When she and her brother reached the throne, they knelt before this artifact . . . and before their father.
King Tavyn Tashei sat upon his throne, hunched like a vulture over its prey. While Nova and Senka were both fair and smooth-skinned, beings of golden beauty and light, their father was a creature of iron, of old pride, of pain and cruelty. If his children were jeweled daggers, deadly and graceful, Tavyn was an ancient longsword, wide and heavy and made not for beauty but for sheer might.
The king wore no jewels, no fineries. Like all ashai warriors, he wore golden kaijia. The form-fitting armor revealed a physique still strong, even in old age—the chest wide, the shoulders broad, the arms far thicker than those of his children. A dark cloak draped across him, and white streaked his long platinum hair.
Most striking of all, a crown of spikes covered his head, digging into his brow. Beads of blood dripped down his hard, lined face, running into the grooves that framed his thin, downturned mouth. All monarchs of Ashmar forever wore this crown of thorns, for the king of warriors should never feel peace, should always feel the yoke of his command.
"My king," Nova said, kneeling before him. "I have returned to your hall, Father. I—"
"No." The king's fists trembled, and his lips twitched. "No, Nova. You will not do this. You will not call me Father. You will not come into this holy hall, clad in the garb of our people, mocking our way, mocking our heritage." His face reddened. "Leave this place now lest I shed your blood across this very floor."
Nova hissed and rose to her feet. Her hand clutched her whip. "I come here not as a daughter, not to beg forgiveness. I come here with tidings of peril. With a warning of an enemy that rises to slay you."
Tavyn rose from his throne, lips peeled back to reveal sharp teeth. The king walked down the stairs of his dais and stood before her. Nova was a tall woman, but Tavyn towered over her, nearly a foot taller.
"We are not cowards like you, wayward child." Spittle flew from his mouth onto her. "Any enemy that rises upon us, we will crush it under our heel. Earth has made you soft."
Nova barked a laugh. "Earth? You mean the planet that you fear?"
King Tavyn roared. Still kneeling before him, Prince Senka winced.
"Fear?" shouted the king. "I fear nothing. I am not a coward who flees responsibility to fly across the galaxy in a rusty dragon. I certainly do not fear Earth."
"And yet Earth's fleets are thrice the size of ours," Nova said. "And yet Earth has colonized dozens of planets, while Ashmar rules backwater outposts on a few moons and asteroids." She snorted. "This weak Earth you speak of is the dominant power of the Humanoid Alliance, while Ashmar lingers in its shadow. Second best. Challenge me to a fight, Father. Draw your whip and battle me, or call your guards to slay me, but do not lie to me. I will not hear my own father speak folly."
Her heart pounded as she spoke those words. She hissed in her breath. Her fingers trembled. She had said too much, perhaps. She had spoken words she perhaps could never take back. She had spat upon her father, as surely as she stood before him. Yet she had been unable to curb her tongue. Too much pain lingered in this place. Too many memories. Too much rage.
"Folly?" said the king. "You accuse me of folly, while you shack with a human? Yes, it is true, Earth's empire is larger than ours. Yes, it is true their weak ships—mere hunks of rust—outnumber our fine warships. But one thing you cannot deny. Humans, those pathetic creatures that you lie with, are nothing but apes."
Nova pointed at the Ashen Shard that thrust out from the king's throne. "And yet you rule in the shadow of a human artifact! The Ashen Shard came from a human ship. From the ship of humans who settled this planet." She raised her voice to a shout. "We were human once! All ashais were human!"
He struck her. With rage, with wild eyes, her father struck her, knocking her to the floor. She gasped, blood in her mouth, and stared up at him. He stood above her, his face flushed, his eyes crazed.
"We evolved!" The king's fists trembled. "We became more than humans. Stronger. Faster. Wiser. Fairer. Deadlier. Yet perhaps the primitive human genes linger in you, daughter. Tell me, did you share the bed of this human you left your kingdom for? Do you grow the seed of humanity in your womb, perverse and twisted?"
She rose to her feet, blood dripping down her chin. She glared at her father. "You old fool." She gripped her whip. "You speak of evolution? The enemy you face—the enemy all the cosmos faces—evolves even as we speak. Every day for us, this enemy evolves a thousand years. While we bandy words here, they are multiplying, growing stronger, faster, each generation perfecting ways to slay us all. Humans. Ashais. Gruffles and halflings. All life in this cosmos will fall before the Singularity."
King Tavyn turned away, disgust suffusing his face. He returned to his throne, climbed the stairs, and perched upon his seat of steel and gold.
"Yes, I have heard of this . . . Singularity." He scoffed. "A few wayward machines turned against their masters on a planet far away, and already cowards speak of all life fading. We of Ashmar defeated the humans who tried to invade us, to bring us back into their empire. We defeated the skelkrins, brutes and murderers, who dared attack our outposts. We fear no machines."
Nova nodded slowly. Her eyes stung, and her lips twisted bitterly. "You have no fear. That is why you are weak. That is why you are second best."
The king bellowed. He leaped from his throne, drawing his whip. The lash swung downward, crackling with electricity. Nova swung her own whip. The throngs slammed together, braided around each other, then untangled with showering sparks. Lightning filled the hall. Prince Senka hissed and leaped back. Between the columns, soldiers reached for their own whips, waiting for a signal to attack.
"You call humans weak, Father." Nova stared into his eyes. "So show me your strength. Fly with me! Fly to battle. I bring with me the coordinates of the planet Antikythera, the planet of the Singularity. I have a map to their hub, their central brain. Fly out with me! Fly with the might of Ashmar, with a fleet of ten thousand scorpion jets. Fly to this Singularity and crush it. If not for fear than for glory. If not for prudence than for conquest."
Some of the king's rage seemed to fade. His eyes narrowed. "Indeed you think me a fool, if you believe you could play me as easily as you no doubt play your human lovers."
She took a step toward him, and rage flared inside her. "Captain Starfire will fly with me to Antikythera. He will fight where you dare not. Would you have him fly to an enemy you fear?"
"He has a name, does he?" The king laughed. "That ape of yours will not fly anywhere. He will languish in the Crimson Gulag for a while until I see fit to let him die. And then you will watch, Nova. You will watch him die before the mob, die screaming as the blades of my torturers tear at his flesh. And then you too will die. You will die for the way you disgrace me."
"You disgrace yourself." She spat.
"You spit now on my floor," said the king, "but when you left this place, you spat on your family. On your honor. On your race. I raised you to be my heiress! I raised you to rule a world." The king's eyes burned, red, damp. His lips twitched in a rabid snarl. "And you left!"
Suddenly Nova's rage faded, flowing away like ice under the engines of a warship. Her chest deflated.
"I did not mean to hurt you, Father," she whispered. "I . . . I wanted to come home. After only two Earth years, I meant to fly home, but you would not have me. You would not see me returned to your grace. So I remained on Earth. What choice did I have?"
Blood dripped down the king's chin, staining his armor. "And so you performed for the humans in their arena. Performed as a gladiator. As a trained monkey for the amusement of apes. Did you think I didn't know?" His voice shook with pain. "Every time you stepped on that stage, you spat on me again."
Nova lowered her head. Suddenly she realized something, something that for years she had misunderstood.
He loves me, she thought. He loves me and I hurt him. More than rage, he feels pain. More than hatred towar
d me, he feels the betrayal of love.
Guilt, cold and overwhelming, filled Nova.
She thought words she dared not speak, words that no ashai would ever utter: I'm sorry.
"Father," she said, voice softer now. "Come with me to the Dragon Huntress. Come and see a machine of the Singularity who is chained onboard. Hear from its mouth words you will not believe from mine." Tears filled her eyes. "I came to see you in your home. Come see me in mine."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN:
WHIPS AND STINGERS
The ashai soldiers dragged Riff down the cobbled road, through an archway of bones, and into a gulag of searing sunlight, clouds of dust, and rivers of blood.
"Welcome to your new home," said Keeva, one of the soldiers. An ashai woman with short platinum hair and cruel eyes, she cracked her whip and shoved Riff forward. "Enjoy your stay."
Riff grunted as the whip hit his back. "No mints on the pillows?"
Another soldier kicked Riff. "Move, ape! Join the other scum."
Riff nodded, stumbling deeper into the camp. "Thank you. Mind giving me a wake-up call at 6 a.m. tomorrow? Oh, and bring up some black coffee and a croissant."
Another lash of Keeva's whip had him yowling.
Shuffling forward another step, Riff looked around him and winced. Back on Earth, prisons at least gave you some privacy: a nice little cell, four walls around you, a roof over your head. Not so on Ashmar, it seemed. For all their wonders of architecture, the ashais apparently had no patience for building actual prison cells. Instead, they simply dumped everyone into a massive pen like cattle into a corral.
The gulag was circular, perhaps half a kilometer in diameter, and crammed full of the planet's undesirables. Most of the prisoners were ashais. These ones were not noble, mystical beings like Nova and her brother, clad in gold, their hair streaming and their eyes bright. Here ashais wore rags, and scars covered their bodies. Many prisoners had shaved their heads; others sported braids heavy with beads and metal shards. Some prisoners were missing teeth; others were missing eyes and limbs. They were all chained, all beaten, all looking so vicious they made Nova seem as gentle as a puppy.
Not only ashais crowded this place. Several other species moved around the field. Short, squat gruffles lumbered about, dragging their chains and swinging pickaxes into boulders. Halflings congregated in a corner, cowering as a group of ashai prisoners—twice their height—sneered over them like wolves over prey. A living rock creature growled at a buzzing, hovering alien with many eyes on stalks. A skelkrin—an actual skelkrin prisoner!—sat by a trough, growling at anyone who approached. Even a few humans were here, scrawny and scarred, their skin burnt in the sunlight. They seemed to be the lowest ranking prisoners here, even lowlier than the halflings, judging by how thin, whipped, and terrified they looked.
There were no cages here, no tents, no cells. Just boulders, chains, pickaxes. Walls and guard towers surrounded the field, and upon them stood many ashais armed with whips and guns. Blood covered those walls, and the skeletons of prisoners lay in trenches, perhaps the remains of those who had attempted escape.
Riff turned back toward the soldiers who had dragged him here. "Any chance you'd call Earth's ambassador over to talk to me?"
"Call him yourself." Keeva, the soldier who had whipped him, pointed. "There he is."
Riff turned to see a human in a tattered suit sitting chained to a boulder.
Never mind . . .
"Look," Riff said, turning back toward the soldiers, "you've got to let me out of here. I didn't do anything."
Keeva tilted her head. "Didn't you steal our princess, drag her across the galaxy, and plunge Ashmar into its greatest political crisis since Mad King Heris decided to marry his goat?"
Riff winced. "Well, I guess if you count that. But at least no goats were involved this time."
The whip lashed again. He yowled as it slammed into his chest.
Rubbing his wounds, Riff walked deeper into the gulag, hoping to find a nice little rock to die under. He could barely move here. The place was so crowded he couldn't take two steps without somebody bumping into him.
"Watch it!" said one ashai prisoner, a towering brute—almost seven feet tall—with a gaunt face, blazing eyes, and sharpened teeth.
"Move it, fresh meat!" snorted another prisoner, a burly female gruffle with a shaggy beard.
Riff wandered on, approaching a few halflings, hoping for some compassion there. But the little critters hissed at him and raised rusty shivs, murder in their eyes. They were nothing like the sweet Twig and everything like murderous little leprechauns from nightmares. Riff loosened his collar and turned away.
Where are you, Nova? he thought as he moved through the gulag. He kept waiting for her to show up, to crack her whip, to drag him out while muttering about how much trouble he was, and how he always ended up in some pit, be it the Blue Strings or an ashai gulag. Yet she never came. Perhaps, Riff thought, she was a prisoner too somewhere on this barren planet.
In the old days, Riff might have expected Giga to save him. The HMS Dragon Huntress would appear in the sky, blast its way through the enemy starjets, and descend toward the field. Piston would be standing in the airlock, lowering a cable for Riff to grab, then hoisting him up to safety. Yet Piston was retired on Haven now, enjoying his autumn years among the halflings. And Giga was broken, dead or a prisoner too, trapped deep within her body, and the Dragon Huntress was grounded and quarantined.
Riff tightened his jaw. I came here to save Giga. To fight the Singularity. Who will stop these machines now? The machines that burned Haven? The machines that possessed Giga? The machines that scarred my arm as a child?
He winced, that old wound suddenly blazing with new pain. He looked at his left forearm, at the scar that snaked down from his elbow, pale and ridged. The memory filled him.
I was only a boy, only ten years old, a simple boy living in the dregs of Cog City.
The robot had emerged from an alley. The chainsaws on its arms had whirred, reaching out toward him, cutting him. Riff had fled that day, racing through Cog City, vanishing in the labyrinth of alleyways, tinker shops, and grimy pubs. He had escaped the Singularity then, but the scar remained, and—
Riff frowned.
"Wait a moment," he muttered.
He sucked in breath. What memory was this? This scar had not been there moments ago. And yet . . . he had been carrying this scar since childhood. This memory had never haunted him before. And yet suddenly the memory seemed so vivid, as if it had always been with him, as if . . .
"As if it just appeared," he whispered.
A chill washed him.
A burly alien of undetermined species—a massive chunk of meat eight feet tall—bumped into Riff.
"Out of me way, runt," the chunk rumbled.
Riff gazed at the alien, barely seeing him. "They've invented time travel."
The alien hunk of meat snarled and grabbed Riff's collar. "Me smash you!"
Riff felt faint. "Oh stars . . . oh gods old and new. The machines just figured out time travel." He grabbed the alien's tattered tunic. "They're already going back in time. Trying to kill us in our childhoods. How can we fight them now?"
The alien blinked and grumbled. "Me . . . smash? Machines?" The brute groaned and shoved Riff away. "You crazy." It lumbered off to find a less perplexing victim.
Riff wiped sweat off his brow. He was still alive. He didn't know what that meant. If he still breathed, did that mean that, in the future, he would defeat the Singularity—that his victorious destiny was sealed? Or did it mean the Singularity was still learning, would send more machines back to kill him, and he might blink out of reality at any moment?
"You used to tell me about time travel, Father," Riff muttered, blinking away the dust of the gulag. "What was it you always said?"
He brought to mind a kinder memory, a memory of Aminor, the dear old magician.
Time is fluid, my boy, Aminor had told him once. Always changing. Always reformi
ng. Time is like the beach—sometimes draped in shadows, sometimes golden and bright, sometimes warm, sometimes dark, sometimes full of jellyfish that will sting you. Sometimes it will rock your boat, and sometimes it will guide you to shore, and sometimes—oh hell, I think I just want to go to the beach. How about a trip?
Riff sighed. That didn't tell him much.
The beat of drums interrupted his thoughts. Jets roared, hovering above the gulag. Soldiers along the walls stood at attention, and the prisoners began to howl, beating their chests, stamping their feet. A chant rose across the gulag.
"Fresh blood, fresh blood!"
Riff looked around him. Was this a riot? An execution?
"Ape fight!" the prisoners chanted. "Ape fight!"
Riff's heart plunged. He had the sinking feeling that they weren't about to drag a pair of gorillas into a boxing ring.
Keeva—the same soldier who had dragged him here—shoved a pickaxe into Riff's hands.
"Take this, human." She snickered. "Try to last a while."
He held the wooden shaft. "I'm flattered, but I barely know you. I'm not sure I'm ready to go breaking boulders together. Maybe just a coffee first?"
Keeva snarled and whipped him again. "This isn't for boulders, human. This is to make the show a little more entertaining."
The other prisoners were moving away from Riff, forming a ring around him, all chanting.
"Ape fight! Ape fight!"
Their eyes leered. Their fists pounded their chests as if they themselves were apes. Even the mean little halflings were howling. The guards on the walls chanted right with the prisoners. The jets hovered above, aiming down cameras. Video displays crackled to life above the walls, all showing an image of Riff holding his pickaxe.
"I'm used to being on stage, but holding a guitar, not a pickaxe." He turned back toward Keeva. "You wouldn't happen to have any guitars around, would you? Maybe one signed by Bootstrap and the Shoeshine Kid?"
Not surprisingly, she lashed her whip at him again.
Alien Sky Page 13