Raystar of Terra: Book 1

by Kurt Johnson

  Nurse Pheelios. Another manipulator tentacle snaked around Mieant’s slowly moving form like a python coiling around its prey.

  “I….” Headache. My arm ached. My side ached. I was collecting aches.

  “I understand,” Pheelios said, her voice sweet honey. “I understand your body’s need. Yes. Nurse Pheelios understands your flesh and bone. Do not think that because I am of the air that empathy and understanding are not achievable.” A tentacle caressed my hair and slid down my cheek. Terrified, I strained my neck to move away, trying to keep my eyes on it. She rested the tip of it against my cheek, and a spark of electricity arced to my face. “Or that I am powerless to do anything about it.”

  I groaned, twisting to escape her rock-hard grip.

  “So fragile. And yet it is WE, beings of air, that are trapped in your world.” She sent another jolt to my chin, and I shuddered away from her. “Fear not, little Human. The Universe is smiling down on you. I do not normally dispense intravenous medication.” Another manipulator snaked through the air toward me, like a mad vine. Except it was a vine holding a syringe.

  “I will end your pain. It would please me to end it for you.”

  WHAT THE NOVA?

  I never asked for any of this. Never. I wanted to play. To send silly vids of kids drooling to my friends. To go to the library and learn about the stars. My anger sparked to life.

  “Beware, Raystar!” Mieant shouted, and with Lethian strength, he ripped himself free of the nurse’s tentacle. He stumbled from the bed toward Pheelios. Her free arm whipped through the air, cracking against him. Mieant fell to one knee but managed to rise and lock his hands on the front of her environmental suit. His weight pulled her to the floor.

  A million thoughts crashed inside the chaos of my headache. Only one made it through. SOMEONE was fighting for me. “We don’t leave anyone behind,” I heard Mom say.

  Mieant struggled with the nurse, but one of her tentacles formed into a point. In the flickering office light, it paused like a scorpion’s tail in the air above his face and stabbed through his shoulder. The force of the blow drove him down, and her tentacle pinned him to the floor with a metallic clank.

  Mieant screamed.

  Blood pooled around his arm. It smelled liked steak. Suddenly, I was hungry, ravenous. Distracted by his scream, Nurse Pheelios’s grip on me loosened as her other manipulator snaked around him. He struggled against her as she immobilized him. And then she withdrew the tentacle from his shoulder and paused above the hole she’d made in his shoulder. Considering.

  Decision made, she pushed her metallic limb back into the bloody wound. He screamed, his voice cracking.

  NO.

  The room flashed white. Shadows rose like dark ghosts against the illuminated office walls. Pheelios…chairs…tables…everything showed up as elongated shadow-puppets.

  Confused, Pheelios rotated her viewport to face me. I saw through the black glass a swirl of clouds as she took me in and jerked backward, in the direction of the door. She lashed at my face, and her tentacle hit my cheek. I crashed into the table, seeing stars momentarily, and the world went white. I heard a hum like a swarm of insects that increased to a deafening buzz. Sparks, like ants, crawled and flowed from my arms, hair, and hands.

  HUNGER growled in the deep pit of my stomach. I hadn’t eaten today. But NOW I WAS HUNGRY and FURIOUS!

  I hadn’t asked for this. I’m not a crusader. I’m a kid. Sleep in. Have sweet-milk. Get a new toy. Have a sleepover. Be liked. Have Mom and Dad give me a hug and tell me I’m great. That they loved me. Isn’t this what all kids want? Isn’t that the gift of childhood? To be free under the umbrella of our parents’ shelter?

  There was no umbrella for me. My parents were clearly in danger. Mieant’s parents had been killed. And he’d just been injured trying to help me.

  Fury whitened my vision. Energy coursed through me. It wasn’t like healing Mieant’s parents; this was like filling the jagged hole of loneliness with nuclear energy.

  Pheelios turned to face me and began floating backward toward the door. I stretched out my hand, and lightning arced from my palm. Fingers of energy caressed everything in the office and then followed my will, screaming and crackling with a deafening hiss as they converged on the nurse. Strands of my power danced around her, zigzagging to the door. Acrid smoke grew from where my lightning had fused the door’s seams shut.

  Nurse Pheelios whipped two tentacles at me from opposite directions. I saw them, in slow motion, as they curved toward my temples.

  My halo of electricity intercepted her appendages and, in a blaze of white energy, drove them down and away. I melted them to the Galactic-alloy floor. She strained to re-form her truncated tentacles, but like a balloon tied to a string, she was anchored to the floor. Welded to it.

  I walked toward her, my rage a burning pressure in my chest. My energy cast black shadows against the wall that shifted their forms with my every step.

  She turned the faceplate of her suit toward me. I have no idea what Syllthan emotions look like. I wasn’t too sure of my own emotions right now. Inside the suit, a swirl of dark gases tornadoed around some bulbous form. Was that fear? My lightning danced on her metal shell, probing. I felt the seams of her environmental suit. They would crack open like my favorite red fruits. The suit’s energy source was warm and delicious, just waiting for me to reach it. I could smell the rare chemicals of her gas-giant entity. No more waiting. I tapped the window a few times to see if she swirled any faster.

  “Raystar! Stop! I will tell you what you need!” The suit’s remaining arms wriggled, but she was anchored to the floor. She swirled faster.

  I didn’t want what she could tell me.

  I wanted her.

  Frustration, anger flowed from me in a mist of micro-sparks, and where they touched her suit, the suit dissolved. Streams of light pulsed back toward me, and I felt like I was stepping into a warm bath. MORE! I hugged her suit, my face pressed against her faceplate.

  One of my sparks found a way inside. I heard a crackle as my currents shorted her vocal circuits. I laughed. My body surged with power. I WOULD UNMAKE THIS ENEMY. Another spark was inside. The atmosphere seal popped; her “air” escaped from her suit. My aura congealed around it, and I felt a rush as it became part of me!

  Far away from this ecstasy, a scared, saner Raystar recoiled, horrified in her understanding of where these actions were taking her. What I was doing??

  A millisecond later, my sparks flooded into the chamber of Pheelios’s suit, and my avatars covered her writhing body. From my toes to the top of my head, I thrummed with life. I screamed, craxy and joyful. I could feel it, my nano, rending, tearing at a molecular level, unmaking Pheelios’s cell walls and bringing her matter into me.

  I absorbed so much from her that suddenly, new controls flashed on, overlaying my vision. As before, I couldn’t read the language. Mieant’s puppetlike profile was silhouetted with a green glow, and a red glare marked the wound on his shoulder. When I looked around the room, I saw outlines of power sources, metal seams—a million pieces of information. I knew, for instance, I could create claws and rip through the Galactic alloy in any direction. And there were capabilities even more destructive that I dared not access.

  MORE. HEAL. FIGHT. ESCAPE. The thoughts came to me. Microsparks flowed from my body like a fuzzy, silvery gown out and over everything in the room, ceiling included. It looked like a sparkly fantasy scene that would delight young children. The jagged, half-moon husk of Pheelios’s suit gonged to the ground.

  Armored fists pounded the door. With newfound control, I pulled in my power. Mieant groaned, and I knelt by him. The tentacle pinning him down was gone; his blood was gone; there was no hole in his shoulder, just a tear in his clothes. I blinked, realizing that I’d healed him. He opened his eyes, grabbed my arm. I lifted him like he was weightless, righting and supporting his body as his legs wobbled.

  “Raystar, what….” My friend’s black, pupil-less eyes too
k in the nurse’s empty suit, the wreckage of the office, the burn marks. “Pheelios. She’s…where is she?” he whispered. Then his eyes grew huge, panicked. “Architect!” He scrambled away from me, falling backward on to one of the tables.

  “Mieant….” What? What was I going to say? Don’t be afraid. Please? The pounding increased. “We have got to go NOW!”

  The doors exploded inward. Godwill and his security team poured into the Nurse’s office. Two guards grabbed Mieant and flung him onto the table, slapped a collar on his neck and injected him with a syringe similar to what Nurse Pheelios had held. Mieant didn’t even have time to yell.

  The Jurisdictor took the office’s destruction in with a glance. He raised an eyebrow at the empty, corroded environmental suit and drew a slim pistol from his belt and pointed it at me. I raised my hands, calling for my power.

  Nothing. Not even a spark.

  Godwill looked at me curiously and pulled the trigger.

  34

  Being unconscious was getting old.

  I opened my eyes AGAIN and concentrated on making sense of what was in front of me. Grains of golden sand made up my view of the ground. My neck hurt. With extreme effort, I moved my hand to the circle of fire around my throat. A collar.

  The avalanche of images, sensations, words, screams, smells, crashed like broken pieces of my life on the floor of my mind. Remind me not to get shot by a stunner again.

  Peace, I told myself. Disconnected from my thoughts, I picked up a fragment of memory. I tried to keep my breathing calm, to not judge or interpret any individual moment, but instead to simply focus on reassembling pieces into a view of reality I could act on.

  Humanity, or more specifically, I, had been framed for killing Mieant’s parents. Actually, it was worse than that. My Dad’s swords had been used to attack them, which meant my parents could be tied to the assault. Were my parents OK? Fear knotted my gut, and I started hyperventilating. Freela and Kaleren had been alive before I was captured—I had healed them.

  Peace. I told myself again. I had to confront these facts and questions, and not panic. I had to THINK! FOCUS! ACT!

  Nurse Pheelios. I had killed her—out of self defense, true. But I’d CONSUMED a sentient being. A citizen of the Convergence. And I’d loved the power and life it gave me! In that moment, I’d been made aware that I had a set of capabilities that I had not yet accessed. Nova. I wanted that power, that invincibility. I wouldn’t need anyone. But I had to learn to control it. I mean, what if Mom or Dad had been accidentally consumed in my body’s quest for energy? I shuddered, remembering the HUNGER, the rage. What were the ancient Humans like?

  Had my organic parents given me away because they came to realize I was deadly? I closed my eyes against the wave of fear and uncertainty. What I’d done was in the past, and I was going to have to deal with the consequences of my choices and actions. I was terrified. Alone. But I could be those things and still take action. OK. Breathe.

  I turned my attention to my surroundings. Dull blue metal bars marked the perimeter of my open-air enclosure. The sky was dark, so it was either early morning or night. Lightning strobed and wound silently through blackness, illuminating the roiling Storm Wall. OK. The Mesas were over there.

  Judging from the increased pressure on the back of my skull, I guessed that a day had passed since I’d been captured. The Storm Wall would soon reach its crescendo atop the Mesas and begin its planetary journey to the sister Mesas on the other side of Nem’. Wind carried occasional fat drops of rain, but nothing constant.

  I pushed myself to a sitting position. Bad idea. Dizziness and nausea swept from my belly to inside my head, and I threw up, retched, and threw up some more. Whatever Godwill had stunned me with had made me feel pretty unstarred. When there was nothing more to come out, I curled up into a ball.

  Between dry heaves and wracking cramps, I became dimly aware of a thrumming vibration through the ground. Recognizing the pattern, I lifted my head, hoping to see Nonch.

  The enormous Crynit from the school attack was centimeters away from the bars, regarding me with—I’d learned from Nonch—curiosity.

  “Jurisdictor,” it said in a light, whispery voice, “The Human is having seizures.”

  Nonch had called her Sarla. She tilted her massive head to the side, listening for a response.

  “Understood. I will report again when it has been subdued and transported.”

  I’d only just understood the implications of their conversation when fire erupted from my collar. I spasmed as the electrical charge surged through my nerves, and I fell back into unconsciousness.

  35

  Something poked my back, above my kidneys. I didn’t move.

  “Is she dead?”

  “When she receives the DNA solvent, she will wish she was.”

  I sat up slowly and opened my eyes. My sore muscles ached, and I had a severe crick in my neck. Turning toward the voices, I found myself squinting into white light.

  “Ahhh. Nem’s only Human awakens.” Someone chuckled behind the blazing whiteness.

  Godwill.

  “Jerk,” I muttered, weakly, and tried to shift and get my knees under me.

  “If your adults had the same fire, your ancestors must have been as formidable as the legends say they were,” he laughed. After a silence, he continued. “But that is how your world, and your people, died, Raystar of Terra. In ignorance of their place in the galaxy. Alas. For your species, extinction is the only seat reserved for you. But. There is time enough for some final moments of entertainment.” And at the word “entertainment,” electricity spread outward from my collar. I shrieked. My hands clawed air while my muscles spasmed.

  “The collars cause pain. It is a good discovery, Raystar. You will learn that they also cause relief. See?”

  I felt nothing. Panting, I looked at him in confusion.

  “Here’s the pain.” The shock hit me again, this time for so long that when it disappeared, I remained on the ground with my back arched, trembling, before my muscles unclenched.

  “The moments when you feel nothing are an immense relief, wouldn’t you say?”

  He shocked me again. Then nothing. He was right. Nothing became relief.

  “In your time remaining,” Godwill chuckled, “you will thank me for ‘nothing.’” He laughed. “It is a play on words. A Human way of speaking, often for causing humor.”

  Shock. Nothing. On and on and on it went, and then, thankfully, a lot more of nothing. The lights shut off, and I was alone in darkness. Cold seeped up from the floor and into my bones.

  I closed my eyes. For a moment, I was grateful for the respite of nothing. But in the darkness of my mind and the silence of my cell, a fire ignited, a mental resistance to their torture.

  Heat.

  The fire in my mind blazed, chasing the cold of the floor out of my body. It crackled and hissed with promises of action as it grew in strength.

  I had been treated to enough insult and cruelty to fuel my internal fire for lifetimes to come. Since I could remember, I’d tried to ignore the sleights of the Galactics around me. I’d pretended to be just another Galactic. I wasn’t. They didn’t want me. I saw my life painted red by the angry firelight in my mind, and it quickened my pulse.

  I was the alien. My people were the destroyers.

  I poured more anger into the fire, and it soared into the heights of my psyche, turning my thoughts into the deep orange, red, and sooty black of rage.

  Is this what my ancestors felt when they first encountered the Convergence?

  Maybe the Galactics had it wrong. I wasn’t JUST their last Human.

  I was their last Human ENEMY.

  So be it.

  36

  “It is not that simple,” a voice said above the clicks, shrieks, and snaps of a million creatures.

  “Oppression is not complicated. You antagonized her at every opportunity.” I lay still, having awakened halfway into an interesting conversation.

 
“That was school. Look around. This is a different circumstance.”

  “Oh. How you act on your beliefs changes with your circumstances? Or have you now changed your beliefs?”

  “Speak plainly, Crynit.”

  “What are your motivations? If we find an opportunity to escape, Mieant, which side will you be on?” Nonch’s voice was low.

  I heard a laugh and a sob.

  “My motivations matter very little. My parents were just assassinated!” I heard grief in the voice. There was silence. Mieant took in a ragged breath and continued. “We’ve been kidnapped. Where does what I want appear in any of this?”

  “Your parents have not been confirmed dead.”

  “Crynit, you know nothing! Where is your all-powerful Broodmother? Or Cri and Raystar’s parents? If I were the Jurisdictor, I would have removed them all simultaneously. We are lost. Alone.” A starbat let out a series of whistles somewhere nearby. Thunder rumbled in reply, its low growl vibrating the floor against the length of my body.

  Mieant continued, “You wanted to know why I didn’t like Raystar. Will you let me answer?”

  I groaned. Cri had given me her list of reasons she didn’t like me. Now I’d have another list. My thoughts from the torture cell whispered, See? They hate you. YOU are the alien, the outcast, the outsider.

  “I had everything on Solium4,” Mieant went on. “Everything. I remember the day my parents learned of some purple-haired Human girl who manifested mysterious abilities. To say they were excited is to say the Galactic Core is merely ‘filled with stars.’ Mother and Father felt this was THE opportunity to befriend a “genetic key” and gain Human cooperation in harnessing their ancient technology. And, for the greater good of all in the Convergence, to diminish the rising strength of the Foundationalists.”

  He sighed.

  “Solium4 isn’t just the Quadrant Capital. It is the heart of the Convergence. I had worked hard.” He sounded like he was clenching his laser-sharp teeth when he said that last word. “…To achieve an apprenticeship with a Master. I had the beginning of a high-end clothing line, a black-hole-tight marketing plan to get it distributed on key major planets and even in shows in other quadrants. All without my parents’ help!”