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

by Jay Allan

  "Max?"

  She tried to take off the binds at his wrists, and it took her a few moments to figure out the latch that unlocked them. Next she opened the buckle at his waist, and he fell into her arms.

  "Max, are you okay? Max?" She tried to open one of his eyelids.

  He snapped awake. "Ari!" He hugged her. "Thought I'd lost you."

  "Max," she smiled. "It's me. Maggie!"

  "Damn," Max said.

  She heard footsteps, and another man dressed in white appeared at the door. She couldn't tell if he was good or bad. The eyes of the new man widened when he saw them.

  Max leaped from her arms and immediately tackled the man. Max thumped him on the head until the man sagged like a rag doll. Then he stood up and dashed from the room.

  She wasn't sure if she was supposed to follow him, and she started to panic. "Max?" She hugged herself, and glanced around the empty room nervously. "Max!"

  He returned, and she nearly cried with relief. She'd never been so happy to see him.

  "I'm scared Max," she said. "Are we in trouble with Master Jeremy?"

  He grabbed both her hands, and sat her in the same chair she'd awakened in. She obeyed, as was her nature. "We don't have much time." He secured the clamps around her wrists, and buckled the belt.

  "Max are we in trouble?" she said again.

  "We are." Max lowered the prongs over her forehead.

  "It's cold," she said, and shivered. For some reason she didn't think she was supposed to feel cold anymore. "Let's go back to Master Jeremy. Let's get the beatings done with. Please Max."

  Max studied the pad beside her chair. "I've only ever read about these in the system archives. Never actually used one."

  The white-coated man near the door awakened with a groan. Max went to him, and hauled him over to the pad. He wrapped his hands around the man's throat. "Restore her or I crush your windpipe."

  The man stared groggily at the pad, then began pressing buttons. Max watched him carefully. "If she doesn't wake up as the woman I know, I'm putting you in the other chair and giving you the revision meant for me."

  The man said nothing, but pressed a button on the pad and the chair hummed to life.

  She was scared, more scared than she'd ever been in her tiny, sheltered life. A sudden thought occurred to her.

  "Max?" she said. "Do you love me?"

  Those words got his attention, and he looked from the pad. "I..."

  "Do you?"

  He opened his mouth, but then shook his head. "She's not herself," he said quietly. Max glanced at the man, and tightened his grip around that throat. "Do it."

  The man slid his fingers across the pad.

  "See you in a bit, Ari," Max said.

  She found herself on a tiny island, surrounded by a vortex of memory. The vortex, and the stormy sea around her, receded, so that the island grew until around her lay only sand—dunes and dunes of the gritty stuff hunching to the clear horizon. Behind her, the Forever Gate climbed to infinity.

  Her father was here. He'd crossed the Gate for her.

  In his hands, he held the twin halves of a coconut.

  "Step through the mirror," he said, extending the halves.

  She took the broken shells, and sipped the sweet, nourishing liquid inside.

  The sand sprouted grass, trees, and bushes.

  She looked to her father in wonder, but he was gone.

  In his place stood a mirror. The blooming landscape reflected back at her. Round leaves, rich trunks, flowering hedges, everything reproduced in minute detail. Everything except herself.

  She had no reflection.

  She stepped through the mirror.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  She opened her eyes to see Tanner watching her, holding one of the revisors by the neck.

  "Tanner," she said.

  Tanner rammed the revisor's head into the desk, knocking the gol unconscious.

  He freed her from the chair. "Welcome back, Ari." He turned away without so much as a hug.

  Ari stood. Another revisor lay sprawled on the floor beside her. The tip of the telescopic monocle poked from the gol's eye, where someone had hammered it in. Blood from the wound plastered the revisor's face. More of Tanner's handiwork?

  "Hurry," Tanner said. Just as if he were blind, he began to slide his hands over the desk that abutted the chair opposite hers. "We have to find the Revision Box."

  Of course. This room was sourced from a Box, like the Control Room.

  Ari surveyed the desk beside her. "What's it look like?"

  "You can only see the Box when it's closed," Tanner said.

  "Ah." So she did as Tanner did, and glided her fingers across the desk beside her, and over the strange levers and dials, and above and around the revision chair. She moved forward to search behind the chair, and the toe of her boot stubbed an invisible object on the floor. Like a street mummer she was able to outline the shape of an unseen chest. Made of wood, she thought, judging from the grainy texture. The lid seemed open.

  "Found it," she said, feeling a swell of pride at having discovered the Box first. She really did enjoy winning.

  She closed the lid.

  Instantly the fabric of reality stretched and folded, and the revision chairs, the desks and everything else warped along that fabric, twisting into the invisible box as if the entire chamber were some tapestry folding in upon itself. The whole room seemed to whip right through her body, and she felt strange inside, unreal.

  Then it was done. Only bare walls, ceiling and floor were left, with not a piece of furniture in sight save for the sealed wooden chest at Ari's feet.

  That strange feeling of unreality inside her worsened all of a sudden, and she keeled over and threw up.

  "Forgot to tell you." Tanner came up beside her. "It's best to close the Box from behind."

  "Great." She wiped her hand across her lips, and swallowed the acrid taste from her mouth. She hated throwing up.

  Ari turned the key that sat in the lock of the chest, pocketed it, and scooped the Box under one arm. "Surprisingly light."

  "Or you're surprisingly strong." Tanner smiled ironically. "Like a gol maybe?"

  Ari and Tanner dashed into the adjoining room, which was empty save for two ladderback chairs set against the wall, and the Direwalker with a twisted neck on the floor. Nicely done, Tanner.

  The two of them crossed to the corridor beyond.

  Here the walls were white, and arches embossed with carvings of sea creatures decorated the doorways of the side chambers. A gold-rimmed red carpet ran along the center of the floor. Triple-pronged candelabras were set every five paces.

  "Which way?" Tanner said.

  She ran the blueprint of the house through her mind, this place she'd lived and walked through so many times in her early twenties. Urgent footfalls and shouts echoed from somewhere ahead.

  "Ari, they're onto us." Tanner's voice cut with impatience. "Which way?"

  When she didn't answer, Tanner took a step forward.

  Ari shot out a hand and blocked him. She glanced downward, indicating the gold-trimmed carpet. "What's really a carpet, and what's something else? This way."

  Ari dashed forward, taking care to run along the bare floor between carpet and wall. Tanner followed in single-file behind her.

  On the far side of the corridor four Direwalkers rounded the bend at a sprint. They spotted Ari and Tanner and gave a hoot. Two of them held fire swords, their fire swords, and the blades glowed a molten red.

  "Ari..." Tanner's voice drifted to her.

  She spun into a side hall as flames roared from those blades. Tanner jostled into her, the back of his uniform singed.

  Ari raced down the corridor, and on the right side the hallway opened onto a flight of wooden stairs—the back route the servants used.

  Ari took the stairs three at a time. At the bottom, she turned into the kitchen, and hurried through the hanging pots and pans. There were no cooks here, not at this hour.
r />   "The back door is just this way," she said.

  "Why do builders always put the back doors in the kitchens?" Tanner said.

  Ari ignored the comment, because just ahead seven Direwalkers guarded the door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Ari immediately backtracked.

  The other pursuing Direwalkers burst into the far side of the kitchen. The fire swords flared in the grips of the two at the front.

  Ari turned into the pantry, and raced past the foodstuffs and out into the main dining hall. She edged by the blackwood table and out into a hallway that was much the same as the one on the second floor, absent the carpet.

  Tanner kept close to her side, and behind she heard the footfalls of Direwalkers, growing in volume. It was an eerie sound, the clatter of claws against marble, and she knew that some of the Direwalkers had broken ahead of the pack and were running on all fours.

  She and Tanner burst into the empty reception hall. She dashed obliquely toward the sword rack, taking a circuit around the carpet.

  The pursuing Direwalkers simply cut across the carpet, and were almost upon her and Tanner.

  The rack with its showcase swords lay just ahead.

  "Catch!" As she ran, she tossed the Revision Box to Tanner—

  She leapt toward the rack, somersaulting over it—

  Grabbed two swords from the rack in midair—

  And landed on the other side.

  She pivoted.

  Tanner had vaulted over the rack as well, and two Direwalkers leaped after him in pursuit.

  She brought the swords about in a wide arc. Tanner stooped, and she cut the two Direwalkers in half before they touched the ground.

  Two more approached around the rack and she made short work of them.

  She saw a bright ball of flame at the periphery of her vision—

  She leaped toward the wall, and used it to slingshot into the air—

  Flames streamed past below her—

  She landed beside the Direwalker and its stolen fire sword.

  A jab, a parry, a slash, and she'd severed the hand holding the blade.

  A spin of the body, followed by a wide backstab, and she plunged her second sword into its heart.

  She hooked her boot into the hilt of the dropped fire sword, kicked the blade to eye level, and swapped one of her blades for that one. She immediately felt the spark of vitra inside her, jolting up her arm from the weapon.

  It felt good.

  Another stream of flame cut toward her—

  She parried with the fire blade—

  The flames parted in a tight V-shape that singed her hair and clothes.

  Two quick steps and a sideways leap from a pillar brought her to the Direwalker in question, and after a quick exchange of feints and stabs, she'd taken its head, and the other fire sword.

  More Direwalkers closed...

  She released the spark of vitra from the blades as she fought, launching hell-fire on all sides. She weaved, a dancer at play. Her rhythm was the blade and its fire; her music was the gush of blood and the sizzle of flesh and the screams of the dying. She avoided the carpet the entire time, though sometimes her foot brushed its edge.

  When it was done, and the Direwalkers lay around her in various states of mutilation and ash, she tossed one of the fire blades to Tanner, who'd wisely flattened himself against the wall and given her room to fight.

  "Nice," Tanner said. There seemed a touch of awe in his voice. Or at least respect.

  "Well that's that." Ari felt immensely proud of herself. She'd barely broken a sweat. "I think I'm at twenty."

  "Let's just go." Tanner seemed weary.

  She took the Revision Box from him, and hoisted it over her shoulder.

  The carpet began to writhe beside them. Tentacles formed, reaching for their feet.

  "Out of here!" Tanner turned to run along the space between carpet and wall.

  "No!" Ari released a surge of flame, and the tentacles instantly retreated. "We get the Control Room Box, then we leave." Leaving now meant Marks had died for nothing.

  Shrieks and howls came from her left. Direwalkers flowed down the wide, branching stairs from the second level. Fifty Direwalkers. A hundred.

  "Ari..." Tanner laid a hand on her arm.

  Still more Direwalkers came down those stairs, the gols crowded so close together as to resemble a single entity, like the black python she'd seen at the circus as a child. A giant version of it anyway.

  "They'll be time to get the Control Room Box another day," Tanner said. "We've done what we came here to do. We've planted the tracker."

  Even more Direwalkers came, and crowded down the stairs behind the others. Far more than Ari and Tanner could handle on their own, even with the swords.

  A tendril hurled at her from the carpet—

  She ducked—

  The tendril slammed into the wall, leaving cracks.

  She released another stream of flame into the carpet. The fire blackened the surface where it struck, and the creature squealed, retreating.

  "Ari let's go!" Tanner said.

  But she was already running past him.

  And so Ari and Tanner ran from the mayor's house with death in pursuit. One or two Direwalkers occasionally hindered their progress, but the pair cut them down easily enough. Across the grounds the two dashed, through the damaged gates, and out into the night.

  But they would not escape so easily.

  The army of Direwalkers pursued the entire way, and followed the pair onto the lamp-lit street beyond. The faster ones ran across the snowpack on all fours, while the more agile ones leaped between the rooftops of the houses beside them, sending snow sliding down onto the street.

  Though she inhabited the body of a gol, she was getting tired. Beside her, Tanner wasn't faring much better. Both of them were winded. They couldn't keep this up for much longer. The Revision Box was getting heavier and heavier on her shoulder. The sword felt like lead.

  She had an idea. It was a small hope, but it was chance, no matter how tiny.

  "Hold them off," she said.

  "What?" Tanner's voice exuded incredulity above the exhaustion.

  "Do it." She halted on the snowpack, and dropped the chest.

  "Hope you know what you're doing," Tanner said, lifting the blade.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Ari spun around, and was forced to slay two Direwalkers at the head of the pack. As Tanner defended against the others, she raised the sword over the box and let the vitra accumulate, but she didn't release it. The blade glowed molten, and shook with the power of pent-up flames. The smoke plumes rose to engulf her hands. Her fingers burned, but there was nothing for it. She needed to put on the biggest show she could manage.

  The biggest of her life.

  "Halt, scum!" she shouted, her breath misting. The Direwalkers at the forefront had begun to overwhelm Tanner, and he retreated toward her. "Halt or I'll destroy the Box! Halt I said!"

  The Direwalkers began to obey, one by one, and the onslaught slowed as the gols in the forefront held back those behind. Direwalkers occasionally broke through, but Tanner hacked them down.

  The Direwalkers formed a tentative half-circle, which quickly became a full circle as more and more Direwalkers arrived. Tanner patrolled that tight circle, brandishing his flaming weapon, forcing back those who came too near.

  The Direwalkers in the forefront snarled, and snapped at the air with their teeth. They reminded her of chained curs.

  Ari raised the blade higher, and accumulated even more vitra in the blade. The sword rumbled, and the smoke poured forth even more profusely. She could feel the heat over her whole body, and the snowpack below her began to melt. The air smelled of cooked meat, and the pain she felt in her hands bordered on indescribable. But she was a gol, and she'd discovered that she could ignore that pain.

  "Go ahead," she said through gritted teeth. "Attack. By the time you touch me, your mayor's precious Revision Box will be ashes. I guar
antee you."

  There was a commotion among the enemy, and the ranks rippled as a huge Direwalker shoved its way to the front. This one towered three heads above Ari, and it had four arms, two in the usual place, and two more midway the ribs. Each hand held a scimitar.

  The huge Direwalker bared its teeth in a rictus of hate, and those finger-long fangs pricked the air.

  It stepped toward Ari.

  Tanner lifted his fire blade to Fourarms' throat.

  "Tanner wait," Ari said.

  Fourarms glanced at Tanner as if he were a fly. A maggot. The heat from Tanner's blade didn't even touch its throat. She saw no scoring. No blistering.

  Fourarms glared at Ari for a long moment, then turned its head and spat some guttural words at the others. The Direwalkers seemed reluctant to obey at first, but Fourarms spat the strange words again, and the others slowly dispersed.

  Fourarms glowered at her a while longer. "We will meet again."

  The giant Direwalker batted Tanner's sword aside and sprinted after the others. It sheathed its four blades in mechanical sequence, and then hunched to run on all six appendages, seeming very much like an insect in the dark.

  Ari watched the horde vanish into the night, and she wondered what the citizens barricaded within their houses and observing from their windows thought of the whole bizarre proceeding.

  Well, there'd certainly be news for the criers tomorrow.

  "Twenty-seven," Tanner said, gazing at the dead. "To your twenty."

  "You win." She released vitra and the sword went out. She sat down—collapsed, really—onto the chest, and unwrapped her blackened fingers from the hilt. To her disgust, some of her skin remained glued to the haft, and it stretched away from her palms like gauze. Her hands were ruined.

  "Take it easy there. Easy!" Tanner helped free her hands from the hilt, and then he bound her palms in fabric ripped from the cloaks of the dead Direwalkers. She kept a wary eye out while he worked.

  "Tanner," she said.

  "Mmm?"

  This was hard, but it needed to be said. "Sorry for all the times I've been a bitch to you."

  He laughed, just a little. "You've never been a bitch to me Ari."

  "No, I have." She looked at him and smiled sadly. "And I shouldn't have. I'll try to be less of a bitch in the future, okay?"