The Kinship of Stars

by Julie Ishaya

  His mind started onto other possibilities when something jarred him within like an unnamed psionic touch. He looked up at the clear sky and swore he saw a ripple of light sweep north, wide and shimmering like a not-uncommon shock wave from the wall, but this was not as brilliant as a shock pattern. This was more translucent, touched by silver and blue, and it had a wide curvature. It was gone quickly, leaving him to play it over in his mind.

  He wondered if the others had seen it, and just as he started to turn back for the inner ward, the air around him moved, thinning out as though sliced by the path of a speeding air ship. It came back together with a clash that sent him tumbling to the ground, catching himself on his palms. His ears ached from the pressure, and he came up on his knees cursing, stinging grass stains all over the insides of his hands.

  The irritation in him came to a dead stop when something flashed in the air above him some twelve paces away. He saw thread lines of light sparking and dying in midair. They began wide apart then began to move together, tracing horizontal and vertical paths toward each other, until they met and condensed into one massive glare of gold-white. The thunderous echo of the sonic clash lingered, then the light died into something that dropped out of the air and hit the grass with a heavy, sickening smmmmmack likened to a slab of meat hitting a hard, cold counter top.

  Blinking, Jarren tried to see through the dark spots plastered to his retinas. He smelled something acrid, like burning flesh, and he heard the air above still sizzling from the disturbance. Rubbing his eyes and getting to his feet, he looked across the ground to where he had heard the thing drop and found something that jolted his sense of reality.

  The body of a young male lay curled in a fetal position, broad shoulders hunched in, the head, bearing a long shock of soaked black hair, tucked forward. There were barely any clothes, only the singed remnants of some cloth wrapped around one leg, and a patch of a sticky once-white fabric lay strewn on the ground as if it had been thrown off with the force of the impact.

  Jarren advanced with caution, observing no movement, no sign of life. The pale, even-toned skin was wet and smoking. Drifts of white smoke swirled up off the shoulders and along the side of the torso.

  A crash victim? Jarren wondered. "How did he get here?" he whispered. Then his heart stopped for one fleeting moment when the body heaved and moved, bowing back, a long hoarse gasp releasing from the throat. The form curled forward again, violently shaking, and then rolled so that the upper body pushed up onto the support of unstable arms, the head hanging, the face still hidden. A rumbling cough shook the entire form, ending with a phlegmy gurgle.

  The sounds of life, harsh as they were, moved Jarren forward out of his shock to see how he might be of aid. He started to lay a hand on one bare shoulder when the head lifted, mechanically angling toward him. A pare of blue eyes with narrow slit pupils peered back at him through the ropes of hair. His breath stalled on him and he fell back on his rear, one hand still stretched out. "Kier. . ." he peeped. He cleared his throat and swallowed. "Kieriell?"

  "Jarren." The lips barely moved with the weak whisper. The eyes glimmered, pleading. "Help. . . me. . ."

  Disappointment and shock had never taken a greater hold on the Shiv kai. He knew what it would entail when he spoke of Kieriell's death to the emperor and minions of Nex, but he had no care then as he had no care now in resorting to a plan more crude, more desperate. Not like the carefully laid plan which, carried out with a great length of patience, had brought Kieriell Shyr'ahm to him.

  Now he prepared to perform an act of veritable insanity. Settling into the dais chair of a private craft mounted with the Shiv's last testimony to rifting technology, he faced out over the pilot's console viewing the main screen. The ribbed walls of the ship's internal organism flashed with veins of the engine's synaptic energy, and the implanted consoles droned, estimating the necessities for entering the atmosphere of a living planet. The crew of the ship took notes and operated quickly to condition the craft.

  Rai Jinn's face appeared on screen, transmitted from the accompanying command craft. His crew worked around him, and he was advised by two other officers of the Shiv armada. "My lord," he said, "when I probed the boy's mind, I discovered nothing on the location of his home on Valtaer. There is only a slight possibility that you will find his mother by going through the sources at the school he attended." He bowed his head with this last sentence, hooded lids masking some emotion in his eyes.

  "You have something more to tell me?" the kai asked, affecting a false tone of patience.

  His second immediately looked up, disapproval eminent in the shake of his head, the slight pout on his lips. "I wish that you would allow me to go in your stead. If the plasmic converter goes down, you will be stranded there."

  The kai calmly shook his head. "Your concern for my well being is noted."

  "My lord, there must be another way. . ."

  "I have no time to find another way!" The kai sat forward in his chair, teeth gritting so hard his jaw creaked. Before his second could persist on the matter, the screen went blank and pulled up a view of the command ship sitting beyond the columned docks of the Shiv world's upper crust. The kai's craft still sat hooked into the lower dock of one of the crust's protrusions, just above the residual haze of the planet's remaining outer atmosphere.

  The crooking columns, dark but flecked with light, resembled primitive prison bars against the backdrop of space. The lights of smaller ships rose from other areas of the crust to position themselves around the command ship. These small fighter craft bore minor weapons: laser and guided missiles. They were soon joined by larger craft carrying heavy weapons: ion pulse guns and wide particle beam cannons which formed gaping black mouths on the front sides of each ship. Like spiny, pod-shaped insects, the squadrons rolled into an attack pattern with the larger craft in front as a means of opening up a path for the fighters to eat their way through the enemy resistance.

  (Condition report?) the kai sent to the staff officer monitoring the bulk of information issuing across his private screen.

  The Shiv looked up from his place to the left of the dais and frowned. (My lord, the organism can only maintain its shields against the atmospheric change for less than two hours. After the first rift, the plasmic converter could overheat and—)

  (Yes, yes,) the kai grimaced. He leaned back in the chair and folded his hands under his chin to brood briefly on the conditions, which were rapidly growing grimmer. He was tired of warnings and worries. (What else?)

  (Provided we reach Valtaer, there may not be enough energy left to bring the craft back through the rift.)

  (I said what else?)

  The sending bore down on the officer's mind, and his body stiffened. (My lord,) he replied, straining to maintain official conduct, (we still do not know what immunities we will lack on Valtaer. Our kind has not set foot there in ages.)

  (We have the means for protection. How much longer?) he asked after a moment of listening to the activity in the room and knowing, feeling, what it meant. There was a much greater cause behind this mission than retrieving the other specimen.

  The officer glanced back at his console and psionically called up an estimate. (You may launch the attack at any time to ensure our path is cleared for the nexus. If the way is not cleared enough by the time we arrive, then we will have time to turn back.)

  The kai didn't listen to the last of the statement. His eyes widened then narrowed with morbid glee as he looked at the screen again to see that the fleet's formation was complete. Several squadrons flanked the massive command ship as it glided into place, Rai Jinn at the helm. The last of the armada remained stationed around the planet's outposts.

  "Initial Command," the kai stated, and the screen once more replaced the view of the fleet with Rai Jinn's image as he now stood on the bridge. Like the smaller craft carrying the kai, the command vessel's interior was supported by a rib structure. The synaptic flaring of the organism's internal responses came alive in the w
alls, streaking lights vivid around Rai Jinn's silhouette as he hunched slightly, looking out from under his furrowed brows, still obviously disturbed that he must keep his opinion of the matter to himself.

  "My trusted second," the kai said, trying to comfort the other, "do you not see this moment for what it really is?"

  "My lord, the entire Shiv armada cannot match Nexian defenses. We might disrupt some of their neural engines, but we are still terribly outnumbered."

  "Perhaps." The kai fingered his chin. "And perhaps we are at last about to prove our worth in this forsaken corner of the galaxy."

  Rai Jinn raised his head, resignation in his eyes. "I know I failed you in the recapture of Prince Kieriell, and so I will not ask you again to reconsider this tactic."

  "If we are to perish as a race," the kai replied firmly, "then this is our greatest chance to claim at least some particle of glory for ourselves. If we are to die, then many Nexians will perish with us. Our goal was once survival, but that has not been enough." The kai stood and stepped toward the end of the dais. "Now we will leave our mark before it is too late, before we all pass void of any sense of worth after millennia of existence. We will represent something truly fierce instead of some pathetic race lost to the reaches of time." His broad, cloaked form silhouetted against the screen's towering image of Rai Jinn, and there was no question about his influence over those beneath him.

  Rai Jinn bowed his head, the tiny plaits in his hair falling free around his ears. "Yes, my lord."

  "Initial Command." The kai's hands curled into fists, and he raised his artificial hand before him clasping the medallion bearing the symbol of the Nexian martyr Ariahm. Briefly he thought of his daughter and leaving her down on the planet alone in her chambers still mourning the loss of Kieriell Shyr'ahm. He thought how he might never see her again. Then in his mind, he cast her away, left no room for her to haunt him with her pleading eyes. He let her fade along with the rest of his people.

  Alone within himself, glorying in the presence of his army, he finally said, "You may engage the enemy."

  30

  Light pierced his lids and stung as he completed the agonizing climb into consciousness. He lifted a hand to shade his eyes while he pried them open. Blinking, he focused through the cracks between his fingers at beaming daystar light. As his pupils narrowed out the excess light, he dropped his hand away and stared up through a skylight. He could see tree branches silhouetted against the bright disk, and he knew immediately that he hadn't made it to Nex. He remembered Jarren's face hovering near him, but it had been so dream-like, rippling before him and then dying out. He couldn't be sure now that he was in one piece with such weakness pinning him down.

  He noted first that he was lying on a bed of clean white sheets, and he could feel his nakedness beneath the cool top sheet. He gazed over four white walls and an open archway, the room primarily furnished with packed bookshelves and a desk. A long white banner bearing the familiar phoenix crest hung on the wall above the bed. He knew what it meant, though he had a hard time believing it.

  Kieriell moaned, allowing the visions of the Shiv hive to surface. What they had done to him, and what they were going to do to him still, no longer mattered.

  What he had intended to be his death had resulted in the long awaited progression of his ability. It must have been instinct that sent his mind into the void while his body plunged toward the center of the fusion well. Or he had hoped that the void would cloud the pain of his flesh burning to nothing. But as with horizontal teleportation, his mind had followed through by breaking down his body into light and taking it along, mind and body being one whole, inseparable being. He understood that now, far better than he could have under the chamberlain's teachings.

  The-void-the-grid, he thought. Void-grid. He could call it whichever he wanted.

  A delayed delight at his accomplishment moved light laughter through him. He was free!

  But the laughter shook several grating coughs from his lungs. Vertical teleportation, at least for the first time, had left him drained.

  Slowly he began to bend his knees upward under the sheet, just to get some exercise in the joints, then he lowered his legs again and rotated his ankles. He rubbed at his face, finding that all traces of the shift were gone for now, but he noticed something missing. Rubbing hard at his temple, he smiled as he found that the inhibitor no longer clung to his skin and skull. In the midst of the light shift, it had somehow been discarded, its alien presence left behind in the fusion well.

  "Yes," he whispered. "Oh, yes. . ." He stopped there. With his joy came pain, the cold hand of guilt clamping down on his heart and the returning taste of Siri's kiss. He had left her behind in that awful place which he despised and she called home because it was all she knew. Surely she thought him dead. His dive into the fusion well could not have appeared more final.

  Now he had only to reach Nex. Then he would be with his father, and perhaps he could convince Asmodéus of the Shiv people's true nature, so far from the nature of their kai and hidden beneath his tyranny. If Asmodéus would listen, then there was still a chance that the Shiv would be saved.

  Siri would be saved.

  But first, he had to suss out his current situation. His stiff body resisted as he forced himself up into a sitting position with a grunt. The sheet fell away from his chest, and his skin crawled with the exposure to the cool air. He took in a better view of the room, wondering where his host was. He called softly, "Jarren?"

  "Uh!" The surprised jolt of an answer came from the other side of the passage. "Coming!" When Jarren Rashahn appeared in the archway, he bore an expression of bewilderment. "You've been asleep for hours."

  His head titling on his weak neck, Kieriell pursed his lips to further question the time, then his face fell blank when he heard footsteps entering behind Jarren.

  The old school maven scooted through the passage and stood beside Jarren. He had lost some weight, and his face was more gaunt, leathery folds deepened around his mouth and under his chin. But his eyes sparkled with knowledge as they never had before, and he produced a child-like smile at the sight of his former pupil. "Hello, Kieriell," he said. "It's good to see you."

  Asmodéus had not said a word to anyone for a long time. The officers and technicians in the tabernacle had begun to skirt him, avoiding the aura of fury that rippled the air around him.

  We didn't work fast enough, he kept thinking. If only he had found that document sooner, then something could have been done. All of Nex knew about it now, too late.

  Hardened inside, he watched the final reactions to the document transmit into the Dyssian system along with responses to the latest report. The document had been acknowledged as legal, tolerances in the neutral orders were average while the adversaries were left with little say in the matter. Nex had official grounds to launch an attack upon the Shiv realm. An attack which would, ultimately, be a slaughter. The lords and officers of all the orders only awaited the emperor's final command.

  "My lord, we need a decision," Kallian said softly as he approached the primary view screen where the emperor had been standing immobile for the last hour, staring at the frontier.

  The Torban fleet sat upon the black horizon in defensive array, monitoring Shiv space under the command ship Shaytan. The Shaytan loomed over the small craft with graduating spined wing formations along its top shell and under belly. A blue-lit center segment of the hull, part of the propulsion system, rotated.

  Admiral Hak'iim of the Nexian armada was currently stationed aboard the Shaytan along with the captain of the Torban fleet. They were both exceptional men, and their efficiency did not go unrecognized.

  Asmodéus requested a view of the Ionan fleet, and the screen complied to pull up a view of the adversarial ships gathered at the base of Nex beneath the asteroid field. The command ship there, the Mastemas, was overseen by Lord Nehmon and beneath the concave shields of its great arching wings which swept forward to meet before the nose of the hull, a squad
ron of raptors fell into position. Some of the raptors flanked the intimidating vessel, while three greater bulk fighters lined up before it.

  Going on to glimpse the other angles of his realm, Asmodéus called up more views from Dyss, each one displaying another example of Nexian firepower.

  "My lord?" Kallian persisted.

  Asmodéus sensed that the general didn't understand this useless appraisal of Nexian weapons-tech. The emperor wasn't sure he understood it himself. Perhaps it was because all of this power had not been able to help Kieriell, but now he had the opening to turn it all upon the Shiv. He finally recalled the view of the frontier and the cavity of Shiv space, and turned toward Kallian bearing a stone face and eyes spoked with deepest crimson. His lips tightened back over sharp teeth, yet spoken words were more out of his reach than ever before. (Leave them nothing.)

  The emotional impact of the decision left him drained. He had just approved the extermination of an entire race that was already crippled to the point of desperation. Wrath and mercy were now one in his eyes.

  I will release them, he tried to reason with himself. Just as their kai released the chamberlain and appropriated Kieriell, I will give them complete freedom from their burned-out shell.

  Soon the screen flickered and the neural activity in the tabernacle fluctuated. Asmodéus spun from his place, his cloak sweeping back. The incoming signal was Nexian.

  The neural core pulsed louder, sounding an automatic alert, then the screen issued crackles of static before the face of Admiral Hak'iim unfolded across it.