Starblade

by Rodney C. Johnson

  In response Aria simply smiled back. The reboot remembered at one time she and Nadia had been sort of friends. But then at the time Nadia had neither been a Queen nor Roderik a man of such power.

  “What year is it, Nadia?”

  “It is 2030,” Nadia answered.

  “So much time has gone by…”Aria trailed off. “Things aren't the same are they?”

  Nadia remembered Aria had always spoken in such a soft wispy manner. It was her girlish disposition, almost a naiveté, she expressed to the world. Some mistook it for dumbness and assumed Aria was no more than an empty-headed young woman. It was such a subconscious integral part of her composition she hardly noticed how it affected people. The Queen placed a comforting hand on Aria. She had no right to be angered at her, yet she felt jealousy and didn't like feeling this way at all. She knew for a fact Sharr felt the same way when he was around Aria. It had to wrench his heart. Curious the emotions this DeFalco girl invoked in those near her. A memory came back to Nadia. Under the circumstances she saw no problem with her sharing it. “The first day we met, you were mad and jealous of me.”

  “A little bit,” Aria confessed.

  “Go on.”

  “It felt strange. I realized that he had at last given up and I did not like that he might not show me the same attention as before, even if that’s what I wanted. He was always so genuinely sweet to me,”Aria admitted.

  Like most women she enjoyed male attention, even if sex was not involved. She knew very well how Roderik had felt about her. After all, he made no secret of it. Nor did anyone else.

  “But he still had feelings for you.” Nadia's tone acquired an edge. “It was I who had to compete with you for his affections. And I was his girlfriend!”

  “I'm sorry, Nadia.” Again Aria spoke in her seductive naïve manner. Was there any wonder that Sharr had fallen under her spell?

  “He worshiped you. All this could have been yours.” Nadia said, indicating the island as well as the power that went along with it. She did not like an unsaid thought that had occurred to her. And it might still be.

  “I was glad that he found you. It seems you've won,”Aria pointed out, not exactly sure where Nadia meant to go with this discussion. It made her feel a bit uneasy. “He couldn't be with me and deserved to find someone else to love and be happy with.”

  “Good. I am glad you recognize what he felt... Feels for you, is honest love.”

  “Roder... Um, Sharr.” The name Roderik used sounded foreign to Aria and not right on her lips. “He was never anything but kind to me. I understand that he was in pain because of the love he felt for me.” She let out a long defeated sigh. “But I was glad for him.”

  “I don't think that you fully appreciate all that you represented to him. You were –”

  Priyanka returned from the lab and cut the discussion off between the two women. She carried a small electronic tablet with the DNA and blood results. Reluctantly, Priyanka handed the pad to her Queen.

  Nadia glanced down at the results, not the least bit surprised by what they showed her. “Oberon is Sharr's half-brother.”

  “That’s news,” the reboot was truly amazed by what Nadia had told her.

  “Did you also know you're pregnant?” Nadia casually asked.

  It had been meant as a test to see exactly how involved this reboot was with Oberon's agenda. It appeared though, to judge by the sense of confusion Aria experienced when she learned of her pregnancy that she indeed was no more than a simple, innocent pawn. Wheels within wheels, gears tumbling over. Nadia found herself almost disappointed by this fact.

  Aria was a little perplexed. The body her mind currently occupied remained virginal and this new fact made little sense to her. “I don't recall having… I mean, who's the father?”

  Nadia looked at Aria coldly. “Sharr.”

  Aria's shoulders dropped. She did not understand, now more confused than she had been upon waking up in Germany weeks ago.

  For her part, Nadia understood all too well. When Sharr and his people first met the Korelias, her mother made sure to take a spectrum of DNA samples from each member of the Phoenix Project. The samples had been in cold storage at GenKon. Aria's baby would likely be the product of those genes from before Sharr had undergone The Rashalon.

  Sharr gazed out his window down into the garden below, his hands clasped behind his back in one of his more natural postures. The rain had not let up for days. Perhaps tomorrow would bring the sun?

  A bell chimed.

  “Enter,” the Shotar said, but he did not turn from his rain soaked view. Lightning flashed out the window, the sound of thunder vibrating in his bones.

  “Look at me,” the Queen demanded. She was one of the few who could speak to Sharr Khan in such a curt manner and remain unscathed.

  The Shotar slowly turned his head. He was struck when he beheld the reboot of Aria beside his mate. He held his breath and his heart pounded in his ears.

  “Breathe!” Nadia snapped, her clipped tone masking her anger. “There are things that I need to tell you.”

  Aria glanced over at the desk. A frosted glass decanter with a curved neck, a half-gone vibrant blue liquid almost glowed whenever lightning cracked outside the large window. On the desk's corner, nearest Sharr the crushed remains of a claw-goblet stood, a testament to the strength of a Falcanian's enhanced muscle.

  Nadia noticed the decanter and goblet as well. It was easy for her to guess how the goblet had come to be in the state that it now was. No doubt Sharr had sat here, fumed over old memories which caused him to simmer to a cool rage. Why had he at last gotten her in this way? How come he had been denied this moment years ago? Doubt filled his core. The simple unfairness of the situation and his own weakness angered him even further, until with his bare hand he crushed the goblet.

  “Have you been drinking?” Aria asked.

  Wide-eyed Sharr nodded at Aria. She was all sweetness. Her rhetorical question was meant to show concern for her old friend. It was clear to her that he was upset.

  As a Falcanian, it was quite difficult to become inebriated. A surprising amount of alcohol would be required to achieve such a state; the Shotar had done his best to test those limits. Yet he was unsuccessful, another one of his failings.

  No sooner had she spoken than the reboot moved nearer to Sharr. He remained a few feet away however afraid to be touched by her.

  Nadia felt ill, her stomach turned and she wanted to purge its contents. The sweet pleasant expression that the reboot beamed at her mate made her sick. Any other woman and she'd have not cared a bit. Her mental control was the only thing which kept her from surrendering her dignity.

  “Oberon is your brother,” the Queen stated flatly.

  With a sideways glance he kept a steady eye upon Aria who smiled happily at him. “I see.”

  “And she is exactly as she appears to be, a reboot of Aria DeFalco,” Nadia said. “For all intents and purposes, she remembers who she is, though she doesn't fully understand what she is. Some of her past is vague, yet for the most part she remembers you. In truth, rather fondly. There is no real detectable tampering with her DNA with the exception of her biological age she is Aria.” A near hysterical smile curved Nadia's lips. She felt a little cruel at the moment and wanted to stun him with the news. “Oh, there is one more thing. Aria carries your human baby.”

  Sharr was not sure how he should react to this. A bit surprised, naturally. The fact of this reboot's pregnancy might complicate his life and matters for the Khanate. He chose discretion, though Sharr knew that he could not long hide his feelings from his mate.

  “I'll leave you two,” the Queen said tightly, “so you can become reacquainted.”

  Nadia turned on her boot heal, but not before she let her tail snap back, its pincer clicked in the silence of the office inches from where Aria stood and caused her to jerk back.

  “Nadia!” Sharr called out to his mate, her back to him.

  Rather than respond, Nadia r
aised an open palm to silence him. She had no wish to hear what Sharr had to say and did not mind making it abundantly clear. The doors of the office closed behind the angered Queen, her tail still madly swinging.

  Aria quietly watched as this unfolded. She was upset that she was the cause of Nadia's pain. “I wish I could make her feel better.”

  “Nadia is strong,” Sharr told Aria. “She is my strength.”

  Questions filled Aria's hazel eyes. She stood there and examined his features. The echo of what he had been still could be seen in his blue-gray eyes. Yet this man who had been Roderik Visal, her ardent suitor, had changed in ways that went far beyond the external. His soul seemed to have been touched by darkness.

  “You look so different. You’ve even regrown your long hair and goatee.”

  “Nadia prefers it.”

  Aria smiled. “Oh, I see.”

  “Does my appearance frighten you?” Sharr asked, knowing his wings, tail, and pointed ears might her off.

  “Not at all. It's just so different.” An uncertain expression came across her pretty features. “Roder – ah...I don't even know what to call you.”

  “Whatever makes you comfortable.” That was a thing Sharr would not have allowed of anyone besides this girl. “It has been a long while since you spoke to me Aria...” Sharr trailed off. He hated how their friendship had collapsed. “Are we OK?”

  “Yes. We are.”

  “You are not treating your wife very kindly,” the Italian girl stated. She'd only been on this island for a short while now and she had managed to gather that Roderik had his pick of women.

  Sharr scowled. Aria had just touched the wrong topic. “Having been Saul's mistress, that is not something you should be worrying about, Chicklet.”

  Definitely not the best place to restart their relationship that was for sure, this topic of infidelity. It had always been an unspoken taboo between them. The one thing that had kept him from telling her how he had felt about her.

  Aria smiled at the pet name. Her recollection of Saul and Roderik's mutual banter was as much for her own entertainment as it was male bonding remained rather clear in her memory.

  “Don't get touchy,” she said playfully. “I thought that you and Saul had resolved your issues. You came to even admire him.”

  Saul Berkowitz had not been the most handsome of the male species. Very much the opposite. Overweight to an extreme, yet his richly gregarious personality had been able to win most people over. At first Sharr, had resented Saul for his affair with Aria. But one day, the older man took Sharr under his wing and began to reshape him.

  “I did admire Saul. I'd even say I am now who I am because of him.” He looked squarely at her. “Driven by the fact that he had your affections, I tried as best I could to become Saul.”

  “We never meant to hurt anyone.” Aria could see the hurt in his eyes. “I didn't know you even cared about me.”

  “And by the time I did tell you it no longer mattered.”

  “You never forgave Brad.”

  Sharr felt his blood boil. “No!”

  Aria began to see a certain irony in the situation. “And look what you have become.”

  “All I ever wanted to do was tell you that I loved you.” He hesitated, his heart shredding. “I wanted to marry you and would have asked you given the chance. Do you know how much self-control it took to keep that to myself every day?”

  That Sharr's instincts about the man Aria had chosen to be with proved fatefully accurate only had angered the young Shotar more. Brad Ferraro in physical appearance was a short, pudgy man minus Saul’s redeeming personality. Sharr had known himself to be so much more than the thick-set man both in appearance and personality. Ferraro had been a bad boy, rough around the edges. He fell into that category of the football lug and was about as dense as one might expect. And he had money. It was very little wonder that Sharr despised him from the moment they met.

  She looked down at the rich, burgundy rug. “After all these years, you still feel that way?”

  “Aria, you changed my world. You unlocked my soul.”

  “What happened?” the reboot stammered. “What happened to the world? To our families and friends. Where did they all go?”

  The abrupt change in subject took Sharr Khan off guard. Aria leaned closer to Sharr and nearly touched him. He moved back a step. This was dangerous. Being close to her, made him lethal...

  Sharr cleared his throat. Images of the destruction of his home state flashed in his mind. “Connecticut did not fair well. The Strategic Oil Reserves in New Haven harbor were bombed. The environmental disaster that followed swept across the state. Groton was targeted as well. Everyone we knew and cared for perished.”

  It was not the exact truth Sharr knew, but it was the most succinct way for him to explain to her the world she had left was no more.

  “And how did you survive?”

  “Planning and luck.”

  His aura of command began to have an effect on Aria. She actually felt herself swoon as he spoke. His raw, animal like power attracted her.

  It was hard not to miss the brooding expression in Sharr Khan's blue-gray eyes. True, he had always been the strong silent type, a condition of his poetic nature Aria had seen and even appreciated that she was his muse. But the sense of darkness had grown palatable.

  “For someone with so much, you look as though you are very sad, Roderik.”

  “Do you really think Aria that one achieves such power without paying a price? I am not that unsure poet who loved and lusted for you so long ago,” Sharr said. “Choices of life and death are daily in my hands. Decisions that could spark war rest before me to grapple with. Such things change a man. One discovers that one's dark side is also strength.”

  She took in his words, at last coming to terms with what Sharr had become. Aria gave him a sultry smile and a strand of hair fell across her eye.

  Oh, he felt his heart thud painfully in his chest. He felt weak with her here. Sharr wanted nothing more than to hand her his uniform dagger so she could cut out his broken heart with it. Perhaps it would free him at long last, her hand ripping out his heart?

  Lightning flashed outside.

  “Are you hungry?” Sharr at last asked.

  “Still trying to feed me, Roderik?” Aria said a gleam in her eye. “You're determined to make me fat.”

  Apparently Aria still had her fixation with her weight. Ironic given her slight frame that she was so weight conscious. It was a something that had always annoyed Sharr.

  “Now, there will be none of that. You look perfect,” he pointed out. “You always looked perfect.”

  Aria melted. He was so forceful, almost arrogant. It actually turned her on.

  “I wish I could let you see yourself through my eyes. You are a vision of beauty.” He cleared his throat again. “I have one of the finest sushi chefs in all of Asia. The Shogun sent him here as a gift. However since you are pregnant you won't be eating raw fish. Perhaps some tempura and sticky rice?”

  She moved incredibly close to the Shotar. “That would be very nice.”

  A ghostly specter passed across the room. The cloaked female figure walked between Sharr and the reboot, wavering slightly as it occupied the same space as the cloned woman. Aria jumped with a start and gasped at the female apparition.

  Falcania glared at Aria, an envious pout on her light-rendered face. She gazed at Aria, shaking her head in disgust. A tiny ironic laugh emitted from Falcania's perfect maroon lips and moved across the room toward the wall.

  “W-What is… Is she?” Aria stammered. She thought for a moment that some wrathful spirit had just laid the evil eye upon her.

  “A hologram. An Artificial Intelligence.” The Shotar watched the hologram fade back into the wall. Of all the women to have lust after him, the AI Falcania was the strangest. “Falcania's personality was based partly upon Nadia. I suspect she simply expresses those emotions she shares with my T'krin.”

  Sharr noticed w
hen Falcania made her abrupt appearance that Aria had grabbed onto his hand and was pressing tightly. The contact of her hand felt good. He had dreamed of this for so long.

  Aria could not but notice how he went rigid around her. She would have thought that having so many women at his whim Roderik would finally be able to loosen up around her.

  “Relax. I won't bite,”she murmured and saw him at last fall at ease. “Hold me, please. Just let me rest in your arms.” Aria wrapped her arms around Sharr, placing her head against the leathery jodtok.

  Pheromones, he thought.

  He curled his tail around her possessively. Sharr knew his body continued to pump them out since the first had seen Aria in the throne room. Her lavender scent was more than enough, achieving nearly the same chemical effect as a drug of seduction on his senses.

  The Shotar ordered the meal to be brought for them and allowed Aria to rest against him. Clearly she was quite comfortable in his embrace. At last, he had won the one thing in the entire Universe that he would have sold his soul to have. Now that the women of his dreams, the female who shaped his image of the type of woman he desired, rested happily in his arms. In the midst of his contentment, Sharr feared the dream would shatter and he would wake to a nightmare.

  Without any sense of her dignified station, Nadia huddled in a corner of the hallway beside a lattice partition, not far from her mate's office. She held herself, canopied by her rose-colored wings and sobbed in despair. In this most sorry state Frederika happened upon the Queen. Frederika pulled Nadia to her feet and made the Falcanian look her directly in the eyes.

  Nadia did not really see her. She was too lost in her emotional devastation.

  “Nadia?” Frederika pushed attempting to break the Queen out of her state of collapse. “Nadia! T'Kara, please talk to me.”

  Nadia regained her senses, her remarkable blue eyes coming back into focus. She stared at the blonde who held her firmly by her shoulders. Such compassion rested behind those emerald eyes. It was almost incongruous with what the girl had been designed to be, a literal killing machine. She considered what her mother told her of why Frederika had been created. It was a pleasant surprise to find such strong compassion in her. No doubt Turhan had seen some value in an overseer able to relate to her victims. In her mind's eye, Nadia beheld a mirror version of Frederika. The ruthless robot overseer who could enslave humanity.