The Sons of Sora

by Paul Tassi

  “I’ll never be you, you know,” Erik said. “You’re the hero of the pair of us. You’re the one they’ll build statues of and sing songs about.”

  “Not likely,” Noah replied. “But you don’t need to be me, or Lucas, or anyone. Just a better version of yourself.”

  Erik scoffed.

  “I just want to be someone she can look at without fear in her eyes.”

  Noah knew who he was talking about.

  “Kyra’s been through a lot,” Noah said.

  “And I put her through most of it,” Erik said. “I know.”

  “Just don’t put her through any more. Change for her, too.”

  Noah felt guilty giving that sort of advice given what had happened between the two of them just a few nights ago. But the last thing he wanted to do was to throw down the gauntlet with Erik about Kyra right now. His brother moved toward the exit.

  “What do the gods tell you, Noah?” Erik said, his back turned. “What do they say is going to happen to us?”

  “They don’t say much these days, but I suppose I don’t either,” Noah said.

  “Don’t lose your faith,” Erik said. “One of us needs it at least.”

  The next day, Noah was nearly all packed up for the short trip back to Sora and Colony One. In the wake of Tannon Vale’s death, Malorious Auran would resume his duties shepherding the Earthborn as he had a decade earlier. Celton would oversee all the military training. Celton swore that no matter what his orders, he wouldn’t let SDI agents get within ten miles of either Keeper Auran or Kyra. There were likely to be some sparks to come, but the colony was defendable, at least. And Noah realized it might be time to call in a favor or two with Finn Stoller.

  The elder Auran posited that perhaps it was important to start thinking about closing down the colony for good in a few years, allowing the present and future Earthborn a more unstructured life. Noah was practically a grown man, and the rest of the Earthborn were only a few years behind him. Life without the colony’s guidance would have been unthinkable a few months ago, but much had happened since then. The other Earthborn besides Sakai and Erik had remained in the bubble, however, and might have a harder time adjusting to such an idea. Were they really ready to start their own society? To have families? Noah wasn’t sure. It was hard to imagine Penza and Wuhan as parents, but it wasn’t as difficult to picture others in that role.

  Noah looked across the Black Wings main hall at Sakai, who had her nose buried in a scroll. He did miss her. He wanted to talk to her about what Erik had said, but she still wanted nothing to do with him. And gods knew he shouldn’t discuss those kinds of things with Kyra.

  The blond girl sat next to Sakai, idly watching Wings spar with each other on the cracked stone floor. Kyra lightly tapped her foot to some grainy, blaring music with only the barest semblance of a beat that was bouncing around the hard walls of the room. Her expression was a permanent half-smile, even as the room stank horribly of sweat, alcohol, and vomit. Even in a place as vile as this, she made it just a little bit better by being there.

  Noah did love her, to the point where it actually hurt, but what sort of future could he have with Kyra? If Erik or Sakai didn’t murder him first, the two could never have a family with Sora and Earth’s inexplicably incompatible biology.

  She would be enough, said a voice in his head.

  His thoughts were interrupted as Alpha came to sit next to him.

  “Greetings, Noah,” the Xalan said. “Have you prepared yourself for departure?”

  Noah nodded.

  “I have. Though it’s going to be an uncomfortable ride home,” Noah said, looking across at Sakai, whose head was still down.

  “Yes, I hear the ships we have access to are quite sub-par,” Alpha replied, missing Noah’s meaning as he often did.

  Kyra had her chin resting in her hand, and was watching Razor brawl with two stout Wings who only came up to his shoulder. They were testing out shiny sets of power armor, purchased by the newly rich Zaela. Word had it she was about to close on the biggest warship docked at the station for a cool five billion marks. Other gang members shouted praise and obscenities at the men who were fumbling around, getting used to fighting with mechanically amplified strength. Noah had been trained to use such armor since childhood, and forgot just how far behind the rest of civilization Solarion was. He was sitting in the mess hall of a six-hundred-year-old prison, after all.

  Asha was pacing around the room looking eager to leave for Sora. The other Black Wings stole glances at her. At all of them, really. Now out of their disguises and with the arrival of Alpha and Asha, their presence on Solarion had become conspicuous. Rumors were flying through the station that the Earthborn were in Zaela’s camp and had somehow instigated the uprising. Even with the neutering of SolSec, they were targets and needed to leave as soon as possible.

  “It’ll be good to be home,” Noah said.

  “Agreed,” Alpha nodded. “Zeta and Theta have made their way back to Colony One and will be there to greet us when we return.”

  “I hope Theta and Erik sort things out,” Noah said, freezing immediately after the words had left his mouth. Alpha cocked his head.

  “Is there some problem between your brother and my daughter?” he asked.

  Noah’s mind raced.

  “Uh, they were just … fighting about … Earth,” Noah said in stutter step.

  “Is that so?” Alpha said, eyes narrowing.

  “Yeah,” Noah continued, saying whatever came into his head. “Erik … swears that Earth will stay uninhabitable, but Theta says those Xalan terraformers showed real promise in transforming the climate.”

  Alpha scoffed.

  “For as much regard as I have for young Erik, he should defer to the scientific wisdom of my daughter. I’ve done cursory analysis on those orbital devices and the readouts are indeed encouraging. What an odd topic to cause a conflict between them.”

  “Someone should tell her that two different species can’t mate.”

  Noah cringed even just thinking about how deeply Theta had blushed.

  “Yeah, odd,” Noah said, but realized he’d accidentally broached an interesting subject. “Wait, so you’re saying Earth could be fully habitable again?”

  Both Noah and Alpha jolted when one of the Wings crashed to the floor in his power armor with a loud bang. The laugher of the rest of the men rebounded around the chamber as the other two in metal suits helped him up. Razor was simply shaking his head.

  “I would require more data to say that with certainty,” Alpha continued. “At the very least, Earth could start producing enough water to be a useful planetary outpost for the Archon, which I am assuming was the purpose of the experiment. A dying planet like Xala may be too far gone for transformation, but perhaps there is hope for Earth yet. Why do you ask? Are you eager to return to your homeworld?”

  Noah shook his head vigorously.

  “It wasn’t exactly much fun the last time. But I’d rather see a Soran settlement there than a Xalan one, that’s for sure. Errr, no offense.”

  Alpha ignored him and brought up a hologram of Earth on his scroll. Old Earth.

  “It was an amazing planet in its prime,” he said. “Even though I was there as a punishment, I enjoyed my time scouting the civilization before the war began. For all its faults, it was a place of great beauty, rich culture, and a population that overwhelmingly wanted nothing more than better lives for their children. Earth’s final age lacked many would-be conquerors or warlords. Their wars were small. Microscopic when compared to our own.”

  Alpha paused, then continued with a sigh.

  “I despise what we turned your planet and your people into. A bare wasteland full of killers as vicious as we were. In Earth’s last days, I saw savagery I had never fathomed possible.”

  “From savages like my true father, the cannibal,” Noah said darkly.

  “Yes,” Alpha said plainly. “Though there is nothing ‘true’ about the father you re
ference. Other than your size, you share nothing with that monster of a man. You are a product of your adoptive parents, through and through.”

  “Also killers,” Noah said, eyeing Asha, who had given up pacing and sat down next to Kyra and Sakai.

  “Sadly, we live in a time where good men and women must be as such. This war has made us all do things we never would have fathomed in another life, has it not?”

  Noah thought about how many men and Xalans he’d killed in the past few months. He suddenly realized he wasn’t keeping track anymore. And he couldn’t see their faces.

  “It has.”

  “And I fear there is more we still must do.”

  They were silent for a while, with the cheers and jeers of the Black Wings echoing around the antechamber.

  Soon they were all onboard the ancient pirate vessel they’d arrived in, but this time they had an outgoing escort. Zaela knew how to pay her debts, and though she’d originally been doing them a favor by providing them aid, the rewards she’d reaped from the downfall of SolSec far surpassed her wildest expectations. As such, she was sending three of her best mid-range ships with them, and Alpha’s prototype SDI fighter was tucked inside their own craft as a last resort. They weren’t anticipating having to spar with any of Stoller’s forces, as they were likely trying to sort out what had happened to Viceroy Maston and his ship. As a precaution, their mini-fleet was purposefully avoiding that sector entirely.

  “If anyone’s not here yet, they’re getting left behind,” Asha called out to the group assembled on the bridge of the pirate ship.

  “All necessary parties are accounted for,” said Alpha, leaning over the rusted central holotable, which only worked when given a few sharp kicks.

  Noah rounded the chair to see his mother. She’d arrived at the station wearing little more than rags and now wore a frayed leather jacket and flight leggings Zaela had given her. Her sword hung over the back of the chair. It shook as the engines fired. Asha’s look of grim determination was broken as Noah came into view.

  “We’ll find him,” he said, putting a hand on his mother’s shoulder.

  She looked up at him.

  “God, when did you get so old? It feels like just yesterday we found you outside our ship in your dead nurse’s hands.”

  “Probably for the best I don’t remember that,” Noah said with a stiff chuckle.

  “I know you didn’t ask for all this. I thought the colony would give you some semblance of normalcy while I fought demons worlds away, but … it seems there’s no way to escape this kind of life for us.”

  “I don’t know,” Noah said. “But I’d rather be here than a pile of dust and ash on Earth in any case. I have a home. I have a family. I have … friends,” he said, glancing over at Kyra who was talking with Key in the corner. She flashed him a brief smile mid-conversation as he caught her eye.

  Asha glanced over her shoulder.

  “Someday you’ll have to explain to me why she’s worth all this trouble.”

  “Someday she’ll probably show you herself.”

  Their attention was diverted when the viewscreen began to flash with an incoming transmission indicator.

  “That’s an SDI hailing frequency,” Celton said, eyes widening. “I wouldn’t—”

  Asha’s patience snapped. “I’m done with this bullshit,” she said as she waved her hand through the receiver controls. An SDI captain Noah had never seen before appeared onscreen. He was male, but that was about all they could tell as the transmission was heavily distorted from the nearby solar radiation.

  “I don’t know who or where you are,” Asha shouted into the viewscreen. “But if you’re here on Stoller’s orders, I have an entire space station full of firepower ready to reduce you to a million tiny satellites spinning around Apollica, and a population itching to declare war on the government!”

  A voice crackled through the feed. The figure was moving, as were many shapes behind him. Noah was perplexed to see that the transmission data indicated the message was being broadcast not only to their ship, but any and all in the vicinity.

  “Please,” he said, his voice desperate. “You have to [static]—”

  Asha leaned in toward the flickering image.

  “The fleet is—”

  More static. The picture went black completely, but the audio kicked back in. Someone screamed in the distance, and there was a low rumbling that slowly grew louder.

  “It’s over,” the voice said, a strangled whisper.

  “Xala is here. Xala is everywhere.”

  32

  Xala was everywhere. Lucas watched as nearly the entire SDI planetary defense fleet was reduced to scrap in a matter of minutes. For centuries, millennia, the Soran solar system had been safe under their watchful eye, but now the Xalans flooded through them like they weren’t even there.

  At such close range, the decloaking Xalan ships were destroying entire vessels before the Sorans knew what was happening. Lucas’s eyes darted over the readouts on the bridge of the Archon’s ship and saw the only SDI vessels that had even managed to fire back were in the outer rim of the system, where presumably they had a few seconds to react as the fleet surrounding Sora itself was destroyed. But even so, the data showed a huge casualty rate for Sora and only miniscule losses for the Xalans. It was utter decimation.

  The readouts didn’t do the carnage justice, but Lucas knew what he was seeing out of the viewscreen was happening a thousand times over all over the system. Titanic SDI ships were ripped open bow to stern by unrelenting missile volleys. What few fighters had been scrambled were now in pieces, their pilots drifting frozen through space, rigid and dark against the shining sphere of Sora. There were so many bodies it was hard to tell them from the debris, and Lucas’s heart was caught in his throat. He hadn’t spoken and barely moved as everything unfolded before him. The Archon stood silent in a sort of trance, mentally directing his troops all over the system. Though he couldn’t directly control them the way Lucas could forcefully influence others, he commanded them all the same. The remaining Xalans who hadn’t rebelled after the revelation of Alpha’s father’s message served the strange creature without question. And why shouldn’t they? He’d won the ten-thousand-year-old war for them at last.

  Lucas thought of Asha, Alpha, and his sons on Solarion. He had barely heard of the outpost, but knew it was close to the sun and that the SDI wouldn’t go anywhere near it. That meant they could still be alive, as Xala was clearly targeting military craft in preparation to invade or destroy Sora itself. Still, it was clear the Xalans wanted to wipe their race out completely.

  But Sora. Sora was the last hope. They’d held the wolves at bay for thousands of years. Was this how it ended? And had Lucas really contributed to the planet’s downfall? He hoped the destruction he saw out of the viewscreen was just another vision from the Archon. That the fleets were fine. That it was another mind game. But he could feel in his bones that it was real. Untold numbers had been butchered in the last few minutes alone. The galaxy had never seen destruction on such a scale. It was over. It was all over.

  The Archon met Lucas’s hard gaze. Neither of them said anything. What could be said? He had won.

  “What now?” Lucas finally asked. There was no point calling the Archon a monster, a murderer, or any other such insult. The creature was far beyond such things. He was in the midst of slaughtering millions and looked entirely unfazed.

  “Now I take Sora for my own. And we journey to an ancient place where you will find the answers you seek.”

  “I seek nothing,” Lucas said. “You’ve destroyed my second home now. What good would answers be?”

  The Archon shook his head slowly.

  “I will not destroy Sora as I did Earth. That was a … tactical error. It would be unfortunate to poison such a prize as this. We will invade, and the extermination of the Sorans will be a long, painful process. I will take no shortcuts with world-ending, atmosphere-corrupting ordnance. Xala’s bombs and Ear
th’s nuclear devices ruined that world nearly beyond repair. I would not relish repeating the same process here, on a planet worth ten Earths. Cities will burn, lives will end, but the planet will live on to serve my glory.”

  That was cold comfort to Lucas. While it was good to know the planet wasn’t about to be immediately carpet-bombed into ruin, the Archon systematically hunting down all its Soran residents wasn’t exactly a welcome alternative.

  Lucas was exhausted, he suddenly realized. He felt constantly weak and on the verge of collapse. Though his Shadow-enhanced strength and speed were gone, he felt less than even a normal man. He was a child, powerless to do anything to stop the rampaging nightmare before him.

  They were moving slowly toward Sora, and from the left side of the viewscreen, a damaged SDI dreadnought came into view. It was plunging straight toward the planet, venting oxygen and crewmen from a hundred fissures in its hull. Lucas could only see the tail end of the name embossed in gold on its side, as the other letters had been burned off by plasma fire. The “—ION” fell slowly until it began to glow red when it met the atmosphere. It broke apart into three enormous pieces, which tumbled toward a continent in the southern hemisphere of the planet. Lucas felt more tiny lights in his head go out. It was too much to bear. Lucas slumped down against the cold metal back of a console. The Archon stood before him, a dark shape silhouetted against a soon to be burning Sora.

  All the rage had left Lucas. Only shock remained. Everything he’d done on Earth and Sora and Makari to survive and fight back was all for nothing. This was the end.

  “Remove him,” the Archon said. Lucas looked around. Two dark shapes materialized and approached him. “I must prepare for our descent to the surface,” the Archon continued.

  Four blue eyes glinted in the darkness. Two charred black Xalan Shadows in plated power armor grasped him by the arms and hauled him upright as if he weighed nothing. The tips of their claws dug into his arms and thin trickles of blood tumbled down his already stained and torn clothing. He struggled for a brief moment, but their iron grip tightened to the point where his bones felt like they were about to fracture. The Archon regarded him with a featureless face and eyes alive with piercing stars.