“We are ready to activate the explosive device in accordance with the orders you gave,” came Okto-Bar’s voice. “Do you confirm these orders, or do you have anything to tell me that will enable me to suspend the assault?”
The commander didn’t answer at once. Valerian and Laureline tensed. He looked at them in turn, then, whatever sedative the Pearls had used on him now fully out of his system, straightened in his seat.
“I’m a soldier,” he said, his voice quiet, calm, and intense. “A soldier will always choose death over humiliation. Annihilate them all!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The words, brutally clear, came over the radio. Kris and his men were stunned, but the K-TRONs, having received their orders, opened fire immediately. Bullets tore through the air, cutting down not just the delicate, beautiful creatures that were the supposed enemy, but the rest of Kris’s all-too-human troops.
“Take cover!” Kris yelled to his soldiers, obeying his own order. But just as he leaped for one of the trenches, a bullet ripped through his shoulder and he landed hard and awkwardly.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” came Major Valerian’s voice.
“I gave no orders!” shouted Okto-Bar. “Kris, cease fire immediately!”
Kris pressed a hand to his wounded shoulder. Over the din of his men returning fire at the black metal robots, he shouted, “It’s not us, it’s the K-TRONs! They’re attacking us!”
* * *
Okto-Bar was utterly stunned. The K-TRONs were under orders from Filitt and no one else, which meant—
Large black metal forms with red lights atop their heads surged into the control room, blazing away in all directions. “Retreat!” Okto-Bar shouted. Some of his people dropped to the floor, diving for cover. Some of them fell, and did not get up. Okto-Bar placed one of the consoles between him and the door, firing over it as best he could at the implacable machines.
Under a hail of gunfire, one of the K-TRONs moved to the console and hit the button.
The countdown, stopped at 3:14, resumed.
* * *
Valerian couldn’t believe it. They had come so close—
“I’ll go give Tsûuri some backup,” he told Laureline. He jerked his head in the direction of Filitt, who wore a look of smug triumph. “Keep an eye on him!”
“Oh, he’s not going anywhere,” Laureline promised. As Valerian grabbed his weapons on the way out, he looked back in time to see Laureline landing a solid punch on the commander’s smirking face.
He emerged into the chaos of a battle going full force between the K-TRONs, the Pearls, and the human troops. There were several large blue cocoons lying about, which bore testament to the fact that the Pearls were putting up a good fight.
“Alex?” said Valerian, shouting to be heard over the sound of bullets, “if you can hear me, load me up with all you’ve got!”
A green light flashed on Valerian’s gun.
“Acknowledged, Major,” came Alex’s welcome voice. “Here goes… fifty infras, twenty anti-flux, twelve ultra-heatseekers.”
“Thanks.”
“You have ten seconds left.”
Ten seconds. He’d make every last one count.
Valerian leapt out from cover and opened fire. Missiles of all varieties exploded from his weapons, and the K-TRONs started to drop. Sheer force blew them apart, and then the parts were pulverized. One robot was blown back, shrapnel all that remained of it. Valerian brought his guns along in a line, firing constantly, gunning the robotic enemy down with terrible precision.
Out of the corner of his eye, Valerian saw the wall start to ripple. The Pearls inside were beginning to seal it up. Valerian was running out of ammo; he was down to the last five… two… one of the eighty-two that Alex had loaded him up with.
But the K-TRONs were down, reduced to inert hunks of smoking, melted or bullet-ridden metal.
All but their captain.
Make it count.
Valerian took aim at the largest part of the robot—its gleaming, massive chest—and fired his last frag cap. Out of ammo, and almost out of time, Valerian raced through the wall a fraction of a second before it sealed shut.
* * *
The control room clock showed 00:01.
* * *
The mine-covered wall in the dead zone turned first silver, then phosphorescent.
The entire area exploded.
* * *
00:00.
In the control room of Alpha Station, still battling two remaining K-TRONs, Okto-Bar saw the clock. No… oh, no, he thought, the rawness of the shock and grief startling him. What have I done?
The general directed his impotent grief and outrage upon the final two robots, turning on them with sudden fury—firing and firing without stopping.
The last one toppled and fell.
Neza stared at Okto-Bar, his eyes wide. A few others got to their feet, dazed, shocked, silent.
Was it true?
Had they all been party to genocide?
Was there anyone left to tell them what had happened?
* * *
The silence and the stillness after all the madness was bizarre. Captain Kris could hear his own breathing, and little more. No… there were other stirrings now as other soldiers realized that they, too, had survived.
Cautiously, Kris peered out of the trench, eyes widening at what he beheld. His radio crackled.
“Survivors?” came Okto-Bar’s voice, harsh with emotion. “Captain? What’s going on?”
Kris didn’t reply for a moment. He was staring right at the site where the wall had been. But now, there was nothing. Not a broken wall, not the bodies of those behind it… only a vast hole, like some enormous crater at the heart of the space station.
“There’s nothing left!” he managed to tell Okto-Bar. “Just a gaping hole! Everything’s vanished!”
Others, too, were poking their heads out, eyeing the pieces of robots, stunned at what they beheld. “Any trace of our agents? Or the commander?”
Kris fished out his infrared binoculars and peered through them, making a slow sweep of the area. “No, nothing… hold on, I’ve seen something! There’s a body!”
In the middle of the crater, a body was indeed suspended from somewhere far above in the deepening darkness, twisting slowly back and forth. It was swathed in a strange sort of sticky, ropy substance. As Kris’s binoculars refocused, the body swung slightly, so that he could see the victim’s puffy, bruised face.
“It’s the commander!”
“Is he alive?” asked Okto-Bar.
The eyes, swollen to slits, opened. So did the mouth. “Get me out of here, you incompetent turds!”
Kris grinned. “Affirmative. He’s alive and kicking!”
“Good,” said Okto-Bar. “Arrest him!”
* * *
Laureline peered out the portal of the Destiny, smiling a little at the vastness of space and the twinkling of stars with no ship or station or planet in sight.
“Do you have any idea where we are?”
Valerian glanced at a monitor. “We’re… two hours away from vacation!” He grinned over his shoulder at her. “I just fired the distress beacon.”
“Two hours, sheesh!” she exclaimed.
“I know,” he said. “Two hours alone with me, what a drag!”
“No kidding,” said Laureline. She sighed melodramatically, still stargazing. “An eternity!”
“So,” he said, “now that the mission is over, perhaps we can finish our conversation?”
Laureline turned around. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back. “Conversation?”
“We were talking about the future,” said Valerian.
Laureline said, playfully, “Really? And what does the future hold?”
She expected a tall tale of an amazing adventure, or a flirty, less-than-subtle mention of other things best conducted in private. Instead, for one of the few times she had ever seen, Valerian seemed completely seriou
s as he replied.
“You… me… us,” Valerian said quietly.
And he held up a ring.
The ring’s circle itself was as pedestrian, as ordinary a thing as could possibly be imagined: a wire loop he’d obviously just now crafted from one of her own hairpins, twisted and wrapped around the gem.
But the gem…
It was a single, small, perfect Mül pearl.
Tears stung her eyes as she gazed at it, at all it represented. All the blood and death, beauty and life. And when she gave him a tremulous smile, he saw that knowledge in her eyes.
Those eyes widened as Valerian went down on one knee. “Happy birthday,” he said, holding up the ring that was at once the most banal and most beautiful thing in the universe.
“Thank you,” she said. “That’s very romantic. Is this your idea?”
“Yes, Laureline.” He swallowed hard, and she realized the hand that presented the ring was trembling. “Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”
“For better or worse?” she asked.
Anxiously, Valerian said, “Is this negotiable?”
Laureline smiled. She wanted to start laughing, to start crying, to start… other things.
“No,” she said.
He settled his shoulders. “All right, then,” he replied.
Laureline gazed down at him for a moment, then bent and accepted the ring. His happiness at the gesture turned to puzzlement as, instead of slipping it on her finger, she placed it carefully on the console. He got to his feet, his expression questioning.
She went into his arms, kissed him, and then began to unfasten his uniform.
His bewildered expression melted into a wicked grin. “Is that a yes?” Valerian asked.
“That’s a maybe,” Laureline replied. She had removed one of his gloves, and got to work on the other one.
He stared at her, totally at a loss. “I’m so confused. Is this how love works?”
“No.” Laureline gave him a teasing look with a hint of a smolder to it, and he inhaled swiftly. She leaned in for a kiss. As he began to enthusiastically return it, she pulled back and began to remove his jacket. When she placed her hand on his chest for a moment, she could feel his heart pouncing beneath her fingers.
“This is how women work. A woman lived in your body for a while. Didn’t you learn anything?”
She tossed aside the jacket and started to slide her hands up under his shirt. To her surprise, he stopped her. She looked up questioningly at him.
“I did learn something,” he said, grinning.
“And what might that be?”
“Don’t start something you can’t finish.”
She laughed a little. “We have two whole hours!”
Valerian gave her a slow, wicked smile. “Precisely,” he said, pulling her close and kissing her hungrily. Her arms slipped up around his neck and she pressed herself against him.
* * *
The stars were not eternal, but they were ancient beyond reckoning. They had seen much, and would behold more. But seldom had their judgeless gazes borne witness to events as momentous as those that occurred this day. Two worlds had been born. One, a vast, exquisite planet, with sea and sky and sand and tranquility.
The other, a much smaller, but no less significant world, consisting only of two.
Acknowledgments
The author must gratefully acknowledge Valerian and Laureline’s creators, Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières, and of course the astoundingly creative Luc Besson, who brings them to life on the screen. Thanks must also go to my agent, Lucienne Diver, and my editors on this project, Natalie Laverick and Ella Chappell.
About the Author
Award-winning and eight-time New York Times bestselling author Christie Golden has written over fifty novels and several short stories in the fields of science fiction, fantasy and horror. She has writing in such franchises as Star Wars, Star Trek, World of Warcraft, StarCraft, Assassin’s Creed, Halo, and Fable, among many others, as well as authoring her own books.
Recent projects are two novels for the Warcraft movie, Warcraft: Durotan and Warcraft: The Official Movie Novelization, and Assassin’s Creed: Heresy and Assassin’s Creed: The Official Movie Novelization. Appearing on shelves in 2017 in addition to the novelization of Valerian and the City of A Thousand Planets will be Star Wars: Battlefront II: Inferno Squad.
Golden was awarded the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers’ Faust Award 2017, conferring upon her the title of Grandmaster in acknowledgment of a quarter century of contributions to the field of media tie-in fiction.
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