The StarMaster's Son

by Gibson Morales

  "Don't do it!" Felik shouted.

 

  He realized she was right.

  The captive cracked. "Okay. A Saganerio network starkeeper asked me to keep quiet about it. He told me to look the other way."

  "Well, now I'm telling you to give me the information."

  "Can't you guys get it from the starkeepers?"

  "This way's faster."

  A minute more and Steeger shared a data node with Felik. "You had no right to do that," he said, still in the interrogation room.

  "Don't like it? Downgrade my karma." Not that it would've mattered much to her.

  Felik glared at her before she kicked him out of the construct.

  "I just received an update that we now know how the Wraiths left. Steeger's work?" Juliard asked. Felik hesitated to ask how she guessed that.

  "She lives up to both of her nicknames," Felik said. The Green Devil, plus the less honorary one.

  "I take it this is your first real combat experience?"

  "I've run sims before," Felik said. Including one for this operation.

  "They don't do the best job of emphasizing the fallout. No one ever thinks about what happens when an energy beam misses its target. How gravity manipulators can cause a nearby sun's plasma and hydrogen to mix. Or whatever happens to the MIA soldiers."

  The command sphere's grass seemed to darken at her words. Grimacing, he doubted he could resolve whatever strife she was drawing upon. At least it shed a little light on her past.

  "Looks like you're getting that experience now." For the space of a breath, there was a hint of empathy in her sullen expression. He took that as a good sign.

  His optimism diminished when the holodisplay filled their chamber with a fleet of bogeys. There were too many to take in at a glance.

  Steeger said.

  Chapter 25

  KAI

  Kai rubbed her stiff neck and sat up, the ground soft and damp. The wet, warm air threatened to smother her as she pushed away some ferns and rose to a stand. On every side of her, long lime-green vines hung from a thick tangle of mossy branches. Distant shrieks, chirping, and hooting of local fauna put her on edge for a second.

  Then, she heard the gentle swash of waves. She looked out beyond the mess of foliage and glimpsed a beach of red sand, the water a rich cyan.

  Suddenly, the beach and the jungle fell out of focus. The next thing she knew, she stood inside a cavern, the rock under her feet dancing with a reddish glow.

  "Is this a construct?" she wondered out loud.

  "This isn't the reality you know. I take it this is the first Engineer institute you have visited?" a beetle-like creature with wrinkly pink skin and patches of a blood red carapace said. Her nexus didn't tag his name or species, but she was fairly certain he must've transported her here from the beach.

  "Where is Phoenix?" she asked. A blanket of heat drew her eyes up, where pools of magma churned along the cavern's roof inexplicably. "The fuck?"

  The heat felt nice after the ice world, but everything told her it was either a complex psionic hack by the Engineers or they were simply inside a sim.

  "Master Phoenix arrived two weeks before you," the red and pink beetle creature said.

  "You were sent here to wait for us, huh?"

  "I am one of his students. You may call me Ashiban. This is a simple temporal challenge he gave me." His deep voice made her think of an anthropomorphic rhino or bull.

  "What do you mean?"

  "I am to make the time between your arrivals feel like no time at all."

  As if on cue, Sarvill stumbled up next to her.

  "Good. There's one," Ashiban said. "And the other..."

  Raksamat staggered in beside them.

  "A total of ten weeks has passed in here since Master Phoenix returned," Ashiban told them.

  "That felt like ten seconds," Sarvill said, taking a wary look at the magma flowing above.

  "Then I've completed my current task."

  Sarvill motioned up. "And the lava?"

  "Also an alteration to reality challenge. Now follow me."

  Kai checked her nexus's calendar. According to it, only a few minutes had gone by. These Engineers must've run on their own clock.

  Like some kind of miniature asteroid belt, dozens of rocks and boulders hovered in the air between them and the magma roof.

  Yet if she reached up to touch a stone, it shifted its mass out of her touch. Thinking she could catch it off guard, she jumped and swatted it. Without warning, the stone plummeted to the cavern floor and vanished entirely.

  "Where are we going?" she asked. Ahead, thousands of tiny neon blue and teal crystals decorated more tunnels and landings than she cared to count.

  "You just asked me that," Ashiban said.

  "I didn't ask you that. I asked you—"

  Raksamat said.

  This must've been another "alteration to reality challenge." A trick Ashiban was playing on her. Because she hadn't just asked the same question twice in a row.

  "Did Phoenix design all of this?" she asked. "And I don't care if I asked it already."

  "Mostly yes," Ashiban said. "The other students and I helped polish up certain areas. And if you are going to be his student, you must address him as Master Phoenix."

  "I'm not his student yet, am I?" Kai grinned. "Well, it's a pretty good construct."

  "Why is it that when your brains can't comprehend something, you humans assume the fault lies in that thing rather than your own mind?" Ashiban asked.

  Kai ignored his little retort. Since Phoenix didn't use a nexus, his students probably didn't. Meaning they were either speaking Basic the old-fashioned way or manipulating reality so that she perceived their communication in Basic.

  The cave opened up to a cliff side. Beyond, sprawling hills blanketed by a dense rainforest stretched for miles. This was the rest of the jungle she'd seen earlier.

  Under a sky clouded with an orange so intense it verged on noxious, the chorus of life sang from every direction—squawks, long drawn-out howls, the rustling of leaves, deep guttural growls—and the edges of the trees, the flowers, the vines glowed in the same bitter hue.

  In a sweeping gaze, she caught sight of hundreds of white bat-like fliers swooping back and forth, winding past the sea of vines of giant lily pads at the canopy level. Sometimes, they grazed the stems and left the pads shaking as they snatched up glimmering insects that had horned heads on both ends. Then they perched on the branch of a neighboring tree and devoured them.

  At a precipice as dry as bone, a white torrent of water gushed out of the rock into the ravine a hundred feet below. Kai glanced at the amphibian-like beasts basking along the pink dirt shores of a cloudy river. That's when she realized the water was actually shooting up into the precipice. She crouched to try to get a better sense of how this was happening. Oddly, she felt no water vapor.

  "Drink from it and the nanites within will begin to rebuild your old frame," Ashiban said.

  She cupped a hand, leaned over, and reached out. An invisible force field repelled her touch. Biting her lip, she pressed in harder. Yet it accomplished nothing.

  Nanites in the water. Considering the lack of conventional technology here, her bullshit detector should've gone off immediately at the idea. She chided herself for buying in to the lie so easily and threw him a dirty look.

  "Master Phoenix designed this as a basic exercise for his students," Ashiban said. "Altering the water's flow requires one to battle his will. Or at least a portion of it. When you become strong enough, you will be able to bend this reality to your will."

  The strain in Ashiban's voice hinted that he was using his own Engineer abilities now. Slowly the curve of the jet of water s
traightened until its peak leveled with them. He gave a brief hum as a concentrated white fog blossomed out of the geyser, churning and growing into clouds that saturated the air around them.

  Without warning, the clouds smothered them until it was all Kai could see. An instant later, they retreated, revealing the base of a giant hill structure, the jungle at their backs.

  An ominous, tall rectangular opening saw them inside.

  Inexplicably, a huge city spanned out before them. Everywhere, hovercrafts zipped through a dim purple fog. Skyscrapers and cranes danced with flashing neon lights, belching out jets of fire. A hum of techno beats throbbed in Kai's ears and the scent of ozone and cheap fuel plagued her. It was too much to take in at a single glance.

  And then it was gone, replaced by a set of marble steps built for a giant in a hollowed-out rock chamber.

  "What just happened?" Kai asked, disoriented by the sudden shift of their location. She turned around and saw the same elongated doorway behind them.

  "Chorisech's work," Ashiban muttered. "Always forgetting to reset the Forge."

  "Shouldn't you say, he's forge-getting?" Sarvill quipped. If that qualified as a quip.

  "The Forge?"

  "Yes, it's a chamber designed for us to freely experiment with our reality-shifting abilities. Similar, perhaps, to a workshop."

  "Chorisech, or whoever, created that city?"

  "He works on it still, recreating his homeworld. The real one was destroyed during the Great Cosmic Wars."

  "Wait, so anything I imagine will be reality?" Sarvill asked. "Like a world where I'm rich."

  "You lack the abilities of an Engineer, so no," Ashiban said.

  Kai ran her hands along the steps, inspecting every little crack and blemish, trying to wrap her head around this.

  Raksamat thought.

  It was among many of the firsts she was experiencing. Sometimes firsts could be thrilling and open up a new range of experiences. Sometimes they could be gut-wrenchingly painful, emotionally and mentally. The best were a bit of both.

  She shook her head.

 

  She paused, knowing he'd caught her in his trap. It didn't help that her arrival here had disoriented her. "Congratulations, you outwitted me. How does that make you feel?"

 

  She could've punched him, but she'd earned his criticism.

 

  "Go ahead. Rub it in while you can," Kai muttered. He might've also heard it from Jace.blek. She was suddenly very glad they'd left the mushroom boy back in his nest.

 

  Raksamat didn't speak Basic, so everything he thought was converted via their nexuses. Sometimes the translations were so good you could be speaking to another New Terran. Other times they were slightly awkward.

  "Okay, clarify," Kai said.

 

  "How can you be sure?"

 

  "I'm assuming you have a point?"

 

  "Not sure I owe you an explanation."

 

  "Brilliant philosophy. Maybe you're Engineer-worthy."

 

  With a sinking sensation, she realized he might have a point. She was not so important to anyone. Even her own family hadn't been desperate to find her.

  "You speak between yourselves. A strange source for answers," Ashiban said.

  "Phoenix never said how he actually defends this place militarily."

  "He doesn't need to defend it in that way. Through his influence on the Burkos High Council, he has ensured there are no unexpected visitors."

  She burst into laughter.

  "I don't understand your amusement," Ashiban said.

  "No, no you wouldn't." She put her hands on her hips and shifted her weight from foot to foot. This whole time there truly was nothing special staving off an attack. Yet she felt safer here than anywhere else she'd been in the last week. It was too good to be true.

  She stopped. Ashiban continued several steps before noticing and turned around. "Yes?"

  "Why am I here? You've taken big measures to keep this place a secret, so why let us into your sacred space?"

  Phoenix materialized suddenly beside them on the steps. Whether it was truly him, an avatar, or some other trick was anybody's guess. "I'm sorry. I should have warned you about the time dispersion around here. The physics aren't exactly the same as the regular universe. My students perform tests and test their performances."

  "It's fine," Kai said. At this point, she had gotten onboard with the idea that Phoenix and his Engineers had created or altered everything here to some extent.

  "It's a nice setup," Sarvill said. "You renting space?"

  "Sarvill," Kai snapped, catching a greasy whiff of steak.

  Phoenix waved it off. "You are my guests now. I can assure you of your safety. That said, I'll ask that you cooperate with my students. They aren't all versed in hospitality, but they aren't so psychologically different." He bit into a hefty cheesesteak sandwich. Kai frowned. A lot of New Terrans snacked purely for pleasure without shame. Not her. Honestly, she would've expected more restraint from Astro Phoenix, but now was hardly the time to say as much.

  Phoenix continued. "Will that be sufficient or would you like me to pretend I believe you literally just want to know why you're here?" In other words, I know you're nervous, but we can pretend you're not. Because she already knew why she was here. So they could study her memory, and maybe the black goo.

  "It's enough," Kai said.

  Phoenix's body faded out, and Ashiban proceeded up the steps. A beacon of orange light far above called out to them. This Ashiban guy meant nothing to her, yet she would tolerate him. The less he and the other Engineer students knew about her, the better. Although how to kill the master of a world like this escaped her.

  Chapter 26

  FELIK

  Four different alien species' fleets had unified against their one fleet. Each of them had already rejected Steeger's ultimatum to surrender. But as a Guardian, Felik instinctively preferred a diplomatic solution.

  The Fluk-Scoyfols were man-sized anemone-like creatures. Since they reproduced asexually, a single one could spawn enough copies to fill its own vessel. The Bloshlwin were essentially hyper-intelligent trilobites that constructed things as a hive. And the Vlamhuns were silicon-based life forms that resembled spongy globs of fat. History showed that none of them responded well to negotiations or requests to surrender.

  Still the urge to try for peace nagged at him. He wanted to be the Chief Philosopher, not a war criminal.

  With the G'hajupan, there was a chance of a resolution considering their shared history with Terrans. Centuries ago, when humanity sent apes into space during early rocket tests, one had gone missing. In actuality, a dying psionic energy-based alien species known as the G'hajupan had abducted it. From there, the G'hajupan possessed the ape and began using its physical form to rebuild their worlds. As a tribute to the chimpanzee who'd inadvertently saved them, the G'hajupan resembled hyper-intelligent ape organisms.


  And yet, whatever promise this mutual "evolutionary cousin" might hold, Steeger had rejected his earlier requests to reach out. And she was the Operational Commander here, he reminded himself, selecting a data node she'd sent him.

  On the holodisplay above the grass of his command sphere, thousands of tiny ships, not to scale, hung in clusters, millions of miles away. Under the command of the Wraiths, the fleet called itself the Yimyur Federation.

  Many ships bore an older design—crude and rigid with wings and fins. A few were massive saucer-shaped crafts. Others were bulky, like metallic asteroids.

  Felik messaged as he finished parsing the data node. Predictive algorithms suggested there was a 33% chance the Saganerio network might intervene on behalf of the Wraith.

  Steeger said.

  Felik couldn't help feeling foolish for phrasing his question like that because the data node did indicate that, more likely, Megas or his allies might have provided the Yimyur Federation with military resources. Not a certainty, but a distinct possibility given the tensions between Megas's network and Oberon's network. The latter's spies had discovered no evidence of it, however.

  His attention shifted to an incoming Fluk-Scoyfol ship. The unsightly dark vessel charged at their blockade's godweb perimeter at a sublight speed. Aimed sideways, it hurtled at them resembling a giant black flea—spines ran from the bottom of the ship's small nose to a bulbous, flat base.

  While the godweb itself was invisible, he observed the effects of it. On the holodisplay, he saw the Fluk-Scoyfol craft freeze in place under a gravity bind. A white burst—an antimatter bomb according to the battle logs—reduced it to space dust.

  As a tradition, the Fluk-Scoyfol sacrificed a ship for good luck at the start of a battle. And now the Yimyur Federation knew that the Watchers fleet's godweb around Wraith was a lot stronger than the godwebs of any of their current ships.

  Their combat protocols would factor that data into a recommended battle strategy. Not that there were that many different directions the situation could go.