Raystar of Terra: Book 1

by Kurt Johnson

  He pushed my head against the table as he released my neck. I choked and sucked in as much of the metallic dungeon air as I could, coughing all the while. I had no idea what he was talking about.

  But someone had escaped. Someone with less of the Human nano than I had. Which meant…wait. ’Natch field. That…creature…that had attacked Dad and me.

  Great. Flipping. Gravity. Wells. IT-ME. 507. Artem! He had been Human. HUMAN!

  “Your next injection of Human Reclamation Nano Solvent will be here in two day-cycles. What an ignoble end for the last Human on Nem’. Synth!” he said into the air, “Release Experiment 508.”

  The restraints slid off of me. Without their support, I slipped off the chair and collapsed onto the crunchy, rusty floor. I stared at the jagged brown bits of corrosion lining the vault floor. Something made a soft pat, pat sound, and I realized it was blood. Mine.

  I watched a red drop fall from my nose, splatter, and then spark, feebly.

  “Put your collar on. Get up.” He kicked my butt, and my elbows wobbled. I fell forward on my shoulder into the rust. Its taste was in my mouth, jagged and metallic. My arms flayed in front of me, and I pulled myself toward my collar. My knees were scraped. My hands bled from the sharp rust flakes on the floor. Galactic metal didn’t rust. This was clearly caused by Godwill’s use of the Human tech. Splayed on the floor, I required no effort to look pathetic and clumsy. I fumbled with the collar, buying time to think.

  Unbidden, a small spark leapt from where my blood had dropped into the rust directly to the collar. The flakes where my blood had dropped melted, and I felt a tingle. I knew, at that moment, that if I let my hunger loose on the rusted byproduct scattered on the floor, it would have fed me. Energized me. The push of ravenous gluttony rose to my throat, and I fought to control it.

  Fortunately, I had sheltered the spark from Godwill’s sight. I took a pinch of the rust and the blood from my nose and rubbed it on the collar’s connector, hiding the movement by pretending to fumble around. Not knowing what I was doing, driven by desperation, I willed my energy into the rust and into my blood.

  The collar buzzed. I screamed as much out of surprise as it was to cover the sound. The rust sparkled and fizzed around the collar’s leads. I closed it around my neck, and the seam burned hot. I hoped that Godwill couldn’t smell the ozone and my seared flesh where it touched my throat. Luck was on my side; I was rewarded with a kick to my lower back.

  “Get up, Raystar of Terra. Wearing the collar is the least of your concerns. Maybe I will let you take it off before your final session.”

  Groaning, I cinched myself back to my knees, then got my legs under me, until I wobbled to stand on my own. Impatient with my sluggishness, he pushed me toward the stairs, and my arms windmilled as I fought to keep balance.

  “Then again,” he chuckled, “Maybe not.”

  There was no railing, and I leaned heavily against the wall as I climbed one stair at a time toward the exit. My legs weakened with each step.

  When I got to the first room, the one with the two entryway guards, there was no ceremony or parting words. Godwill simply pushed me through the door and into the evening shadows. Banefire was on the other side of the Mesa. I stumbled and sprawled onto the dusty ground. I lay there, watching the wind blow small pieces of dried leaves across the soil. Geckomice squeaked and scurried outside of the barrier. Starbats, millions of them, were crooning, flapping, and stretching themselves for their evening feast and preparing to launch themselves from their nests in the ancient buildings. Get up. I had to get up and tell my friends what I’d learned.

  I was starving. No, really. Actually starving. The “nano solvent” Godwill had injected into me drew power from me in some manner. It must work the same way the industrial nano consumed a feeder cube to reconstruct our controller. In this case, I was the feeder cube. Whatever I was, whatever was in me, was resisting, fighting back, but this internal battle was about staying who I was or being remade into the universe-knows-what. And both sides were drawing energy from me!

  I pushed myself to my feet and let the momentum carry me forward. Gravity seemed to pull me as I blindly turned left or right until I made it to our covered enclosure. My friends sat there, huddled in a circle.

  Nonch had just flicked his sensor stalks in my direction when I stumbled into their light. “Raystar!” Nonch said, snaking out of my way to make room and guiding me to the ground. He wiped my face and chin with a rag that became red.

  Cri took me in with a disapproving glare, but her eyes soon grew wide. I looked down at what had caught her gaze. The front of my shirt was soaked with my blood. I always bled before the storms. But now? With all of the power I’d been using, this close to the Storm Wall’s epic release, something was very different. If the headaches followed, I didn’t know if I could take that. BIG IF.

  I frowned back at her. “This isn’t my ‘cry for attention’, Sis’. I have information,” I said bitterly, making eye contact with everyone, “that will make a difference.”

  “Of course,” she said, dismissing my bloody, haggard appearance with a hand to the sky, “when don’t you?” She scooched away from me and placed a hand on Mieant’s shoulder.

  Mieant lay curled on his sleeping mattress, like he was still asleep. The dim light couldn’t hide his swollen jaw or split lip. His shirt was ripped across his shoulder, and his exposed grey skin was mottled with red, black and purple, knuckle-shaped bruises.

  “Mieant,” I sucked in a breath and frowned. “What happened?”

  “The guards said it was supposed to look like a Human beat me. You.” He opened an eye and shuffled on his back so he could see me. A cough shook his body, and I realized he was laughing. “But looking at you now, I realize how out of touch they are with reality. What happened to you?”

  I told them.

  When I’d finished, we stared at each other a long time in silence. Total silence.

  “Well,” Mieant said, in a small voice, “my parents are not confirmed dead.” He looked at Nonch, acknowledging his earlier comments. “That is positive.”

  “We must escape tomorrow,” Nonch said. “There is no choice. Raystar will die. We will be used for Godwill’s plans. Then we will die.”

  “Autoturrets. Collars. Oh.” Cri had re-engaged and began counting on her hands. “There are thirty guards,” she said, raising another finger, “and they have guns.” She met each of our gazes.

  “Nevertheless,” Mieant said, “they want us all alive, at the moment. We can use that. We have Nonch’s smell signal. And maybe two of us, definitely three of us, can overpower a guard. Except for that monster, Sarla.”

  “Godwill made a mistake today,” I said. Cri had been about to say something, and she glowered at me.

  “He injected you with nanovirus?” Cri asked.

  “No….”

  “He beat Mieant to a pulp? Oh, and he framed us on GNN? Killed Mieant’s parents?” she continued.

  “No…he….”

  “Oh, AND he left the autoturrets on? AND he took the keys to the NPD cruiser? AND he brought two entire Battle Groups here to support him as he takes over the planet? AND he….”

  This was the moment of truth. Had my nano fried the rust and broken the collar lock? If not, our options were extremely limited. The circlet around my neck clicked open, and I handed the collar to my sister.

  Cri turned the collar around and then looked down, her hair curtaining around her face and closing off her expressions.

  I chucked her lightly on the arm. She looked away.

  “I’m sure we’re tracked by these things. How craxy would they get if we threw the collar over the force fence into the Ruins?” I asked, taking the band from her and refastening it around my neck.

  The plan was simple. Jump the guard closest to the NPD cruiser. Cri, who was by far the strongest, would throw the collar over the fence, into the Ruins, thus pulling everyone toward the tracking beacon while we escaped on the transport. It seemed l
ike our best chance.

  “Raystar,” Mieant asked, in such a tentative voice that we all stopped talking and turned to him. “Nonch asked me earlier which side I was on.” He pulled Cri closer. “I want to escape. To find out what happened to my parents. To get us all to safety. On my honor, this is the side I’m on.” He paused to clear his throat. “But what about you? What are you? When we were with Nurse Pheelios, you…did things.”

  I swallowed. I hadn’t told anyone about that. We simply hadn’t had time. And frankly, I didn’t want to think about what happened. What I’d done was awful enough, even if it may have saved Mieant and me. What I’d felt was terrifying. Strength, power, hunger.

  Godwill had been like that when he was with me. More than his usual arrogant self, I mean. I shivered, remembering the craxiness that had peeked out of him at that moment, perhaps a side effect of absorbing and using all the Human nano. If he’d been using this tech longer than I had, what could it have done to him? Was he even Lethian anymore?

  Those red stains on the walls. They were not paint, and they were still wet. Fresh. Knowing what I had done with my powers and what I could do, I knew Godwill would be far worse. A million times worse. He enjoyed hurting people. And he was doing it with Human technology. I wasn’t sure how, but he had to be stopped. And we had to get out of here. All of us.

  I dipped my head toward Mieant, acknowledging his point, and looked at Cri and Nonch.

  “Thank you for letting me tell the story in my words,” I responded, looking at my laced fingers in my lap. I turned my gaze to each of my friends, and answered their concerned, serious expressions. “I ate her.”

  Nonch froze. Cri sputtered, “Twig, that’s not even funn–NOVA! You’re not kidding?”

  I shook my head.

  “It is as Broodmother has described,” Nonch breathed. And then, more loudly, he said, “We were unsure if you had the power.”

  “I don’t have anything! It has me! All this,”—I paused and waved toward the galaxy overhead—“is because of something that happened a long time ago.”

  “Nevertheless. You have the power over Human technology. Human weapons. You are one, yourself. If you are so integrated with the technology, how do you even know you are Human? It is what has troubled Broodmother about your kind.”

  “Could you,” Cri said, rolling her four hands, “eat us?”

  We sat in silence.

  “Yes,” I said, looking down.

  “That’s nova,” she whispered, her anger and jealousy apparently on hold for the moment. I squinted up at her. Our thinking wasn’t going in straight lines. We were all craxy insane. “I mean,” she corrected, catching everyone’s expressions as they regarded her, “totally horrible. But I saw her spark-out in the ’natch fields the day before school. Lightning claws, glowing eyes, super purple hair. BZZZZZSTH-BRA-WHAMP!” We flinched as she mimicked my fight with IT-ME, sound effects and all.

  “I went back to help your parents,” I said to Mieant, in a small voice. “And you tried to help me in the nurse’s office—we saved each other.” Telling them about my powers was terrifying. What if they left me? What if they didn’t like me anymore? I didn’t want to be alone. I didn’t want to die alone, in this horrible place.

  “I’m not bad. I don’t know what’s happening.” I said, looking at each of my friends. It was becoming harder to breathe. The fear of losing my only friends—my connection to my personal Humanity—made sucking in each breath hard labor. “I’m trying my best.”

  “Raystar,” Mieant said, after a huge silence, “I am the only person that saw what you did for my parents. And to Nurse Pheelios. And yes, you healed me in that room. I don’t know what you are, but I owe you two debts. And I trust you.”

  He reached across the space between us and put a hand over mine, where it rested on my knee. I stared at his long, grey fingers, his scraped knuckles, the tattered cuff of his once-beautiful shirt. Something rustled at my side as Nonch placed eight hand claws over our hands. It was his navy blue armored chitin, ending in many-digited, blood-orange hands. Cri wrapped our hand knot in her own red-skinned hands, covered with dirt and abrasions. Our thirteen-year old lives were most likely going to end horribly in the next several days.

  But we’d face the future together.

  41

  Minutes later, after we’d all settled down for sleep, I was mildly surprised by a gorgeous smell of loam and sugar drifting lazily through the air. Slowly—very slowly—Nonch reared up and turned his head toward the force fence, snaking his lower body like he was targeting where to strike.

  “Wha—?” I started. He put the soft part of his hand claws over all of our mouths.

  “No sounds,” he whispered.

  I listened. Where were the starbats? The bugs? The other creatures? The night was silent. In the lull of the thunder, evening had snuck up on us. Something was out there, in the darkness.

  We moved so our backs were all toward each other and faced outward into the darkness. The smell of death snaked through the air, until a constant, gentle breeze carried the Crynit’s warning into the Ruins and toward what lurked outside the walls of our prison.

  42

  The morning air was paralyzed by the dark clouds lit from the inside by spiderwebs of lightning. Thunder rolled from one horizon to the other with such frequency as to be nearly continuous. Starbats rustled closer to each other and were muted, not wanting to attract the attention of whatever was up in the heavens. They peered toward the sky, twitching their angular heads this way and that, from within the shelter of the skeletal Human Ruins.

  The lurker in the Ruins from last night was gone. Primordial memories of being hunted seemed to permeate the consciousness of every living thing, from insects and geckomice, to my friends and me.

  In the night, I’d slid down and slept against Nonch’s warm, armored side. He wasn’t much of a pillow, though, and my unconsciousness had left me with my head at a right angle. His hard, banded chitin had imprinted small lines on my face. I rubbed the burn from my collar and sucked in drool from the corner of my mouth as I sat up. My nosebleed had stopped, and bits of crusted blood dropped to my shirt.

  All of me raced to hurt. My neck was winning. My stomach was a close second. I hadn’t eaten in over a day.

  Nonch was in his sleeping ball. One sensor stalk extended vertically, twitching as it followed the sounds of a starbat or some other noise beyond my range of hearing. How everyone could be asleep during this thunder was beyond me.

  I blinked as I took in Mieant and Cri.

  My sister’s long, black hair was over her face and shoulders like a lustrous, thick mop. Not quite hidden by her waves of hair, her face pressed against Mieant’s chest. Two of her arms were casually draped over him. He was a good pillow, apparently, and her upper hand rested gently against his jaw. He’d encircled her with an arm and a leg, and they lay facing each other, breathing long breaths alternating with the other’s rhythm. Mieant had pressed his lips against her forehead, and he looked…happy. Happy like his mother had been when I first met her at the school. Free from the perpetual frown that seemed to cloud the expressions of the Lethians I’d encountered, and that increasingly hovered on all of our faces.

  The Lethian and Glean guards shifted at their posts, not noticing the two of them, not noticing us. Autoturrets, with their glowing hot barrels, swiveled, searching eagerly for destruction outside the camp. And the Ruins, a story of nearly two thousand years of Galactic war, a story that hadn’t actually ended, hunched like broken people trying to forget the cause of their despair.

  My sister and my ex-bully lay entwined on the concrete, their arms like force fields keeping the world out and each other’s warmth in. I wanted to kick them. Or leave them alone. Protect them. But, mostly, scream about the unfairness of it to the stupid sky!

  So I frowned and looked away.

  Thunder pealed above, seemingly three meters away from our shelter, and shook the ground. I glanced back at Mieant and my si
ster. Their eyes popped open simultaneously. Black stared into gold for a serene moment. Her hand tensed around his jaw. Then they both looked toward me, their expressions morphing from bliss to horror.

  “YOU!” Mieant howled, pushing Cri off of him as he disentangled himself. Her head was on his arm, and he lay on her long black hair.

  “CREATURE!” Cri shoved him off with four arms. “OW!”

  Nonch uncoiled and contemplated their clumsy scramble in opposite directions. “Mating,” he said, tilting his head and waving six sword arms in different directions at our surroundings, “seems impractical, given where we are.”

  Mieant straightened out his ragged clothes, lifted his torn shirt back over his shoulder, and glared at his feet. The material, having already surrendered its life, fell back to its previous position and exposed his chest. Cri dusted herself off, one hand pushing hair from her glowing eyes, another straightening her shirt, and the other two patting dirt from her pants. She looked angry enough to take a swing.

  “We were NOT mating,” they said simultaneously.

  My stomach cramped. I didn’t want to think about not having Cri’s attention, despite the rockiness of our relationship of late. I didn’t want to contemplate what it would mean to have her interested in someone else beside me. We were supposed to be planning our escape. I needed food to survive. I needed my sister. Not love. This was all now, and urgent.

  “Hey,” I said, “Where’d you guys put the water?”

  Cri glared at Mieant one last time and then turned to me.

  “Ray,” she gasped, her eyes getting large as she moved closer and grasped me by my elbows, shoulders, and around my neck. “You look like flip.”

  “Food.” I nodded, feeling weak. There was a war inside me. I was winning for now, but for how long? She looked at Nonch and glared at Mieant.

  “I’ll stay with her.” Cri waved a hand toward the starbats’ nesting places. “See if any of the starbats died inside the compound. There’s got to be something not Galactic-made.” Yeah, that would be something. Dead starbat. Yay.