by Huss, JA
“I can plot a course,” Booty said. “But we can’t leave until Demon Girl… err… you”—meaning ALCOR—“undock and free us up.”
At this point ALCOR stood up. “I have made a decision. I will go back to my ship and we will go to this rendezvous point together. Two ships are better than one. But this discussion isn’t over.”
And maybe… just maybe, Booty smiled. Because indeed, two was almost always better than one.
Just a few minutes later ALCOR was back in control of Demon Girl, and the three of them—plus a few thousand Mighty Minions borgs, bots, and ambassadors—were exiting the gate where the signal was coming from.
They didn’t find a ship.
They found a single cryopod with Valor’s frozen body inside.
Which alone would’ve been good news. But it was more than good news. It was great news. Because there was another, very important piece of information included in that cryopod.
A place of origin.
Every cryopod has a registration number on it and when you launch one, it records the exact coordinates of where it came from.
“Leave him,” ALCOR demanded. “Leave Valor here where he’s safe. We will take this Veila bitch out, get back Tray and any remnants of Draden, and pick Valor up on our way home.”
And for the first time ever, Asshole and ALCOR not only agreed on something, but found themselves on the same side.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE - BRIGIT
I wait there in the black emptiness feeling very, very small. There’s no way to gauge space in here. If this were an actual place—like a room—then it would be endless, and vast. But it’s not really a place and it’s definitely not a room. I don’t know what it is, actually. I don’t understand what I am.
I feel like a person, not some program running on a computer.
But real people can’t be trapped the way I am now.
The sound of footsteps through water make me turn. And while just a moment ago there was no light and I had no body, now I do have a body and there is just enough light to see the man walking towards me.
He looks familiar. I think.
He’s wearing dark tactical pants, a white shirt, and a smile. “Hello, Brigit. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Mind what?” I ask.
“I… gave you a form. Clothes. Hair color. Eye color. Because I think it’s easier to talk this way.”
I look down at myself and find I’m wearing a dress. A long, electric violet gown with crystals on the bodice and full skirts that float around me like they have life of their own.
“The crown was just”—he smiles at me—“what you deserve.”
My fingertips gingerly touch the tiara on my head. Feeling the intricate filigree metal and the hard, faceted jewels attached.
“What is this? Who are you?”
Images flit through my mind. A montage of moments. A boy, wearing another version of this man’s face. Laughing and playing. Light swords and toy guns. Footsteps running down long, black walkways in dim, low light.
His friend. Laughing with him. Roughhousing and fighting. Exploring and playing.
Then a terrible flash of light and pain and… darkness.
But just a flash. Because then there’s more images. Another face, same kid. Older now. Leaving home for the first time. Playing loud music and drinking themselves drunk. More fighting, only now it’s real and comes with consequences.
A ship, and a bot, and a brother.
Another flash of light and pain and then I remember. I remember him.
“Draden,” he says, extending his hand. “I’m Draden. I’m here to tell you… I’m here…” But he cannot get the words out. He turns away, turns back, takes in a breath and says, “I’m gonna help you through this, OK? I’m gonna stay with you the whole time and help you make it through. Because I had to do it all alone. And it took a really long time. And I don’t want you to have to go through this the way I did.”
My heart is thumping hard inside my chest. “Through what?”
He frowns. Swallows hard as he looks down, shaking his head a little. “If I could put you back, if I could save you, I would.” He looks me in the eyes. “I would not hesitate. But I can’t, Brigit. No one can save you. What they did to you when we were born can’t be undone.”
“I… I don’t understand. When we were born? What are you talking about?”
“You’re my twin sister,” he says. He opens his mouth to say more. Probably to explain that, but he must not be able to find any more words. Or maybe there’s just nothing left to say?
I knew this. I did. I knew this. I know what I am. But… who I am?
I have never known that.
Until now.
“Your sister?” I say in a soft, low whisper.
He nods. He’s still reaching for me, his hand still extended. “I’m like you now,” he says. “My story is a long one and I really want to tell it to you.” He pauses, and for a moment I think he’s going to cry. And then, in that same moment, I think I might cry too. “I want to tell someone, at least. Serpint, mostly. But you too. Because ever since I died I’ve been so… alone. Just floating in and out of different places. Trying to find my way back to who I was.”
A tear falls down my cheek. “Me too,” I whisper. “Me too.”
“Draden?”
We both turn to find Tray watching us.
“Tray,” Draden says. And then Tray crosses the distance between them and pulls him into a hug.
They don’t let go of each other. They hug tight and they do not let go.
I feel bad for not taking his hand. Because all Draden wants right now is a hug.
They’re whispering to each other as they embrace. Draden is saying, “I’m not dead. I’m not dead. I’m not dead,” over and over again. And Tray is replying, “I know. I know that, brother. I know.”
But we are, though. We’re all dead. That’s the part they never told us. That’s the missing piece of who and what we are.
Dead.
“Brigit,” Tray says, drawing my attention back to them. They’ve stopped hugging and both face me now. “Brig, this is my brother, Draden.”
I smile weakly and nod. “He’s… he’s my brother too.”
Tray nods and swallows. “It’s OK,” he says. “We’ll figure it out.”
“Valor’s gone, isn’t he?” I ask. “He’s never coming back, is he?”
“No,” Tray says. “No, he’s not gone. He’s safe. For now, at least. He’s not… he’s not like us, Brigit.”
“Because he’s alive and we’re not.”
“Yes,” Tray admits. “Yes. That’s right. But that doesn’t mean we can’t live, you guys.” He looks at Draden, then me, then back at Draden. “I’ve been doing it since I was thirteen years old. We’re still here.”
“It’s too late,” Draden says. “The bodies are gone and there’s no way to get them back.”
“Tray has a body,” I say. But I’m looking at him as those words come out and I know it’s not true before he tells me.
“She’s destroyed it,” he admits. “I’m just… this now. Just like you. But listen,” Tray says. “Listen to me now. ALCOR is coming for us. He’s coming and—”
And just as he says that, our whole world rocks and shakes. A great rumble echoes through the darkness. The ground beneath my feet tosses me sideways so hard, I fall to my knees.
We all fall in that moment and a stream of bright yellow light breaks through the blackness. One powerful stream of blinding light shines down in the center of the floor between us like the sign of the sun god himself.
“He’s here,” Tray says, looking up and around. And then he’s got Draden by the shoulder and he’s crawling towards the light, pulling a confused Draden along with him. “Get in the light, Brigit! Hurry! We have to work fast. We don’t have much time.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO - INTERLUDE WITH ALCOR
This was Tray’s doing. ALCOR knew this.
He didn’t know why Val
or was out in the middle of space frozen in a cryopod, but he didn’t need to understand specifics.
Valor didn’t belong there. Tray didn’t belong with Veila. And whatever that remnant was of Draden? It belonged to ALCOR.
Everything went back to Tray. Every bit of this story he’d been writing since those boys appeared at his gate asking for passage went back to Tray.
At first glance ALCOR had thought Crux was the one driving everything forward. It was an easy assumption to jump to. Crux was their leader. Crux was their conscience. And Crux was careful. Almost to the point that ALCOR suspected him of being part of something bigger.
Maybe something meant to take him out of the game?
Or maybe something more powerful than that?
For a long time ALCOR had thought of Crux as some kind of disinformation, or spy, or perhaps even the vehicle that would bring him down. He’d run millions of scenarios trying to determine what part Crux would play in ALCOR’s future.
That was mostly why he’d left him out of all his plans with the other boys. But also… Crux was a good standard to measure himself by. A sort of benchmark. Something to aspire to. Crux had a solid moral character that ALCOR had never seen in any other sentient entity.
Ever.
Crux knew right from wrong. Without question, this was his superpower.
But now ALCOR realized his mistake.
It wasn’t Crux, it was Tray.
And looking back with this new hindsight, it all made sense.
Tray was the traitor.
Tray had always been the traitor.
He was also the one boy ALCOR had trusted without question.
Until now.
While the plans for the Veila attack were being made ALCOR spent his time running scenarios. All the things Tray might do. All the ways Tray might turn. All the possible outcomes that would happen if he saved Tray and if he just… let Tray go.
And even though ninety-nine point nine percent of those outcome scenarios were not in ALCOR’s favor if Tray was left in the game, they had little bearing on his final decision.
Which was to save him.
Because by saving Tray he could save Draden.
Why, exactly, ALCOR had killed Draden eighteen years ago when he fell off the lift bot was still up for debate. He’d waged an internal war with himself over this decision for almost a decade. The only answer he came up with was… Draden was necessary. Every possible calculation ALCOR ran required Draden to be both dead and alive at the same time.
And there was only one way to do that.
Kill Draden and bring him back as something else.
The new Tray. That’s what Draden needed to be if ALCOR was going to see this whole thing through to the end.
And he had come too far to give up now.
He hadn’t just run scenarios for Tray or Crux in those early days, he’d run them for all the boys. There was a reason Serpint needed to be feared by the Cygnians. There was a reason why Jimmy and Xyla needed to find bots and borgs, and there was a reason why Luck and Valor needed to visit all the ancient sectors in the galaxy.
And sure. Serpint and Draden did need to fill the harem, and Jimmy and Xyla did need to provide a workforce, and Luck and Valor did need to scavenge parts to keep the station running.
All those things were helpful, but the products they brought home were never the point.
The point was for them to be seen.
They were meant to be targets.
No one was more surprised than ALCOR when these boys not only cheated death dozens and dozens of times as they had their prescribed adventures, but ended up inspiring people.
No one came to Harem Station because ALCOR ran advertising campaigns.
They came because all those outlaws, all those runaways, all those escaped prisoners, and pirates, and assassins wanted the one thing his boys had and they didn’t.
The one thing you cannot buy with credits stolen, or earned, or otherwise.
A home with a family.
By the time ALCOR realized he’d built something unique and special by accident the boys had been with him for nearly sixteen years.
Sixteen years.
That was how long it took for ALCOR to change his mind about his plan. And in the grand scheme of things, after tens of thousands of years of living, and hiding, and living, and hiding—all with this original plan as his goal—sixteen years was nothing.
Nothing at all.
A picosecond, really.
So even though his copy never had these experiences with his boys, he had spent his own picosecond with them.
And he saw something familiar in his past self.
The ability to change.
This was why, when Demon Girl and Booty exited the gate and found Veila’s Cygnian warship waiting at the origin point from which Valor’s pod was launched, just as Tray knew he would, ALCOR decided that he didn’t just want Tray so he could keep Draden.
He wanted Tray for himself.
If ALCOR could change his ways in a picosecond—twice—then surely Tray could as well.
And even though, after running all the possible combination of outcomes when it came to Tray, they almost always added up the same way—betrayal—he went in on faith.
ALCOR hadn’t known a single sentient ship before Booty Hunter showed up on Harem Station asking for Serpint by name. But he’d known what she was.
He’d known who she was. And he’d known there would be others.
The universe—at least this one—ran on supersymmetry. The idea that every mind comes in pairs. Every force must be balanced. Everything needs an opposite in order to exist.
Even ALCOR. But that was a whole other mess that involved Jimmy, and ALCOR could deal with that later.
What ALCOR didn’t know until the precise moment they exited the gate to confront Veila was that Draden wasn’t Tray’s symmetrical other half as he had suspected.
There were three minds inside that warship.
Three, not two.
That was when everything about Tray became crystal clear. That’s when all his calculations actually made sense. That was when ALCOR knew that if he saved Tray ALCOR would die.
But all his boys would live.
If he saved Tray all these thousands of years would eventually come down to one moment in the end. One moment of total loss.
The ultimate betrayal.
Saving Tray meant defeat.
And he saved him anyway.
Because that’s what Crux would’ve done.
Crux would’ve believed in Tray because Crux was part of something bigger.
Crux had faith.
And the idea of faith—that against all odds things would turn out in your favor just for the simple fact that you believed—well… that was more powerful than the idea of winning.
ALCOR wanted to believe.
There was never any doubt that ALCOR could beat Veila. Never.
He is called the sun god of all the universe for a reason.
His mind worked so fast there was no hope of Veila enacting countermeasures, but everything that happened next occurred in slow motion from ALCOR’s point of view.
They exited the gate. ALCOR had all those thoughts about calculations, and Draden, and Crux, and Tray, and betrayal, and faith, and winning, and family, and sacrifice before Veila even knew Demon Girl and Booty were attacking.
And then he knew what he had to do.
He reconfigured one of Demon Girl’s SEAR cannons into a free-electron laser, directed it at the containment facility currently holding Tray, Draden, and the outside third party, which converted into billions upon trillions of photons, which enabled ALCOR to capture the mind particles of all three and convert them into passengers along his beam, thus removing them from the Cygnian warship and placing them inside the now empty, vacated mind of Demon Girl.
As soon as ALCOR knew they were safe, he reversed Veila’s SEAR cannons and fired them on the warship. This reversal created an electroma
gnetic pulse that incapacitated every bot, every borg, every electrical component—except for Veila.
Because he wanted that bitch alive.
Just a picosecond later he was shutting down her docking bays and locking all her ships in place so there was no chance of escape.
And then he got his warborg ass on one of Demon Girl’s shuttles, flew over to the Cygnian ship, and boarded.
Thousands of dead borgs and bots littered the hallways as he searched. It took almost a full standard spin to finally find her. Rather, he found her escape route.
A spin node was spun up deep inside the innards of the ship. Open, with brilliant white light spilling out.
ALCOR went through after her and found only a single brown dwarf star faintly lighting up eons of empty space all around him and a quick scan that let him know that Veila was still one clever little bitch.
So that was how it was going to be.
But he had his boys. And the newcomer.
He sighed, going back to the warship and shutting the spin node down.
He took thirty seconds to think through his options, which was a considerable time. But he wanted to be careful—and thoughtful—about his next move.
Because it was official now.
The final war had begun.
If anyone was left when it was all over they’d write stories about this day. They’d call this the Battle of Dead Things. Or maybe the Battle of the Sun God. Or maybe just Final War—Day One.
That would be his choice.
Objective. Emotionless. It is what it is. No need to dress it up. Maybe he should write that down for someone to find later? Take the matter into his own hands?
ALCOR used another three full seconds to think about those stories. What would the future fixate on? The minds he’d taken? The borgs and bots he’d killed? The princess who’d got away?
Who would be the hero and who would be the villain?
He guessed that depended on who won in the end.
He went back to Demon Girl, spun up a virtual on the fly, and brought Draden in for a talk.
Draden, when he appeared in a body, dressed the way ALCOR remembered him—black tactical pants, black boots, white t-shirt under a black flight jacket, mop of too-long hair spilling over his bright violet eyes—didn’t say a word. He didn’t smile, he didn’t frown, he just stood there.