The Sons of Sora

by Paul Tassi

  Lucas imagined what it must have been like for the Desecrator to have watched all his older brothers and sisters killed in the Shadow transformation process. To watch his mother dissolve along with her family. The misery. The agony.

  That was pain. True pain.

  “I understand,” Lucas said aloud, calmer.

  He sat down once more. This time, he searched for no exact memories. Almost immediately, he slipped out of one plane of consciousness and into another.

  Lucas found himself in the throne room of the Grand Palace, before it had erupted in flames from a Fourth Order bomb. It was dark, lit only by the moons outside, and seemed five times as large as when he’d been in it previously. The ancient stone seat of power looked like it was a mile away from where he stood.

  And then they appeared. Three figures, cloaked in wispy white streams of fabric, hoods raised. They shifted around the room making no sound, moving across the floor stripped of all furniture.

  Lucas shivered as a breeze blew through the open doors on either side of the room. The silence was deafening.

  “What is this?” he finally said. The wisps turned toward him. He took one step toward the throne end of the room, but then sprang back as one of the figures materialized before him. Its hood fell, and Lucas stared into a pair of prismatic eyes.

  Corinthia Vale.

  Her expression was solemn, almost stern. Her golden-blond hair was wrapped tightly in a series of interwoven braids behind her head; the white robes she wore floated like she was underwater. Lucas couldn’t speak, he simply stood silent, transfixed. Her beauty was legendary, but here her perfection was sharp, unsettling.

  “I am the horror of Sora,” she said at last, the pitch of her voice twisted slightly into something that made his skin crawl.

  “I am the madness and mayhem you found on this planet, and in your service to it. I am the murdered girl who perished at a feast in your honor.”

  Lucas remembered the light going out of those multicolored eyes after the bomb exploded. The burns coating her face and neck. Her pretty blue dress, fully ablaze.

  “I am the lost brother-in-arms, forever at rest in an alien jungle.”

  Something caught in Lucas’s throat as he remembered Silo’s death in the Makari wilds. The trigger he had to pull. The red mist. The jungle’s screams. His first real friend from another world.

  “I am the martyred commander. The man who saved you. The friend they twisted into foe.”

  Seared into his mind was the look of acceptance on Mars Maston’s face as he ejected the escape pod with him and a Shadow inside. Lucas watched his body lying still on the ship’s monitors. And now, the new creature. The Corsair. The monster of darkness and insanity some version of him had become.

  “You will know my pain. Let it be the mortar of your bones.”

  And with that, she was gone.

  Lucas looked around, and saw the other wisps had disappeared. He stumbled toward the throne end of the room, which still seemed so far away. His stomach was a solid knot.

  Something brushed past him in the dark. A whisper. A flash of light. He turned to follow it, and found himself staring at another shade.

  Her hair was platinum waves, spilling down her shoulders as the ethereal cloth billowed around her. Eyes of emerald green stared through him, piercing like blades. She was a photograph brought to life, and he knew why she was there.

  “I am the horror of ruined Earth,” Natalie said with ice in her voice. “I am the constant despair and oppressive darkness of the world’s last days.”

  Lucas shivered as he remembered his years-long trek across the country. The loneliness. The destruction. The hopelessness.

  “I am the mountain of bodies you created and climbed to find life, the sea of corpses you crossed for a new beginning.”

  How many had he killed? Had he ever really counted? There was the atrocity at Kvaløya, but the trail of bodies he’d left across America was endless. He told himself they deserved it. They were all evil. Lucas remembered the sound of bone snapping as he broke the neck of the army captain who butchered his group of survivors without quarter. The man with Natalie’s photograph. The man who etched her name on the rifle.

  All my love.

  But there were so many more. Robbers, cannibals, murderers. But were they? Were all of them? Weren’t some just trying to survive like him? That’s a question he was forced to stop asking himself back then, before it drove him mad. But here it was again as he stared into the accusing jeweled eyes before him.

  “I am the billions of dead, crying out from the dust for vengeance,” she continued.

  Before the wastelands, the war was quick, but horrific. Before he’d started killing, there were so many dead. He watched cities burn as the sky was swarmed with terrifying spacecraft. He remembered seeing the mushroom clouds that seemed to linger for eons. How many souls did each represent? A whole world dead. His family dead.

  “You will know my pain. Let it race through your nerves like fire.”

  His head swam, he felt sick and miserable. Natalie was gone, and he knew who the final shade would be.

  She came from a long way off down the empty hall. It felt like years until she reached him. Her hood was folded down revealing a third shade of blond, a touch darker than both who had come before. Deep blue eyes, but no smile. An implacable look that existed between disgust and unending sorrow.

  Sonya spoke, and his wife’s warped voice caused him to tremble.

  “I am the horror of your wretched life, before this all began.”

  All the breath was gone from his lungs, and he couldn’t find it again.

  “I am the devoted partner who offered kindness and care in return for neglect and betrayal. I am the lost little boy forever in search of an absent father. I am the life never truly lived, drowned in an unending well of poison drink.”

  Nothing before the war even felt real. But he couldn’t run from it. Couldn’t bury it forever. Here it was, staring at him in the face. He thought about every terrible thing he’d ever done long before a worldwide invasion had given him an excuse. He remembered how much he’d once loved the woman in front of him, and how poorly he’d treated her once she was his. How she and his son witnessed the beginning of the apocalypse as he was three thousand miles away, drunk and in the arms of another woman.

  “I am the disappointed father, a useless, selfish wretch for a son. I am the martyred brother, who died while those far less worthy lived.”

  Fathers shouldn’t hate their sons, but his did. But looking back, it was hard to blame him. It’s no wonder he had wanted Sonya’s brother as his own. The poor young man killed in one of Earth’s own pointless wars, long before the interstellar one began. Adam should have been the one to live through it all, not Lucas. He didn’t deserve to.

  “I am the forgotten tragedy of a half-formed man, only forged into a finer one by the fires of death and destruction. You will know my pain. Let it flow through your veins and nest in your heart.”

  She was gone, and Lucas fell to his knees and cried out. The sound echoed around the empty hall.

  Lucas raised his head and found himself at the foot of the great stone throne. He’d crossed the endless span of the room without noticing.

  “No more,” he whispered. But a figure clad in pure darkness sat on the monolithic seat before him.

  “Rise,” she said. He didn’t want to look.

  Her hair was coal black, her light-green eyes blazed in the dark. The shadows floated around her like orbiting spirits as she stood up.

  Asha spoke with unbridled rage, her face twisted into something terrible.

  “I am the horror of extinction,” she said. “I am the end of this new world. Of all worlds.”

  “I haven’t lost you,” Lucas choked out as he reached out to touch her.

  “Not yet,” she said, and she took his hand. Her expression softened. She grazed his cheek with the backs of her fingers.

  “But you will. You will lo
se everything, everyone you have left. That pain will consume you wholly, and there will be no returning from it, and no escape, even through death itself. It will follow you into eternity.”

  Lucas was speechless. He was shaking all over.

  “You will know the pain of losing me, like you have lost so many others. Take that wretched thought, plant it in your mind, and let its roots spread through every inch of you. Only then will you be free, and able to avoid this fate.”

  A supernova of light, sound, fire, and ice exploded in Lucas’s mind. Tears wrenched themselves from his eyes, and every muscle in his body contorted unbearably. The pain was everywhere. Every cell. Every atom.

  His eyes sprang open. They glowed electric blue in the reflection of the polished floor. His oil black veins hummed with power and fury.

  33

  Though Solarion Station was full of hardened, violent criminals, mercenaries, and murderers, a hush had fallen over the entire floating city. Every citizen was glued to viewscreens full of frantic news reports from the homeworld, or they stared out into the stars, seeing distant blue-and-white explosions almost immediately snuffed out by the vacuum of space. For all the chaos that had come after the fall of SolSec, the station now was quiet, terrified. Gang territory disputes and old vendettas meant next to nothing now in the face of nearly certain death.

  With no military remotely near the station when they arrived, the Xalans spread out throughout the system hadn’t paid them any mind yet. Rather, they’d appeared at every defensive outpost at once, seeming to materialize out of nothing. Some were saying they found a way to pinpoint core jumps to a thousand precise locations at once, but scientists like Alpha said the initial evidence pointed to some sort of mass cloaking capability, though even he didn’t understand the technology that would allow for such a thing.

  Noah walked briskly down the street toward the damaged Solarion Security compound, which Asha and Zaela had taken over after their flight home had been cut short by the invasion. It was far better outfitted than Zaela’s Black Wings base, and ex-SolSec gang members were all either in the wind or had joined up with her.

  On the side of the road, people were gathered in clusters, staring at giant holographic viewscreens showing terrified reporters covering the invasion. Pieces of wrecked SDI ships were hammering Sora like micro-meteors, and the first Xalan landing parties were heading down to the ground after planetary surface defenses had mostly been reduced to rubble.

  The headline on the glitching, fuzzy screen currently read “WHERE IS CHANCELLOR STOLLER?” The supposed ruler of the planet hadn’t been seen or heard from since the Xalans appeared. Most thought he was dead, but Noah suspected otherwise.

  Asha had issued a coded distress beacon advising any and all SDI ships to rally to Solarion, as most of the Xalan fleet was giving up on the stragglers and heading to form a protective ring around the planet itself to prepare to bomb and invade. So far only a few SDI ships had shown up, with no officer onboard ranking higher than corporal. Scores of civilian vessels had arrived as well, but were largely useless in a tactical sense. Fortunately, word had it that the fleets guarding or laying siege to the Xalan colony planets were nearly home, most having departed soon after the Xalans disappeared. It was clear now where they all went. Whoever this Archon was, this invasion was a masterpiece of military strategy and impossible technology. The war seemed over. But yet, they lived. Though who knew for how long.

  Noah walked through the gaping hole that used to be the SolSec main gate past a collection of Black Wings guards chatting nervously with one another, pointing to lights in the sky. He made a beeline for the refurbished comms hub, one that Alpha had been working tirelessly to clean up, cleansing the solar radiation from the broadcasts so they could more easily receive and transmit messages to and from the remaining SDI and Xalan resistance forces. Noah had a call of his own to make, one he suspected wouldn’t be quite so long distance.

  Alpha was frantically trying to reach Zeta on the surface of Sora. Asha was talking to a group of shell-shocked SDI officers, freshly arrived at the station. Noah sat down at a console and tried the hailing frequency he’d gotten from his brother. The comms here were the newest on the station, but that meant they were still about six decades old. Noah swore he smelled smoke coming from near his feet.

  Finally, an answer. A narrow pair of blue eyes underneath a mop of reddish brown hair appeared before him. Finn Stoller looked stunned to see who was on the other end of the line.

  “Godsdamn, Noah. How did you get this frequency?”

  “Shut up, Finn,” Noah replied, “and listen to me. Are you with your father?”

  Finn Stoller looked around nervously. He was clearly on a ship and Noah recognized the plush luxury of a supercruiser lounge behind him.

  “I, uh …”

  “It’s time for you to live up to your end of the deal we made when we didn’t slit your throat for what you tried to do to Kyra. I know your father isn’t dead like the news reports are saying, and my guess is that you’re both trying to flee to some secret satellite hideaway you own, am I right?”

  “No, we just …”

  “Shut up, Finn,” Noah commanded. “Your father panicked. Losing a ten-thousand-year-old war is a lot to handle, I understand. But think about this. Where will you go, really? Whatever haven you think you’re headed to, how long will you last there? Months? A year or two with your supplies? In the meantime, every Soran in the galaxy will be exterminated, and you’ll die starving and alone in the middle of space.”

  Finn averted his eyes from Noah.

  “We’ll live long enough.”

  “And Sora will die.”

  “What are you asking me?” Finn snapped back.

  “Tell your father to turn your ship around and meet us at Solarion Station.”

  “Solarion?” Finn said, scrunching up his nose. The feed dissolved in static, then reappeared. “What the hell are you doing there?”

  “It doesn’t matter, but for now it’s safe. The remnants of the defensive fleet are rallying here, and hopefully the rest of the SDI from the Xalan rim planets will arrive soon. Your sister included.”

  Finn looked around again and lowered his voice to a whisper.

  “You don’t understand. My father is useless. He lost his mind the second the Xalans showed up. He’s acting like we’re going on vacation or something, and he hasn’t stopped drinking since we got onboard.”

  Noah shook his head.

  “Whatever state he’s in, the Soran people need to know he’s alive. They need to know that the government is still functional, even when facing annihilation. He needs to at least try to coordinate a response to this.”

  Finn rubbed his forehead.

  “I’m telling you, it won’t do any good. Can’t you track down that old bastard Tannon and tell him he’s in charge?”

  “Tannon Vale is dead,” Noah said stiffly.

  Finn paused.

  “Well, I guess that makes sense given the state of the fleet.”

  Noah didn’t want to bother explaining that the exact circumstances of Tannon’s death were in no way related to the invasion.

  “Just tell your father what I said. If he doesn’t agree, chain him up and drag him here if you have to. Prove you’re not the coward we all think you are,” Noah growled.

  Finn glared at the screen, but nodded.

  “I’ll get him there.”

  Noah had no choice but to trust him.

  “I’ll believe it when I see it,” Erik said, folding his arms across his chest.

  “He said he was coming,” Noah said. “I think he’ll pull through.”

  “I might have to kill him when he gets here then,” Erik replied.

  “Finn or the Chancellor? Never mind, it doesn’t matter, you’re not killing anyone. I know you’ve learned enough to know that.”

  He didn’t say it, but Tannon’s death still hung over both of them. Erik’s face darkened, but he remained silent.


  “I can’t reach Colony One at all,” Sakai said, trudging up the last few stairs to join them on the roof of the main hall. The cloudy dome protecting the station showed winking stars, but no more distant explosions. The massacre of the SDI fleet had stopped, or at least was slowing.

  The crisis had forced Sakai to speak to both of them again, though her usually cheery demeanor was gone, possibly forever.

  “I tried all my brothers and sisters, everyone I could think of. Even the guards. No one is answering. Alpha says Theta and Zeta are there too, and if they can’t get comms working …”

  She didn’t have to say it. They were all fearing the worst already.

  “We’ll find them,” Kyra said, turning back toward them from where she’d been stargazing. “Alpha’s reestablishing new comm links every few minutes with the homeworld. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time.”

  Forever the optimist, even in the face of armageddon. Sakai did not look comforted.

  “Where do you think Lucas is?” Erik asked. There appeared to be genuine concern in his voice.

  “It’s pretty clear the Archon wanted him alive. He’s probably in the eye of this storm somewhere, if I had to guess,” Noah said.

  “He’ll fight his way out,” Erik said confidently. “He’ll be back and probably bring the head of the Archon with him.” He momentarily sounded like the young boy from a decade past who enthusiastically told endless stories of his father’s famed battles to anyone who would listen.

  “Let’s hope so,” Noah said.

  “I can’t believe Asha and Alpha survived the Corsair,” Kyra said. “And that he’s some twisted shade of Mars Maston. What a terrible thought.”

  “And that he’s killing us all in the hopes it will bring Corinthia back,” Erik added.

  “That would almost be romantic if it wasn’t so horrible,” Kyra said, a visible shiver running through her. Though she’d never met either Maston or Cora Vale, Noah realized she probably still felt tied to their story. At least she was the “right” kind of clone, while this neo-Maston was the very, very wrong kind.

  Sakai tapped her wrist communicator.