The Kinship of Stars

by Julie Ishaya

  "Do you want a scar of your own, prince?" the kai asked. "Shall I disgrace you for the rest of your life as he was?"

  In contempt, Kieriell turned his cheek. "Go ahead, you piss-eyed freak!" He angled his chin out slightly, set his jaw, and snarled.

  The kai hesitated, pushed the blade so close that the hot edge almost singed Kieriell's flesh. As Kieriell waited, refusing to wince, the blade retracted into the wrist and the kai grabbed the youth's throat, squeezed just enough for discomfort.

  Kieriell's lips worked over his teeth, his tongue rolling in his mouth to gather the largest glob of saliva he could in so short a moment, and then he pursed his lips and spat. The spittle smacked against the kai's cheek and slid down, gleaming and foamy.

  The kai stood quiet for a long time, teeth still gritted. Slowly, with his real hand, he dabbed the wetness away and wiped it on the front of Kieriell's tunic below where the bronze medallion hung. "Brave," he hissed. He turned around and started for the passage. "Bring him," he told the guards, and with a waving gesture indicated the headless body on the floor before the pod's ramp. "Put that on the pod. Send it back to Nex."

  Kieriell made no sound as the tears finally overwhelmed him and spilled over. He watched one of the guards grasp the chamberlain's head by the hair and pick it up, while two more took the body by the shoulders and legs. He lost sight of the bay as he was half-dragged through the passage. The dull light from the walls turned all clothing a shade that described a dark, pukish color. That smell of rancid, unclean flesh followed, issued from the living entity of the ship itself.

  The passage wound sideways and through several small chambers with seats melded into the organism's tissue. Cy-netic consoles were built into the walls at intervals. Kieriell had studied fragments of the technology but never how it was operated.

  The passage opened into a helm room, vast but with a low ceiling. The tissue above was rippled and pinkish with a variety of colored veins running across its rubbery surface. The walls were concave and ribbed. A reddened tissue more like tough muscle filled in the spaces between the ribs. To the front, a divided triangular screen was implanted in the flesh and provided a visual of space. The pilot's seat was located in the very center of the room and surrounded by a circular console.

  The kai moved ahead of the group and took a firm position before the screen. He glanced back at the guards holding Kieriell. "I don't think he'll run now," he told them, seeing how the captive stared about in morbid fascination. The kai turned to address the ship itself. "Contact all Nexian orders," he said in crisp Shiv. He looked back at Kieriell. "This should get Asmodéus' attention."

  Adam was in the process of receiving word from Dyss of his son's abduction. Asmodéus' face filled the screen in the Hellan counsel hall, his eyes blood-colored, rimmed in white beads of scales and purplish flesh in the deepened hollows beneath his lower lids.

  Adam's breath tightened, his core-being trembling, heat rising inside his head. "The chamberlain?" he whispered, thinking of how Kieriell had been concerned for his mentor during the negotiations. "I can't. . . I can't believe it."

  "It's true," the emperor replied. "As of this moment, General Kallian has received no response from the Shiv vessel. They launched the escape pod back into space, and that is being collected."

  His ears pounding, Adam barely heard the last of the statement. Numb and dizzy, he moved his head stiffly back and forth. Kieriell, he tried to comprehend, taken by the Shiv. Taken by the chamberlain to the Shiv. The thought looped in and out upon itself until he clenched his fists. "How could this happen?" His voice grated, echoing through the obsidian vault structure of the Hellan manse. Beneath the echoes came the rustle of footsteps, the brush of a cloak over the floor. Adam turned toward Astar'Æth and absently licked at a drop of sweat trickling down toward the corner of his mouth.

  "I cannot answer that," Asmodéus admitted.

  Adam could hear in his father's voice the flatline of emotion as if the emperor's anger and worry had imploded, leaving only a cavity of despair.

  "What is the concern?" Astar'Æth asked, his brows knitting slightly in confusion at Adam's outburst.

  Adam let his father answer the question.

  "My grandson, Kieriell Shyr'ahm, has been taken by the Shiv." Asmodéus waited for his twin to respond.

  Astar'Æth stared at the screen for a long moment. "You mean that the Shiv made a breach in Dyssian security?" he said in disbelief. "Is the boy not merely down in the colony?"

  "No, he never goes to the colony unescorted," Adam said.

  "But why Kieriell?" Astar'Æth shook his head, shrugging. "Do they have some plan to set ransom?"

  Adam's eyes rolled back up toward the screen and met with his father's so that their gazes locked.

  Then Asmodéus stiffened, frowning. "There is a transmission coming into the tabernacle," he said. "It's broadcasting throughout Nex." Before he finished, the screen's image dulled and a new face appeared highlighted in blue holographic patterns. The harsh cheekbones and large, deep-set eyes centered with familiar horizontal pupils identified the sender immediately.

  The Shiv kai expressed a satisfied and vicious smile, which appeared on the holographic image as a series of shimmering blue lines defining and contouring around his teeth and lips. The three-dimensional effect gave an ice-like depth to the flat surface of the screen.

  "Greetings Lord Asmodéus." The lips on the image moved fluidly, the words echoing upon themselves in imperfect Nexian. "Given the fighters you dispatched to the frontier, I gather that by now you know that I have successfully maneuvered your valued court counselor into delivering the transcendant child, Prince Kieriell Shyr'ahm, into our hands. By your own laws he is forfeit. The evolutionary key is now our's. For the benefit of our race we shall study him." The image leaned closer as though it would emerge from the screen and tower before the viewers as they watched from every order. "And you can do nothing," the kai finished. "The Shiv will finally take their true place in the universe, and the Nexian regime will suffer for its insolence. There will be no ransom, and no further communications on this matter. I bid you a final farewell."

  The communication dropped.

  Asmodéus' face appeared in its place, and Adam could see the tide of emotions building in his father. There are small ticks under his eyes and along his cheeks, and his lips trembled around gritted teeth. The humiliation-rage spiraled up through Asmodéus' core-being and released itself in one great psionic wave like a clap of thunder that carried to all of Nex. It was powerful enough to bound through the halls of Dyss and out over the colony so that everyone stopped in their tracks and stood ice-still. It touched Hella and Adam drew a breath as he felt the sending ripple through him, causing his ears to pop with pressure and his heart to slam with sickening zeal. The sending knocked out the link, and the screen went completely black.

  Feeling almost faint, he looked back to Astar'Æth. "Does that answer your question about Kieriell?" His voice was hoarse as though he'd been screaming.

  "Kieriell's a transcendant," Astar'Æth stated. Then he was speechless.

  In the tabernacle, no one dared take a step toward the emperor as he collapsed to his knees before the screen and bowed his head. The crown mane wilted into a coil around him on the floor.

  Only the sunken heartbeat of the neural core bore away the silence until the voice of General Kallian reported over the audio system.

  "My lord." The soured tone indicated that Kallian had witnessed the kai's message from the cockpit of his raptor, leaving the general at a loss of eloquence.

  Asmodéus' head rose a fraction, and he peered up through the veil of his mane, but he didn't answer.

  "My lord, the renegade craft has been secured. I. . ." The link broke off in static and then returned. "I'm sorry you will have to see this."

  "See what?" Asmodéus grated.

  "It's the chamberlain, my lord," Kallian replied. "He's dead. He's been decapitated."

  20

  "You th
ink I'm your evolutionary key?" Kieriell half-laughed.

  The kai folded his hands behind his back and paced slowly before his captive, his steps making no sound on the floor. "Your genes manifest the gridcode," he stated.

  "In theory," Kieriell corrected.

  The kai ignored the remark. "Hence you are able to teleport. With the right sampling and engineering, we may determine how it is that the code manifests and replicate it to accommodate the Shiv biological structure. What is left of our rift-tech is too small to remove the entire race to a new environment."

  "You want to create teleporters?" Kieriell asked incredulously.

  "Transcendants," the kai corrected.

  Kieriell thought he might find the situation humorous were he not recovering from the chamberlain's abrupt death. In his mind, he still saw the head hitting the floor, saw that gaze with nothing behind it, the pale hair strewn about.

  The kai glanced at Rai Jinn and nodded. An exchange was made in Shiv, each guard given a position, while a new figure stepped into the room, also uniformed but bearing a silver plate on the side of his head behind his right ear. Wiring trailed from the plate and draped over the shoulder to be secured in a shelled breast hollow.

  Kieriell watched the newcomer settle into the chair at the center of the room and withdraw the wires. These were selectively plugged into various nodes of the console, creating a direct link between the mind of the pilot and the creature-ship. The craft slid into a silent retreat from the frontier.

  "Displacement drive operative," the pilot's dim voice issued in Shiv, and Kieriell's gut squirmed. The ship launched from its current slide into a space folding state. Vibrations beneath the floor died away. The screen went blank of any stars, having nothing to show but darkness in the tunnel of hyperspace.

  Kieriell stayed quiet, watching the room. He couldn't calm the inner hum of his anger, couldn't admit defeat, yet he bore his dilemma. It was true; he was forfeit to the Shiv now, and only he could work his way out of it. He began to ponder for possibilities and at the moment found none. Even if he were capable of overthrowing the guards and crew and taking the ship, he had no idea how, or the means, to pilot it.

  "Relax," the kai murmured close to his captive's ear, "we are almost home. You need not brood over the chamberlain. He fought well. I've never seen a mind quite as strong as his. It gave me a pleasurable challenge to break him."

  "You didn't have to kill him," Kieriell replied.

  "I released him from his shame."

  "What if you fail?" Kieriell turned and studied the face near his. The kai would not, he realized, look him straight in the eye. He's hiding his uncertainty, Kieriell thought. At that, he couldn't resist the urge to taunt his captor. "You aren't sure you can tap the code," he said. This afforded him a scathing return gaze. "You may fail, and then what? You've given up your final chance to unify with Nex. Your people will die out on that husk you call a planet."

  "Be quiet!" The kai reached up and grasped Kieriell's hair, forcing his head to tilt back, exposing his throat. The cy-netic arm ejected the hissing blade from the wrist and brought the edge up against flesh.

  Unflinching, Kieriell merely shook his head in response to the threat. He looked out from under hooded lids at the kai's face and almost detected a minuscule shade of angry red through the gray cheeks. The teeth bared at him, the breath reeking as stale as the air aboard the craft. He pursed his lips and whispered, "Remember, I'm your savior."

  The kai attempted to regain his dignity by pushing the prince back and holding up the glowing blade between them, then he retracted it. The cy-netic hand, detailed to the shape of a real hand, pointed an accusative finger at Kieriell. The kai said nothing more.

  Kieriell began to feel some satisfaction with himself. He might not be able to fight back now, but he could cause the kai to question his own convictions. His mind was simmering with ideas when the craft pulled out of displacement and fell into a slow drift, and the screen image came alive again. Only one small star pulsed on the horizon line of the screen. The rest of the surrounding space gaped empty, black, a few surrounding stars too distant and hazy. Individual console screens in the room issued warnings for the craft to steer clear of certain paths, which crossed the gravity wells of several black holes on the fringes of the realm.

  Bits of debris pelted the craft's shell with the sound of sand blowing against hollow rock. Ahead, light clusters patched the blackened structure of the Shiv world as it came into view like an inkblot against the single star's light.

  Kieriell took several slow steps forward, left to his silent speculation. He had seen images taken from Nexian probes. He had seen schematics of Shiv territory that highlighted the synthetic outer crust built up around the planet.

  None of it had prepared him for this.

  The crust encased the atmosphere almost entirely but for jagged punctured sections that looked as if they had been rammed by meteoroids. Crooked and craggy columns ramified out into space from other areas of crust. These appeared to be docking stations as half of the Shiv fighting fleet maintained positions around the planet and, along with other ships of different sizes and purpose, were tucked against the columns. The beak protrusions on each craft were, apparently, some sort of connecting apparatus. All together, the clusters of ships reminded Kieriell of the barnacles he had seen on the craggy boulders along the Nallian shore at low tide.

  The planet itself he didn't want to think about. It provoked pity, and he least wanted to pity the Shiv.

  The craft maneuvered through the field of columns and descended toward the crust. A haze of dirty, external atmosphere drifted past the screen.

  "Your new home," the kai said.

  Kieriell could feel those yellow eyes trained on his back. Slowly he turned back from the screen. He tried to adjust his wrists slightly within the cuffs. "Kai," he said softly, "you don't know what a home is."

  The ship dove deep down to the planet's crust to the base of one of the columns. The beak-like protrusion hooked over a tubular passage that led down through the rest of the column. After the tube pressurized with the ship, the kai and Rai Jinn disembarked via a narrow, steep stairwell. Kieriell followed with two guards in front and two behind him. He had the urge to simply halt, creating a tumble down through the tube. His vision adjusted to the dim interior. The slick walls crawled with living vines. The ground felt like walking over damp, hard-packed soil.

  Kieriell tried to keep a good pace with the guards in front to avoid being shoved by the guards behind. The stairwell ended at a much wider corridor. Here the vines ended at intervals, and the walls revealed solid, dirty stonework. Grit had settled against the lower walls in thick, crusty-brown layers. From beneath the walls, tinier vines protruded, grew out toward the pathway then dug back into the floor. Kieriell had to avoid tripping over them. They came from the neural core of the Shiv world, he realized. Unlike Nexian neuro-tech, which was clean and hidden, this was so overdeveloped as to expose its ugly innards.

  Moments later, one wall of the passage opened upon a balcony, giving way to a view of a greater enclosed cavern. The structures below described a small, torch-lit village with narrow labyrinthine streets through which figures walked. Some took notice of the small procession on the balcony and looked up, but they mostly went about their own business as Shiv citizens. Kieriell's gaze traveled over the flat, earthy rooftops of the structures, some block-styled, others slightly domed, some taller than others.

  In fascination he came slowly to a halt and lingered near the edge of the balcony. One of the guards behind him started to push, but then the kai was beside him, signaling for the guard to be still. Allowed to continue his observation, Kieriell tilted his head and frowned. He watched men and women carry covered baskets through the streets and into some of the buildings. Others ran vending stands, and some worked construction on the buildings.

  Shadows in the streets were broken by shards of dull gold beams. The greater light source came from several glowing columns p
laced atop towering block bases set throughout the cavern.

  Kieriell examined the light columns, wondering at their power source. There were five in all, stretching back through the cavern, providing just enough light and heat that the residents could function; hence, he figured, why the citizens compensated with fire light. He began to miss the artificial sun of the Dyssian colony. Its glow was much brighter, much more like real daylight. But this was more like the orange, sometimes dirty, illumination of dusk and imparted the sense that it would fade and die at any moment.

  Again Kieriell followed the paths of the residents, eyeing their pale gray limbs, their taut, angular faces and pointed ears. Giggling circles of children played in the streets, often barely avoiding the low hover of transport craft. Some of the children, not much older than infants, sat on their round bottoms with wide, curious eyes. Mothers came and gathered them, joined up with fathers and other family members. Faded banners marked a market square sector of the colony. Here fights broke out and were resolved. Vendors raised their voices to hawk their goods and were either obliged or ignored. Small bands played bell-like instruments in dank corners of the labyrinth.

  They're just people, Kieriell thought a moment before the kai's voice disturbed his observation.

  "The atmosphere beneath the crust is maintained through oxygen producing algae grown in hidden pools below the palace structure and the neural core. Vents move it up into the colony and the rest of the hive."

  "What about those column lights?" Kieriell asked.

  Just as the kai opened his mouth to respond, the entire cavern rumbled. The sound carried with it a narrow vibration rippling beneath the floor, behind the walls, and Kieriell turned to the kai with a look of dread and curiosity. "That," the kai explained, "is the source. The planet's fusion well. It is our primary means of power."