoughts. The first several months, he thought about his baby girl at least once a day, wondering what she’d look like or how her laughter would sound. But she’s dead. As wonderful as Aut’ala’s choice sounded, it was never an option. “Every day some part of me wonders who she might’ve been. What kind of younger sibling she’d be to my son.” Habraum looked up, glaring a hole into Aut’ala. “But never would I choose her life over the trillions you plan to murder.”

  Marguliese’s reply was immediate. “Nor I.”

  Khal’s hesitant body language made Habraum briefly fear he would cave to Aut’ala’s offer. “No thanks,” he finally said, shaking his curly black hair.

  Finally came Khrome, hovering overhead with that same closed look. Habraum remembered his tech officer in the same position. So did Khrome. “I got a similar offer from another half-baked terrorist. Know what my answer was?”

  He raced forward, his fist colliding with Aut’ala’s jaw. The Farooqua went sailing several yards away, a floppy ragdoll.

  Khrome winked at his field commander. Habraum smiled. “Converge and take him down.”

  As Marguliese and Khrome flanked Aut’ala, the Cerc raised his fists again while Khal moved to telekinetically restrain their enemy.

  The Farooqua pushed to his knees, enraged. The Zenith Point roared around them ferociously. “Wrong move, Star Brigade,” he snarled…and vanished.

  Suddenly Aut’ala was in Habraum’s face, slamming his hand against the Cerc’s armored chest plate. Habraum winced at a familiar draining sensation, and grabbed the Farooqua’s wrist with both hands. Unlike Ghuj’aega, Aut’ala was faster and more powerful. Before the Cerc knew it, his strength faded immediately, his joints growing pained and rickety. Then his vision clouded over with milky film. His combat armor, formerly light and flexible, now weighed tons. Habraum sank to his knees and pitched forward. “What…you…do?” The Cerc’s own voice stunned him to his core, sounding closer to someone in his late nineties instead of thirty-three years. He tried muscling back upright, but the slightest movement drained him. And every joint screeched with what had to be rheumatoid arthritis. He aged me!? the Cerc realized in disbelief.

  Habraum finally pushed to his feet with considerable effort, his failing eyes taking in the surroundings. The Cerc briefly thought he was hallucinating. Another look said otherwise. “NO!” His cry was a weak, wet croak.

  Khrome lay on the ground, ripped in half. His burly limbs thrashed uselessly as his round yellow eyes stared off at nothing. Marguliese was on her knees, head lolled back, limp arms at her sides. Blackish technorganic gunk was spewing from her mouth and ears in gooey sheets, her body spasming weakly from each putrid discharge. This junk was visibly suffocating her, whatever it was.

  Then Habraum’s weakened eyes landed on a baby, swarthy and only a few months old, screaming and thrashing its chunky little limbs in displeasure. The Cerc almost had no clue where it came from until he noticed the skin and the tufts of curly black hair.

  Sweet Earth Mother. Khal, turned to an infant. Four powerful Brigadiers, felled in moments. Aut’ala must have frozen time and dispatched each with ease. The weight of Habraum’s arrogance landed on his chest then, nearly suffocating him. Against Ghuj’aega, Star Brigade might’ve won. Against Aut’ala and the Zenith Point? We never had a chance.

  The Farooqua stood before him, his whole body vibrating as the Zenith Point’s torrents of power flowed through him.

  “Just so we’re clear…Habraum,” he rumbled. “Before you die, you will watch me erase your Star Brigadiers from existence. Then you will watch as I slaughter the Particulates and fix time.” A smile returned to Aut’ala’s squashed face, cold and malicious. “Only then, with your failure absolute, will I offer you the mercy of oblivion.”

  “Not while I still breathe, abomination.” An earthshaking squeal followed that interruption.

  The Zenith Point…in pain. Habraum’s weak eyes turned toward that otherworldly voice. The Particulate stood up, free of the Zenith Point. His towering frame was cloaked in midnight, at least eight feet tall and ringed in shimmering energy. The ancient creature bared teeth and claws in defiance. “I will do what should have been done thousands of years ago.”

  Then Habraum’s cataract-filled eyes saw Aut’ala sneer. “Try.” The Farooqua spread his arms welcomingly, hands glowing bright yellow. When the two beings collided headlong, jagged forks of harsh illumination exploded in all directions.

  Habraum tried to pull himself toward his fallen team, to see whom he could help. How…? He was an old, dying man. Regardless, the Cerc persisted.

  But the effort of dragging his wizened body in that combat armor wiped him out. Habraum sagged onto the floor, just to rest a bit. He passed out in an instant.

  Chapter 45

  “Where in the two hells are we?” Taorr son of Maorridius Magnus asked. “And how are we still alive?” The last thing he recalled was holding his beloved Mhir’ujiid, right as an explosion was consuming them. Now he was crouched in some spread of rolling technorganic earth littered with dark veiny growths the size of giant trees jutting upward. Each growth sparkled from throbbing energy pulsing up or down their lengths. Taorr stood up, gaping. The sight was frightening yet fascinating.

  “I was wondering both myself.”

  Taorr turned. Mhir’ujiid stood behind him, equally awed by their new surroundings. Gratitude swelled through the Ttaunz. Then Taorr gawked at her lean and unscathed body. “Mhir’ujiid.” He did a triple take. “You’re healed!”

  The Farooqua looked down in confusion at her dark pelted flesh a
nd her chest, one breast stacked above the other. “Guess I am.” Mhir’ujiid looked back at her lover with a fascinated smile. “How?”

  “Qos, the Zenith Point.” The pair turned again. Taorr’s gaze found Zojje, egg-shaped head bobbing atop that three-foot neck, milky eyes alight with strange bluish light. The Ttaunz was grateful again, and leery. The Kudoban’s triple-toned voice sounded…off. “The Zenith Point healed Mhir’ujiid and brought us beneath its surface.”

  Taorr and Mhir’ujiid exchanged bewildered glances. “How would you know that?”

  “The Zenith Point told me.” Zojje gestured around them with long, thin arms. A pulse of light raced across one of the closer veiny growths, briefly illuminating the Kudoban’s face. “It’s alive. And curious.”

  Taorr stared back, too thunderstruck to speak.

  Zojje approached and jabbed a spindly finger at Taorr’s chest so forcefully, it made him wince. “You should be dead, but when its energy struck our ship, it sensed Mhir’ujiid,” he jabbed the Farooqua’s collarbone. “And her love for Taorr. It wants to know why you love him.”

  Mhir’ujiid lit up like a sunrise. “You mean…the Zenith Point is a deity?”

  Zojje shook his head. “The Zenith Point just is.” Despite the eerie glow in his eyes, he looked as lost as Taorr felt. “It’s okay,” the Kudoban said, looking up reassuringly. “Do not fear.”

  Taorr backpedaled. They were inside a moon that was apparently alive and could reverse death. This situation has officially reached bizarro world. “Wait. You’re talking to it?”

  Zojje nodded, meeting the Ttaunz’s gaze again. “The Zenith Point is not used to my psyche. And it’s afraid of something else.” His voice dropped several degrees with those last few words. A shiver ran through Taorr.

  Mhir’ujiid, however, remained fearless to all this weirdness. She walked up to Zojje with a determined look. “Show us what the Zenith Point fears.”

  Zojje smiled. Taorr paled. Who knew what kind of ethereal horror the Zenith Point feared? Before he could object, their surroundings were washed away as if by ocean waves.

  Suddenly, Taorr found himself, Mhir’ujiid, and Zojje among similar colossal veiny growths stretching all around and above. Except now they had company.

  Four bodies lay strewn across the ground some distance away. Further from that, swirls of white radiance churned and raged as two silhouettes violently clashed. Whatever energy they put out caused their environment to groan in objection. The veiny technorganic growths encircling the conflict appeared to contract then swell, contract then swell. It appeared to Taorr as if power was being pulled from the growths’ core the longer this conflict ensued.

  He had to shield his eyes to get any hint of who was fighting. Within the fiery corona, the Ttaunz detected a hulking and hooded creature tangling with a smaller, rail-thin Farooqua that looked very familiar. Taorr’s breath caught in his throat.

  Mhir’ujiid saw the resemblance too, clutching Taorr’s arm protectively. “Is that…Ghuj’aega?” she gasped.

  Zojje stood motionless, unaffected by their fear or the light. “Ghuj’aega’s body,” he admitted vaguely. “Inhabited by someone far more powerful.”

  Taorr finally found his voice, focused on the mountainous combatant. “What is he fighting?”

  Zojje’s calm features twisted with a mix of pain and hatred. “Someone who the Zenith Point loathes.” It was a testament to this roiling fight that Taorr almost forgot the bodies lying between it and his group. Then he took a long look and nearly swallowed his tongue.

  He saw two humans he didn’t know: a squalling swarthy baby and an old, wizened man near death. Beside them was that Marguliese cyborg spasming on her knees as black gooey gunk spewed from her mouth and ears. Then Khrome was splayed across the ground…in two separate pieces. Taorr’s eyes darted back to the old man and the baby, recalling Ghuj’aega doing the same to a pair of Farooqua who had defied him. Suddenly, he knew these humans. Captain Nwosu and Khal Al Abdullah. “Look,” he pointed. “It’s Star Brigade.”

  Mhir’ujiid’s eyes followed his arm and bulged. “Oh, by the Maker! I think…I think that Ghuj’aega thing killed them.”

  Zojje scanned the bodies and smiled. “They still live. Barely. Captain Nwosu appears in the best shape.”

  Not from Taorr’s perspective. The human looked aged almost 160 years.

  “That is what the Zenith Point is confused about.” Zojje turned away from the blistering conflict far away. “He is loyal to…Aut’ala. But scared of his plans to wield all this power.”

  Hearing this, Mhir’ujiid came to a simple conclusion. “We must help them.” She whirled around to dash for the fallen Star Brigade.

  Taorr’s panic soared and he caught her arm, lean and muscular to the touch. “Wait. You could get hurt by whatever that is.” He gestured his head at the mushrooming, radiant battle.

  The Farooqua yanked her arm free. “Star Brigade saved us both!” she shouted over the battle. “We must return the favor!”

  “How?” Taorr demanded. He wouldn’t lose her again.

  She shrugged. “No idea. Are you coming?” She whirled and ran toward Star Brigade.

  Taorr looked to Zojje and sighed. “Of course. I learned never to tell you what to do.” With the Kudoban at his heels, he trailed her over this cumbersome terrain. Then again, Taorr realized he’d follow her anywhere.

  Chapter 46

  The three voices sounded faraway, emerging from darkness. Or did those voices just sound distant due to his bad hearing?

  “You sure that is him?” a reedy male voice asked, incredulous.

  “Yes,” another voice reassured, three voices at different pitches.

  “By the Maker above,” a female voice exclaimed in horror. “He looks over a century old!”

  “This is Ghuj’aega…or Aut’ala’s work,” the reedy voice added. “I’ve seen him do this before.”

  Finally, Habraum’s eyelids fluttered open, feeling so heavy. And even after managing to open his eyes, filmy cataracts and weakened vision made everything a milky blur.

  “Nwosu! Can you hear us?” The Cerc shivered. This close up, he recognized Mhir’ujiid’s trilling voice. She loomed over him, cradling his head on her knees. His weathered brain took a moment to identify the murky figures beside her; the long-necked figure had to be Zojje, the more humanoid shadow was Taorr. “That’s…not…right,” he said aloud, again stunned by how ancient he sounded. These three should be back on Faroor. Was this a hallucination as Habraum’s end neared? “How…are you here?”

  Zojje spoke. “The Zenith Point brought us.” His gentle, spindly fingers helped Habraum up to a seated position. The Cerc again saw the bodies of his CT: Khrome ripped in half, Marguliese suffocating on that technorganic gunk, and baby Khal shrieking while thrashing chunky limbs.

  Beyond that were eddying smears of light, the Particulate and Aut’ala clashing. Who was who, Habraum’s brain was too tired to decipher.

  It’s over. Aut’ala defeated Star Brigade. His thoughts fleetingly flashed back to Beridaas long ago, a rumpled terrain littered with dead and dying Brigadiers. Shivers ran through the Cerc’s weary bones. Despite his armor’s internal heating systems, Habraum couldn’t get warm.

  “Habraum.” Zojje’s fingers guided the Cerc’s chin until he faced the trio. “Stay with us.”

  “Why’d the Zenith Point send you?” he asked, unable to comprehend. “Why?”

  “It sensed Mhir’ujiid and Taorr’s bond.” The Kudoban flinched away from a particularly harsh flash. “It was curious. Then it had grown afraid over what Aut’ala was planning to do.”

  Zojje shook as if buffeted by powerful winds. “Now the Zenith Point’s filled with hate. Mainly for the Particulate fighting Aut’ala.”

  A cry shuddered through the walls of the Zenith Point around them. One of the smears of radiance faded. The Particulate crumpled to his knees, a bulge of starry midnight black.

  “And that screen,” Taorr pointed at t
he wall-sized screen showing Faroor. The golden sphere orbiting now grew larger on the screen, or was that Habraum’s aged mind tricking him? “I see Faroor,” the Ttaunz squinted. “But there’s some ship approaching.”

  “More Particulates.” Habraum recalled what Aut’ala had said. He found a sliver of strength and managed to sit up on his own. “We’re at least four thousand years in the past.”

  Zojje, Taorr, and Mhir’ujiid gaped at him. “The past? Impossible,” the Farooqua girl exclaimed.

  Taorr clutched his head as if trying to hold his mind together. “I don’t…what…no.”

  “Focus!” Habraum snapped. “And get as far away from here as possible. Aut’ala will slaughter those Particulates. And you three will be next.”

  The Cerc looked back at the fight between the Particulate and Aut’ala, which was no longer even a contest. The Zenith Point had skewered the rodent-like creature with two veiny growths from behind. All while Aut’ala hurled blistering energy attacks on his helpless foe.

  “Hurry,” Habraum urged before a fit of painful coughs racked his frame. He didn’t have long, but the Cerc wouldn’t leave CT-1. “Aut’ala and the Zenith Point are destroying the Particulate.”

  “I am trying to reason with the Zenith Point.” Zojje’s innocent face contorted as if in severe pain. “But there’s so much hatred for the Particulate.” The Kudoban collapsed to all fours, prompting Mhir’ujiid to rush to his side. “It’s…overwhelming.”

  Habraum stared at him through eyes filled with these insufferable cataracts. Mind-linking…the idea struck then. It might make no difference, but while he still lived, Habraum would never give up to beasts like Aut’ala.

  “Link our minds together,” he blurted out, his lungs spasming from the excitement. “Myself, Taorr, Mhir’ujiid’s minds. Link them to yours and reach this Zenith Point again.”

  Zojje stared at him, swiftly understanding. “To disconnect him from Aut’ala?”