Stars & Empire 2: 10 More Galactic Tales (Stars & Empire Box Set Collection)

by Jay Allan

  She saw a small child nearby. A little girl, huddling in the cold. She paused beside the child, and looked down at those weary, sad eyes.

  "Ah to hell with it." She took off her fur cloak, and before she could change her mind, dumped it in the child's lap.

  The little girl looked at her prize in disbelief, and then took off with it at a run.

  If Ari was cold before, now she was positively frigid.

  "Why'd you do that?" Richard said.

  "Just shut-up and walk with me." She could hardly talk for her chattering teeth.

  A group of ten gols in the armor of the city guard stood in the square ahead. All of them were looking at her. None of them seemed to have the slobbering faces that marked those with the gol mind disease.

  She filled herself with vitra, and steered Richard toward the group.

  "What's your game, Ari?" Richard said.

  "What, no dear before my name this time?" The vitra flowed through her veins and filled her with warmth. She dragged Richard onward, and she could feel him struggling to pull her away. Likely he was surprised by her strength. It was an illusion of course. Little bursts of strategically-placed electricity that weakened his muscles in just the right places, at just the right times. That, and the gentle boost the flowing current gave to her own strength.

  "Hello gentle men," Ari said to the gols. She smiled a sweet, grandmotherly smile. "Lounging around in the cold, spying on the citizens, are we?"

  She pushed Richard away, and before any of the guards could answer, she attacked with everything she had.

  Bolts of lightning flashed from her fingertips. Tendrils of energy sparked from her hair. Surely she looked a demon arisen from the nine hells, born into this world to wreak vengeance upon those who would collar humankind. In moments, all that remained of the ten gols were cinder blocks and charred bodies. Those all-too-human faces wore expressions of shock and disbelief.

  When you used massive quantities of vitra like that, you drew the city guards by the score. Small amounts of vitra were virtually undetectable, and you could even get away with medium quantities if gols were far away. But for what she just used, why, guards would come calling from all quarters of the city.

  And though she'd used up her entire charge in that attack, she began to laugh.

  Let them come.

  She was ready to die. More than ready.

  But then she had a thought. What if they recognized that she had no charge left? What if they collared her instead of killing her? No. No. She couldn't let them take her.

  She surveyed the square in a panic. She could still run. It didn't have to end like this. A few human bystanders stared at her in horror, but when she met their gaze, they ran off. None of them would follow her. And the nearest gol barracks were still a ways distant. Yes, she could make it.

  But she needed Richard's help now more than ever. "Richard? Where are you, you imbecile! We have to get out of here!"

  In answer, a fist slammed into her ribs, and she collapsed to the snow.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Ari nearly blacked out when she struck the hard snowpack. Her hip and ribs ached something nasty. So cold. So very cold. Why had she given up her fur cloak?

  "You're a User!" Richard kicked her now in those same ribs, and she felt the age-brittle bones crack. No, she wanted to say. You're killing me! But no voice would come to her. Didn't she just want to die a few moments ago? Yes, but she wanted to fall in battle, not to some idiot nurse beating her to death.

  She tried vainly to reach the spark inside her, hoping the pain would ignite something within, but she had nothing left.

  She would've laughed again, if she could.

  Ari, the great Leader of the New Users, kicked to death by her own nurse.

  Richard rammed his boot into her ribs still again. More cracks.

  "You fool," she finally managed through the pain. "They'll kill you too when they come." Would he believe her deception?

  Richard raised his boot to kick her a third time, but hesitated.

  She heard it then. The crunch of approaching boots. She tried to lift her head, but she couldn't see who was coming, not from where she lay.

  Richard backed away. "I don't know this woman," she heard him say.

  Her heart sank. So the gols were here already. She'd be collared, and jailed, and would die rotting in the dungeon.

  This was the end.

  She relaxed her neck muscles. She didn't feel so cold anymore. No. The warmth of sleep beckoned. The warmth of oblivion.

  The newcomer strode right up to Richard and planted a fist squarely in his jaw. Richard fell backward in the snow.

  "Run," the newcomer said to Richard.

  Richard got up and stumbled backward a few paces, then he turned around and hightailed it out of there.

  The newcomer knelt beside Ari.

  "Are you all right?" He said.

  She looked up groggily. It must be a dream.

  The newcomer furrowed his brow, and he gently explored her ribs with one hand.

  She moaned. The pain of his touch brought her away from the edge, and the cold crept back with a vengeance. She shivered uncontrollably.

  "We'll have to heal that before we can go on," he said.

  She stared at him, shivering. So many words filled her mind, but her chattering teeth managed to form just one. "You."

  "Nice to see you too, Ari, it is. You'll have to thank your friend Jackson for me later. Led me right to you, though he didn't know it. I was going to drop in later, when I was sure you were alone. Shame that you've burned the pals I brought, though. I leave my escort for a minute and look what you go and do. If only you knew how much convincing it took to bring them along." He glanced over his shoulder at the charred bodies and sighed. "Well, there's nothing for it now. Just the two of us, then. We don't have much time."

  It was him all right. He hadn't aged a day, and in fact he seemed younger than the last time she saw him, with not a trace of gray in his hair, nor a wrinkle on his face. He looked a nobleman in those red boots and black pants, topped by that green tunic. An odd costume to wear in the heart of winter, to be sure. Without a coat and gloves, he should have been shivering, but the cold didn't touch him.

  There was something else wrong. The clothes fit him too tightly, just as if each piece was melded into the skin and could never be taken off. Worse, there was a symbol stamped into the tunic, a symbol Ari didn't recognize.

  The number 1000.

  Hoodwink was a gol.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The heat of rage banished any cold she might have felt.

  "Where have you been all these years you hoodwinking bastard?" Ari felt the tears coming. It was almost easier to believe this was some trick of Jeremy's. Easier than thinking Hoodwink had abandoned her for ten years and returned as a gol, of all things. "I thought you were dead. All this time. Dead."

  "Ari," Hoodwink said, with a gentleness that melted her old, rigid heart. "I tried. Really, I tried."

  He tore open the side of her sweater and his jaw clenched angrily when he saw her ribs. "I should've killed that bastard." He reached into a pocket and fetched a shard. The five appendages throbbed eerily. She was always reminded of a frozen starfish whenever she saw those crystalline life forms. "You'll have to use your own charge."

  "I don't—" She winced at the pain in her ribs. "I don't have any left."

  "You have to try," Hoodwink said. "Can you do that for me, Ari?"

  Her father was back. Her father. She nodded quickly. "I'll do what I can."

  She glanced down at the shard. The creature felt like ice against her skin, and it only added to her uncontrollable shivering. She took two deep breaths, and focused.

  But the spark was nowhere to be found inside her.

  "I can't," she said. "What about you?" He had no collar that she could see.

  Hoodwink shook his head. "Gols don't have the ability. Most of them, anyway."

  Gols. Her father had become a go
l. She still couldn't believe it.

  She heard the distant trudge of boots in the snow. The first wave of guards emerged at a run onto the far side of the square.

  "Ari," Hoodwink said. "We can't let them see the shard."

  Yes. And the damn thing wouldn't come off once you let it touch your skin.

  "Well cover it then!" she said.

  "You don't get it, you don't," he said. "Once a shard grabs you, it's like a town crier to us gols. It's practically glowing to my eyes. Doesn't matter how much you cover it. Trust me, we have to melt the thing! And now!"

  She gritted her teeth, and rested her fingers on the shard. She closed her eyes and reached into herself, searching, roving for the power that had warmed her all these years.

  But it was spent.

  She hadn't a glimmer left.

  She shook her head. She was beginning to feel sleepy again. It would be so easy to close her eyes. "I'm done, Hoodwink. I'm sorry. I'm old and spent. I just, I want to sleep. Go. Leave me here."

  He stared at her, the disbelief plain on his face, then he flashed that easy smile she remembered so well. "I'll do nothing like that, I won't."

  The guards were closing.

  "It's not like my Ari to give up like that. And I won't let her." Hoodwink flung one of her arms around his neck, and raised her upper body. She started to protest, but then the pain of what he just did reached her, and fresh excruciation pulsed through her torso. She wasn't sure what stung more, the pain, or her father's words.

  It's not like my Ari to give up like that.

  He was right. She wasn't a quitter.

  She'd prove it to him.

  She reached again.

  Still nothing.

  It was hopeless.

  She was a quitter. A quitter and a failure.

  And she was going to die.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Ari glanced at the guards in defeat. The gols were almost upon them. She felt Hoodwink tighten his grip.

  And then she noticed something.

  The pain, pulsing through her torso, was like a current passing through her, signaling agony upward from the chest and into the brain. That current fanned the tiniest of sparks in the recesses of her mind, and if she listened, really listened, she could almost hear it calling to her.

  She reached for that spark, fumbled for it, but it slipped from her grasp.

  She reached again.

  Got it.

  She let a trickle of electricity, all she could manage, flow from the spark and into the shard.

  That was all it took. The crystalline life form warmed pleasantly, and the heat spread outward from her ribs. The pain immediately lessened, and then faded entirely.

  Hoodwink glanced down in shock as the shard melted into her. And then he smiled fondly. "That's my Ari."

  "They don't call me... the greatest User... for nothing," she said, panting.

  Hoodwink helped her to her feet, and the guards approached, halting in a semicircle around them. Many of them stared uncertainly at the number on Hoodwink's chest.

  Ari knew that if Hoodwink spoke, the ruse would be up. No gol talked like he did.

  She feigned a sob. "A man killed them." She intentionally fingered the fake collar around her neck. "A lightning-shooting hooligan." She indicated the direction Richard had escaped. "He ran that way."

  The gols didn't move. They gave no indication they'd even heard her. Their eyes were on Hoodwink. More than a few of them were slobbering.

  "She speaks the truth." Hoodwink's words and manner had changed entirely. He spoke like a man who expected to be obeyed. "The User flees to the south. Pursue the krub. Now!"

  The gols didn't even hesitate. They made off at a run in the direction Richard had gone.

  "They'll kill him if they catch him," Ari said.

  Hoodwink scowled. "Bastard deserves it for what he did to you."

  She regarded him warily, not sure she knew who he was anymore. Not sure she knew who she herself was. "How did you do that anyway?"

  "Do what? Oh. Make them run, you mean. Well, sometimes the convincing works right well. The numbers on my suit trick them, make them think I'm a gol somebody. And if I believe I'm a gol somebody myself, well, you know what they say—if he looks like a somebody, talks like a somebody, well he must be a somebody."

  Ari gazed at the numbers on his chest. "What does it mean?"

  "Eight."

  She raised an eyebrow. "Eight."

  "My gol name." He wrapped his free hand around her waist. "Nothing you need concern yourself with for now. We're going back to your house." He glanced at the snowpack around her. "Where's your coat? Or cloak?"

  "Don't ask."

  She'd forgotten the cold until he mentioned the cloak, and now she felt it keenly. She snuggled against Hoodwink like a little girl. Though the shard had healed her ribs, it had done nothing for the pain in her knee, which flared up again, and she limped worse than ever.

  "Everyone's going to think I'm your mother," she said in that cranky tone of hers. Everything she said sounded cranky these days.

  "Good." He grinned. Of all the things about her father, she remembered his grin the most fondly. It comforted her. "Then our disguise is complete. No one'd ever suspect the leader of the New Users is the mother of a gol."

  "Yes," she said, the sarcasm oozing. "And a fine leader she is. In her dotage." She looked at him. "How did you become a gol?"

  He frowned, saying nothing. Another guard patrol jogged past. That signaled the end of the conversation, apparently.

  A short while later Ari was back inside her tiny home, seated by the frosted window, a fresh cup of tea in hand, the door sealed up against the cold, Hoodwink sitting in the chair across from her. She took a deep sip, then rested the cup on her leg. Her knee had stopped acting up, at least.

  Hoodwink. She stared at him, at a loss for words. He seemed to be waiting for her to speak first.

  "I never thought this day would come," she said at last. "The day you returned from beyond the Gate. From beyond death."

  "So you knew, then." Hoodwink nodded absently. "That passing the Gate would kill me. And you let me go anyway."

  She stared at him, the indignation rising inside her. "Now just a minute young man—" Young man? What was she thinking? She cleared her throat, and tried again. Not so cranky this time. "Just hold on... Hoodwink. I didn't know that crossing the Gate would kill you. There was a chance you'd fall during the climb, true enough. And that the gols on the other side would greet you with swords. But killed just for crossing? I didn't know. How could I? Besides, if I recall, you did accept the risk."

  Yes. He'd accepted the risk to save her. Her. Why was she hiding her true feelings like this? Was it the indignation she felt over his tone? Partially. No, truth was, she'd hardened over the years. She'd had to surround herself with a shell of iron as Leader of the New Users. It was the only way to protect herself.

  "Oh the gols on the other side greeted me with swords all right," Hoodwink said. "But maybe not in the way you think. Tell me something, just what do you believe is on the Outside? What notes did you get back from the Users who went before me?"

  She scratched her head vigorously. Her scalp could really itch sometimes. Another mark of old age, she supposed. "Only some gibberish about sand, and giant skeletons."

  "That's outside the city walls, sure," Hoodwink said. "But I mean the real Outside."

  She set aside her tea, and regarded him warily. "The real Outside? I don't— come on, out with it."

  He smiled enigmatically. "The Outside beyond the Outside."

  She shook her head. "Now you've really lost me, dad."

  He laughed, and looked away. "This feels wrong somehow, doesn't it? You calling me dad. Grandson might be more appropriate."

  She smiled coldly. "So even you would patronize me?"

  The humor left him. "No Ari. That's not what I meant, not at all." He stood, and walked to the bookshelf hammered into the wall. He pulled out a volume.
Ubik, by Philip K. Dick. One of her favorites. He flipped through the tome. "Look, the gols need our help, but their inner workings won't allow them to accept it. This isn't news to you. It's what the old Leader wanted ten years ago. It's what you want. Well, jump up and down for joy, Ari, because I've found a way to do it."

  She stared at him a moment. "How?"

  "I'll get into that later. For now all you need to know is, well, to succeed I need someone on the Inside who can track the gols, and keep me in the loop on how well the changes I've planned for them take. Someone who can get to the Control Room in the mayor's office. Someone who knows the halls of his house. I want you to be that someone. But first we need to fix up your body."

  She frowned. "Someone on the Inside? What are you talking about? Inside the mayor's house?"

  He smiled briefly—an impatient smile, she thought—and returned the book to the shelf. He strode to the stand-up mirror by the dusty make-up desk, and with a dramatic flourish he removed the white blanket that covered it.

  "There are levels of the mind." He had his back to her, and his reflection spoke from the mirror's depths. "As different from this one as ice to stone. You need to go up a level before you'll know what we're facing." He glanced over his shoulder at her. "Tell me, Ari. What would you give to have your youth back? Your beauty?"

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  "My youth?" That piqued Ari's interest, which of course he must have known it would. Who wouldn't want their youth back?

  She answered slowly. "I would give quite a lot. But, tell me, what's the price? And don't tell me there isn't one. There's always a price. Especially for something so valuable."

  "Oh there's a price all right," Hoodwink said. "And I wouldn't dare tell you differently."

  Ari tapped her foot impatiently. "So what is it?"

  "Your innocence, mostly. You'll learn the truth the other Leader thought he knew, but didn't."

  Her eyes focused on the numbers on his chest. "Will I become a gol, like you?"