Starfire, A Red Peace

by Spencer Ellsworth

  I en’t read none, but I figure that’s the worst inspirational speech in history.

  * * *

  Araskar

  I don’t know what to say to Helthizor. We stand in the hangar, and all the slugs I kept alive on Keil’s moon mill around me like dumb puppies, even though Terracor’s bellowing to get into the burrowing pod. They all look at me. Some disappointed. Some surprised. Most seem like they’re waiting for an order.

  “I don’t like this,” Helthizor says.

  I can’t afford to agree. “It’s nothing, slugs. Just . . .” I look at Terracor. He’s, for once, taking point on this mission. “Just use your sense. This is a simple snatch-and-grab. We’ve been through too much to be afraid of a snatch-and-grab.” I lean into Helthizor. “No soulswords, no killing,” I whisper. “Not for children. That’s an order.”

  “Yes, sir,” he says. He leans in closer. “But, sir, they’re humans.”

  “What?”

  “They’re just humans,” says Helthizor. “We’ve all heard, sir. We all know what has to be done. No one said consolidation would be pretty.”

  What is this? “Someone besides me give you an order? About humans?”

  His face tightens up. “No, sir, no orders; I guess I was listening where I shouldn’t have been.”

  “Yeah, you were, soldier.” I struggle for a moment—do I ask Helthizor about this thing, and acknowledge that my gossipy slugs know more than I do, or do I wait to confront Terracor?

  Terracor bellows something, which decides things for me. “Go. Snatch and grab and we’ll talk later.”

  Helthizor shrugs, and says, “Got it.”

  I salute, and we all roar, “Stamp your boots and open your sheath!”

  I run to the end of the hangar, for the Moths, unfurling from their white plasticene cocoons. The six-man squad of flyers has put in extra hours for this, though every soldier here trained with a Moth.

  Moths evolved on a wild world, one no one paid attention to because of the way it lost atmos after terraforming failed. Wormy sentients lived underground, and grew a bone-hard, spiny-winged carapace that recycled carbon dioxide into oxygen and kept them nice and warm, if a bit sticky. They could vent carbon dioxide in jets, which allowed them to fly for weeks beyond orbit and harvest water from their icy moons. Perfect natural spaceships, and it was John Starfire who figured out that crosses could fly them with a bit of training. Those worms were more than willing to give us used carapaces, for enough coin.

  My Moth’s enclosure is wide open, the carapace gleaming pink inside, the hard, brown outside studded with spikes. A gun has been mounted in place of its original feeding tube.

  “Hello, sir,” says one of the other pilots. “I’m Jevathor. Nice to have the Secondblade flying with us.”

  More like the Lastblade. “Whatever you do, stay on the pod. We can’t let them hit our boarders. I’ve got the field—just listen.”

  He salutes. Polite kid, considering they don’t need my advice. Still, I’ve got orders, even if they’re shit orders, and I’d better act like the big boss according to those orders. I take a moment to slash the soulsword across the meat of my arm.

  Blood lights the blade with white fire.

  I climb into the Moth, sticky and warm, like—never mind what it’s like. The carapace closes, and I thrust the flaming soulsword up, into a slot made for the fin-brain of the original inhabitant. With that, a channel through my soulsword extends my awareness to the carapace, a part of me now.

  I can see outside myself, in a blurry, bisected way; my vision stretches in a vast bug-eyed circle. I see the hangar as we leave. I see the unnaturally dark space ahead of me. I see the wide rings that make up this establishment, and I see the gun barrels the boss of this complex has installed. The guns spit bright red shards against the darkness. The asteroid blinks with light, far below us, and a tiny gunner ship jets up from its hangar.

  “Formation fall, in twos, to the guns,” I say, and the other Moths pick it up, into their soulswords and their thoughts. We fall through vacuum, our own shard-fire answering the guns. Shards dance across the blackness. Shards explode against wire and metal and plasticene, break the rings into glowing fragments. One of my slugs catches a big gun under its carriage, at the supply pod, and it bursts in a massive flare of red shards, tearing the ring apart, sending fragments of metal and rock and plasticene through the void.

  Then a shard rips a Moth, turns it to meat. We all feel the scream, vibrating through the soulswords, as the poor slug inside dies.

  Those mounted guns aren’t automated—something with a brain is targeting us. In this sector of space, it’ll be the machine men.

  “Back off, back off,” I say, over protests. Stabilizing jets of carbon fire, the Moths rising as though they really are riding currents of air. “Those are Suits behind those guns. They’re predicting us. No more formations.”

  From the heart of the complex below, the little gunner ship rises toward us, lurching back and forth, trying to stabilize. Through my circular field of vision, I see our burrowing pod, stuffed with my slugs, drop from the belly of our cruiser. There’s Terracor and Rashiya inside, and my whole squad, falling toward the asteroid. Ready to board, and I’m up here.

  I dart for the gunner ship, and fire, protecting my slugs.

  -13-

  Jaqi

  UP WE GO.

  “What the hell are those?”

  Z doesn’t have an answer. Big brown bugs? The Vanguard has some funny allies. They circle the rings of Bill’s asteroid, trying to take out the shard-cannons that Bill’s Suits installed. Their wings are spread out, hard and veiny and traced with black and brown designs that kind of remind me of Z’s skin, truth. They’ve got shard-fire spilling out of their mouths, and one of them is coming for us. Its shard-fire traces a line across our left side. We’re hit, and the ship shakes, spins evil before Z gets it under control. “Fire!” he yells.

  I fire crazily, a wide burst of shards at this insect. No good. I distract whatever-it-is—but it en’t real shooting.

  “Shoot like you mean it!” Z snarls. “Shoot like you did before!”

  “How did I shoot before?”

  “Shoot!”

  Oh, that helps. Damn. I grip the handle and let off a spurt of shards, and they go flying well off into the darkness. The brown thing spins, fires.

  “Shoot!”

  “Dodge!”

  Z does an admirable job, I must admit, piloting, but he en’t got the touch I do. I’d better make some shots count. Too bad I en’t much of a shot.

  How’d I do it before? I was as panicked as a girl can get. I suppose I’m close now.

  It was like a node. Like finding a node, the way I reach out, find that one little slit the old Jorians opened to pure space. Invisible to everything except the right code transmitted on the wormhole engine’s frequency, or the eyes of a cross with the talent. I can grab a node and I can pull us in, and before . . .

  Before, on Swiney Niney, I grabbed that gray bitch’s brain. I grabbed her like a node, and I shot, and the shard-fire just soared right to her. And I can tell you something, now that the bugs are close. There’s Vanguard in those brown bug-ships, and if I reach out I can do the same.

  * * *

  Araskar

  Oh, hell.

  Why am I suddenly crazing? I can hear the music. Not some smooth fine background noise—it’s blasting in my ears, a screaming, dissonant roar this time, a wave about to break—

  I take a hit.

  My Moth’s wing breaks away, alight with the red glow of the shards, pieces flying bright through the darkness. The skin on my good leg shreds and freezes, exposed to vacuum for a second before the carapace closes over it protectively. I fly up from the force of the blast, away from the asteroid, and I fire the Moth’s stabilizing jets. But I’ve lost half the jets, so that sends me into a spin.

  I’ve never had the music come sober. Or had it come with this burning pain. I fight the fall, spin the Mot
h. I am fighting a little of the asteroid’s gravity now, and the shards bring their own burst of hot gases, throwing off my flight.

  The gunner ship gets above me. Whoever’s on that thing, they think I’m out of this fight.

  Above me, Rashiya’s burrowing pod falls closer.

  The gunner ship is moving into the perfect position to meet it.

  I fly right at the gunner ship, steering with my sword. I twist my fingers, about ready to fire, to take out the gunner ship—

  Everything goes numb, like before. I can’t feel my fingers. I can’t feel my arms. My stupid fake tongue is limp in my mouth. I can’t control the Moth.

  No!

  * * *

  Jaqi

  I got him! One of those bug wings breaks apart, sheds fiery pieces as it goes spinning into the vacuum.

  “Yes, good,” Z says. “Fire again. Blood and honor!”

  “Tomatoes!” I try to lock on to one of the other insects. The calm is gone, in that rush of actually hitting something. I reach for the node, the sense of connection, but I don’t have enough time. The rest of the insects are flying interference, farther above the asteroid, trying to take out the cannons, and now trying to take out the three Suits scuttling up and down the rings. At least the Suits are giving us reinforcement.

  One of them damn bugs connects, its shards blowing through Bill’s ring, breaking apart the cannon and tearing one of the Suits into three pieces, metal and flesh separating and spinning off into the black. Bits of metal rain down on us, pulled by the asteroid’s gravity—Z jerks the ship back and forth, trying to dodge them, but we still take a nasty hit, and we’re listing, spinning on our side, and I see—a pod, coming from above, one of them pods meant to board a place—

  “Z!” I yell. “Take that pod!”

  He pushes the ship, up and up, to meet the burrowing pod that is falling rapidly toward Bill’s. That’s the one, soon to be vomiting Vanguard into the halls of my home. That’s the one I’ve got to hit.

  Without stopping to concentrate, I let off a bright burst of shards at it, and miss by a good mile. Z is yelling something, no doubt something unhelpful about honorable death and maybe some blood. I try to concentrate. Node, it’s a node, I’m focusing, feeling the space between us, closing the space . . .

  Not as easy as it was with just one of them. There are a good fifty Jorian crosses on that pod, and they’re throwing off my sense. I can’t grab onto any of them. I fire, and fire again, and miss, and miss again, and I reach and reach—

  Our ship spins, gone crazing. My head jerks to the side, knocks so hard against the window that my vision blurs. “What—”

  I open my eyes and there’s a bug on the windshield. The insect-ship I just shot has crashed into us, its hard and horned brown body wrapped around the glass, blocking the gun. Its own gun head is lurching, back and forth, trying to get a place to shoot from the gun glued into the insect’s mouth.

  I can see, though I can’t say how, the fella inside the bug. Big scar across his chin. His eyes are wide and he’s coated in sweat.

  Z is turning and diving, turning and diving, trying to shed the thing, but it’s got spikes in the clear plasticene around me, holding tight, and I’m trying to pull the trigger, but it’s shoved up against the barrel, forcing the gun back. If I fire, the gun will jam, and we’ll all blow to hell.

  “Do something!” Z roars. “Get out and scrape it off if you have to!”

  That en’t going to happen. But maybe—

  He’s a young guy, with enough scars on his face for a lifetime. Old eyes. Right now, his body’s shaking. He’s afraid.

  It’s all connections, I’m thinking. All like the nodes, these connections between Jorians. Like the Starfire, what they talk about in old times.

  So I push.

  I shove him away like closing a node.

  And the bug-thing tears away from the ship, goes spinning out into space, and I have a clear view, at last. Bug fighters dart for me, trying to cover for their burrowing pod. One of Bill’s Suits drifts in the black now, firing at the bugs. They fire back. Metal Suit limbs go spinning off into space.

  The burrowing pod is within a few meters of Bill’s. Grapples launch from the front, hook into the rock of Bill’s asteroid, pull it closer. All fifty Vanguard in there are going to drop in, on top of the kids and Bill, and I zero in—

  I fire. I fire a beautiful big volley, the shards spinning across space, bright yellow and red and trailing clouds like blood in water.

  My shards catch the burrowing pod. They blast it open, shred metal, molten pieces splitting and careening through space. Vanguard bodies fly out. The fire tears their bastard faces and their bastard arms and their kid-killing swords and I fire again, and again, the shards shearing their bodies down, ice-chunks of blood and limbs and heads making a pattern across the vacuum. I kill as many as I can hit.

  “Blood and honor!”

  That was me saying it.

  * * *

  Araskar

  I can’t move.

  I can see the cross in the pod. Starfire knows how. She’s tiny, dark-skinned, black eyes reflecting the red light of my shard-glow. She’s looking right into me. Like she can see everything, and I know she only wants me to be meat, and I can’t move!

  The music is overwhelming me. Tears leak from my eyes at the beauty of it.

  It’s her. She’s the music.

  She pushes me away.

  I go spinning off into darkness, like a piece of frozen debris. The notes of the music are a frenzy, a storm of slicing metal, ripping through my veins, and my whole numb, frozen body just won’t move, just locks right up, not even a twitch of my fingers—like a damn baby, like meat in the vat, like nothing, and I can do nothing—

  Nothing but watch, as she kills my slugs.

  Her shards connect with the pod. The metal turns white, then bursts open. Bodies fly out, targets like animals flushed from their hole. The shards keep coming. My slugs sail out, and her shard-fire cuts them into pieces, into lumps of meat and bone and freezing blood across the emptiness, just like my friends, the same faces, the same blood, the same way they are just meat, turning to nothing but meat.

  My face is too numb to scream.

  The music rises to one final crescendo, soaring strings, hammering drums, roaring walls of notes.

  * * *

  Jaqi

  Z is shouting something in another language, in triumph. I shout, “Contact Bill! Tell him to get out now! Now!”

  I’m still shooting—firing up, at another insect ship swooping down at me. “Z, did I get gray girl? Is she in space?”

  “I don’t know,” Z roars.

  That pod made contact before I blew it. If gray girl hung on—if a few of them made it in, when it was burrowing—then Bill and the kids are dead.

  If not, I could bug out. Bill might be safe, now. I could take Z and I right into a node, right now, far away from this craziness. As long as Bill and the kids left safely—

  Shard-fire hits us, and there is a loud boom, we shake and the air hisses with atmos escaping. We’re in trouble.

  Z pilots the ship down, toward Bill’s hangar. Too fast. We’re going to hit hard, possibly ignite our shard-tank. Hangar doors are open, but nothing’s changed—the bare floor, the Suits’ pile of junk, the water tanks, Palthaz’s ship where I left it parked—and then I can’t think any more, because we hit.

  We scream across the ground, metal on metal. We crash into the Suits’ pile of junk, send it flying.

  Under the scream of metal twisting, I can feel the roar of the shard-tank at the base of our ship. If it breaks, we’re gone. The ship will be gone, the whole hangar gone, the whole asteroid up in fire. I grip the bars below the triggers, hang on, knuckles white—

  The ship hits the wall of the hangar, throws me against my chair so hard that my breath collapses in my chest. After a moment, I open my eyes. We’re still here.

  The hangar doors screech closed overhead. Closed? But Bill
! The kids! They should be bugging out! Atmos hisses through the space around us, Bill’s precious air filling the hanger.

  I unbuckle slowly, painfully. Crosses are built to take punishment. Nothing broken, right? Built for punishment. Built to crash ships and fight Vanguard and . . . I struggle up, force my hands to grasp the ladder to the cockpit. I pull myself up through the tiny passageway.

  Quinn, you brave bastard. Jaqi, you dumb scab. Z, you . . . He’s alive, but he’s unconscious, and he’s taking up the whole damn cockpit. I reach over him, my hands scrambling across the controls. Dark take us, it’s cold in here, so cold my fingers feel like they’re collapsing. I punch the keys and open the cockpit.

  I mutter, “Up, Z. You’re not dead in blood and honor yet. Up!” I slap his face. Nearly breaks my hand.

  His head rolls around, revealing eyes that are rolling in their sockets. “Up!”

  His head comes up, groggy. “I—”

  “Blood and honor!”

  “Blood and—”

  Bill’s head appears over the cockpit. “Jaqi, oh my Dark-gone girl. Come on.”

  “Bill? Why en’t you gone?”

  “Node en’t open! I been sitting, waiting, but those bugs got all my Suits.” He looks over at the hangar door. “Good shooting, girl. Come on, let’s get you and this lug out, you can jump me through the node, then you can go about your—”

  The hangar doors, to Bill’s living quarters, to my home, open. It’s dark beyond, fire flaring in the limited atmos, smoke billowing, but I see that white-fire glow of two soulswords. Aw hell. I missed some.

  -14-

  Jaqi

  I DON’T THINK. I raise my gun and shoot.

  And I miss.

  Gray girl runs out of the smoke, same color, carrying her sword, flashing white against the darkness. She’s got her head unwrapped now, orange hair springing every which way. Behind her comes a bearded fellow in body armor. His soulsword is up and at the ready too. Blood drips off his hand, and when it hits the ground, it sizzles white.

  And behind them—that damn NecroWasp!

  “Oh, come on!” I groan at whatever fates are listening.