by Paul Tassi
Lush green plants sprouted out of the stone floor around the edges of the room, and Lucas wondered if they were always there or if they had been transplanted for this occasion only. In the center of it all was an enormous cornucopia of unfamiliar food that guests were sampling as they milled around it. Hoisted on a large spit was the skinless form of some great animal Lucas didn’t recognize. It was hard to tell if it was feline, canine, bovine, or something else entirely. A neat row of glowing blue flames underneath kept the beast warm.
On the ground, guests chatted with one another. Many of the men had donned a look close to Lucas’s own relatively subdued suit while others wore stranger ensembles. As they stepped out into the open, one attendee looked at them, then another, and within seconds the entire room had gone silent. Every eye turned in their direction, and they glanced at each other uncomfortably.
Mercifully, Talis Vale quickly walked over to them, downing the last of her drink and handing it off to a servant as she approached. She touched her hands to their arms while the old man who had escorted them shuffled off into the background after a short bow. Talis turned to address the crowd.
“Our guests of honor have arrived at last,” she said, as everyone had now fallen silent. “And don’t they look lovely? May I present Lucas and Asha, the Earthborn!”
There was a rousing cheer from the crowd. Lucas thought there were probably about three hundred guests in all. It was a far cry from the millions he had spoken in front of earlier, but this was an equally intense prospect, as everyone was transfixed by the pair of them. Talis kept her hands on their backs as they walked down the stairs onto the main floor. Lucas noticed an enormous old marble throne to his left.
“Don’t worry,” Talis said. “Everyone here has been instructed to mind their own business and not swarm all over the two of you the entire night, as much as they may want to.”
A new voice came from behind them.
“And if they do bother you, let me know and I’ll boot their asses out of here.”
It was Tannon Vale, dressed in his military finest. He’d forgone his medals for a single pin that was a symbol Lucas didn’t know. There wasn’t a fleck of dust on his entire slate-gray uniform. He did, however, have an energy pistol on his hip. Lucas looked around and realized that at each pillar stood an armed guard clutching a large rifle.
“So you’re running security?” Lucas asked.
“I run security for this whole damn planet, why should this party be any different?” he replied with a snort.
“How many death threats have we gotten so far?” Asha asked.
“About six hundred an hour,” he replied. “But only 3 percent of those are from anyone who’s actually dangerous.”
“Tannon!” Talis exclaimed. “You’re scaring our guests.”
“They’ve seen worse, I can assure you. And besides, no one is within five miles of the palace who hasn’t been put through ten levels of security, which includes all your little fancy friends here.” He motioned to the crowd. Lucas still wasn’t sure exactly how far a Soran mile was yet.
Talis turned to them with a reassuring smile.
“I promise you are perfectly safe here.” She dimmed a bit. “Though I cannot say the same when you run off to join Tannon’s army.”
“It’s your army, I just run it,” the admiral replied. Suddenly his eyes widened.
“Oh, that reminds me.” He turned and shouted toward a conclave of guests behind them, “Maston, get over here.”
A tall, broad-shouldered man broke from the group and strode toward them. He too was in military dress fatigues, though his uniform was dark blue instead of gray and had a full array of commendations across the chest. Black curls of hair spilled down his forehead, and he had a pronounced dimpled chin like a cartoon villain. His brown eyes were deep and dark, and immediately worked their way up and down Asha. Annoyed, she cocked her eyebrow at him. He turned away from her with a smile.
“Yes, Admiral. How can I be of service?”
“You’re first in line to meet the aliens. Lucas and Asha, this is Mars Maston, former Commander of the Fifth Fleet and current First Watchman of the Guardians. He’s helping out with security tonight.”
Lucas noticed a thin line that ran down the right side of his neck, parallel with his collar. A scar? It was the only visible imperfection on what was otherwise a flawless visage.
“It is an honor,” Maston said, bowing deeply.
“Mars like the planet?” Lucas asked.
“Which planet is that?” he said, righting himself.
“Oh right, errr, it’s one of ours.” Lucas felt foolish.
“Well, I’d love to visit it someday,” Maston said with a smile. “It’s amazing,” he continued, turning to Asha.
“What is?” she asked, eyebrow still arched.
“That the first contact we make with another species, they give us an ambassador that outshines our entire race with her beauty.”
Asha rolled her eyes.
“I didn’t need to fly a trillion miles across the galaxy to be hit on by soldiers. I had plenty of that at home.”
“Don’t mind him,” Talis said helpfully. “He’s been a charmer since he could walk. Trust me, I used to babysit him.”
Maston looked a bit sheepish and veered the conversation elsewhere.
“I was impressed to learn that you two are enlisting in the SDI. That’s quite a high calling after just finishing a war of your own.”
“The highest calling,” Tannon said. “And it’s the real reason you have the honor of being at this gala, incidentally.”
Maston looked confused.
“I don’t understand.”
“The Earthborn will be joining your Guardians.”
A look of fury swept over Maston’s face for a brief moment, but it was quickly wiped away and he forced a smile.
“But Admiral,” he said, his voice dropping an octave, “the Guardians are the most elite unit in the entire Initiative. They’re bred from birth for the squadron. It’s not even possible to enlist.”
“It is now.”
“But sir, there’s no way their skills will match that of the existing team. The Guardians have the finest genetic material on the planet. My best soldiers cost billions of marks to assemble.”
The charm was gone, and his voice was now distinctly hollow and cold.
“They also have a bad reputation after your last few missions went … awry,” Tannon said. “You need some good press, and these two joining up will turn them into heroes again in an instant.”
“They are heroes, sir.”
“Not recently.”
Lucas felt the need to interject, though this was the first he was hearing about the Guardians or his imminent deployment to them.
“We’ve been fighting for years now, and outlived everyone on our planet. We took out an entire Xalan space station, and killed a Shadow general on his own ship.”
Maston looked upward in a way that was dangerously close to an eye roll as he let out a sigh. Lucas wanted to hit him.
“Yes, yes, I’ve read the Stream.”
“Then you should know we’re ready for anything you can throw at us,” Asha said menacingly.
“I very much doubt that.”
“You have your orders, Commander. They’ll report to you in a week,” Tannon said forcefully.
“Yes, sir,” Maston replied without breaking eye contact with Lucas.
Apparently Sorans didn’t salute, or Maston was just overcome with anger as he turned and marched off into the crowd without glancing at either of them again.
“Oh, Mars,” Talis said wistfully. “He’s a royal pain sometimes, but underneath he’s a fine soldier, and a fine man. And he’s been through so much …”
“If he gives you any trouble, I can have him deployed to Thylium,” said Tannon. They both gave him blank stares.
“The ice moon,” he clarified.
Tannon glanced over his shoulder to where a large must
achioed man gave him a friendly wave from the other side of the massive banquet table. He returned it with a slight nod.
“Ah, damn it,” he said, turning back to the group. “That’s Madric Stoller, and he’s about to talk my ear off for twenty minutes. Can you give me some backup?” he asked, turning to Asha. The man was indeed already starting to make his way around the table.
“What’s in it for me?” Asha asked dryly.
“He’s the second-richest man on the planet. Probably a good friend to make.”
“He also ran against me last term for high chancellor,” Talis added.
Asha shrugged.
“Interesting enough, I suppose.” She turned to Lucas. “You going to be alright by yourself ?”
Before Lucas could speak, Talis chimed in. “I will see to it he’s well cared for.”
That was good enough for Asha and she turned to leave, her iridescent dress swirling. They met Stoller as he approached, and his face lit up with delight as he was introduced to Asha.
“Come on,” Talis said to him. “It’s your turn to meet the masses too.”
The next few hours were a blur. Lucas was paraded around to an endless array of dignitaries, nobles, provincial leaders, and planetary celebrities. Their names and faces all blended together after a while, and Lucas amused himself by trying to sample every piece of food on the central table at least once. A thought occurred to him as he was eating a pile of cubed red meat on a crystal plate while speaking to the Vice Emissary of Something-or-Other.
“Where’s Alpha?” he asked Talis, who seemed glad to be talking about something other than the food shortage of the man’s province.
“He was invited to the gala, of course, but he refused the offer. It’s hard to blame him, as I can’t guarantee many of these folks wouldn’t be cowering in fear if he were here. Only a handful of people in this room have even seen a Xalan in person. He’s down with the Shadow’s ship, working with our scientists.”
Lucas figured that’s probably exactly where he wanted to be, but it would have been nice to have another friend around. Asha was currently surrounded by a throng of admirers hanging on her every word. Her hand gestures implied she was regaling them with tales of one of their past battles.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Lucas said to Talis and the emissary, “I think I’m going to get some air.”
“Of course, my dear,” Talis said, and the man next to her nodded. “Come find me later.”
Lucas made his way through the crowd with all eyes on him. He figured that everyone he passed was probably dying to meet him, but knew they would be excommunicated by Talis if they bothered him without his permission. It was quite kind of her to make that rule.
He walked through a pair of armed guards standing stiffly at two pillars near the edge of the room. An open doorway led out onto a small balcony. The noise grew quieter as he stepped out of the grand hall. The brilliant display of stars was there once more, and he could see two smaller moons embedded in the sky, one full, one just a sliver. He supposed he was on the other side of the palace now, as the three he’d seen before were out of sight.
In the distance, tall spires of buildings glowed, lit up by pocket-sized null cores far smaller than the one that had powered their ship from Earth to Sora. Lucas wondered when or if he would visit the city of Elyria itself. Or anywhere else for that matter. The palace was gorgeous, but there was a whole new planet out there to see. He shipped off for military training in a week, and who knew what part of the world that would be in? Probably nowhere nearly as beautiful as this. Perhaps enlisting so quickly had been a rash decision, but it had seemed like the right thing to do at the time. But if he died fighting this war, he would get to see only a fraction of this wondrous place he had come so far to find. It was no wonder Alpha had called it a “crown jewel” that the Xalans sought as a prize at the end of the war.
Suddenly, a voice spoke behind him.
“Quite a view, isn’t it?”
Lucas turned. A young woman in a sapphire-colored dress walked slowly toward him. Her blond hair was done up in a series of twisting strands that must have taken hours to arrange. Her neck and wrists glittered with the starlight reflecting off precious stones. As she drew closer, the moonlight illuminated her face. Her eyes sparkled at a distance, and it became immediately clear she was awe-inspiringly beautiful, with each facial feature perfectly measured and placed. And judging by the silhouette of her dress, she had a figure to match.
She stood next to Lucas without looking at him and put her hands on the stone banister in front of her, gazing out at the horizon. The guards hadn’t stopped her from approaching him, which meant she had to be someone of high importance, even in a room full of the most powerful people on the planet. Lucas had forgotten she’d asked a question. She asked another.
“Did you have any cities like Elyria on Earth?” she asked. Her voice had a melodic quality to it that instantly made Lucas forget all about the stress of the party inside. He found his tongue.
“None like this. We had a few great cities. New York, Paris, Dubai, but none could match this.”
She nodded.
“Yes, from what I understand your world was quite a bit younger than ours. But you do seem … civilized.”
“Well, uh, thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” she said with an earnest smile.
She was still staring off into the distance, and had yet to make eye contact with Lucas. She put her elbow on the banister and rested her chin on her hand. Lucas was trying to guess her age. Twenty-five in Earth years maybe? But it was always hard to tell on Sora, with so many procedures to make anyone look young through genetic reconstruction or therapy.
“Who are you?” he asked.
She finally turned to face him. A nearby lantern revealed her eyes, which were a shocking spectrum with flecks of blue, green, brown, and gold, all surrounded by a dark violet ring. Lucas had never seen anything like it before. Her irises were more captivating than the entire galaxy of stars behind them.
“I’m Corinthia, but most around here call me Cora. That’ll happen when everyone’s known you since birth.”
“Since birth?” Lucas asked.
“Well, if you can call it that. My parents spent trillions on the genetics, and I don’t even want to know where I was put together. A Vale has to be perfect, of course.
“I hear you have one of your own on the way as well. I suppose congratulations are in order. The First Son of Sora and all that. I’m sure they’ll give him the best genes on the market. And probably some off market as well. Just avoid eyes like these,” she said, motioning to her own. “Even at a hundred million apiece, the coloring isn’t worth the light sensitivity.”
“You’re a Vale,” Lucas said at last.
“Yes, yes, I know, the pains of being the High Chancellor’s daughter. I must sound like a proper brat,” she said, rolling her eyes.
Talis’s daughter. He could see the resemblance now, vaguely.
“Not at all,” Lucas said politely, determined to pretend he knew who she was all along.
“I do actual work around here, despite what they may say about me. I’m actually Chief Military Liaison for the Chancellor’s office as of last year, so we’ll be seeing quite a lot of each other. I hear you ship out with the Guardians in a week.”
“So I’m told.”
“Why would you enlist in the Initiative?” she asked. “You just got here after fighting a war, and now you want to jump into another one?”
“Well,” Lucas said, “I do have a planet to avenge.”
“And one to save as well,” she added, her tone shifting from playful to serious. “Sora will be overrun in my lifetime if we do not find a way to end this war soon. Defenses are breaking down across the rim systems every day. They could be here within a decade. And truth be told, we don’t have the strength to hold them off again.”
She tucked a loose strand of hair back into a braid and continued. “I’m tired of wa
r. We all are. Soran history is full of them. We’ve fought over land, money, race, religion. We had to fight our own creations, the machines, and now we’re doing it all over again with the Xalans. We’ll never learn.”
“Earth wasn’t so different,” Lucas said. “Rarely a century went by without millions dying in conflict. It’s human nature, I suppose.”
“Ah yes,” she said. “That’s what you call yourselves, isn’t it, ‘humans.’”
“It’s going to be hard to break that habit.”
She fell silent for a minute and took a sip from the glass in her hand.
“Just promise me something, will you? Finish this.”
Lucas raised his eyebrows.
“Your drink?” he said, nodding toward the blue vial she held.
“The war.”
“That’s a tall order.”
“I know what they’re planning, revealing the truth to the Xalans. It can work.”
She really was well-informed.
“Convince the Xalans we can live in peace. Expose their leaders for the liars and murderers they are. Winning their minds is achievable. Wiping them out entirely is not.”
A few trillion marks in genetic material had obviously made the woman in front of him poised, intelligent, and disarmingly beautiful. As she drifted slightly closer to him, Lucas realized it could be a potentially dangerous combination.
A shiver ran through her and she took a few steps back.
“It’s a bit chilly out here. I’m going to return to the party, as much as it may pain me. I can’t remember the last time this many windbags were in one room.”
“Alright,” Lucas said, chuckling. There was a raucous chorus of laugher from inside. “I’m going to wait a minute longer.”