Phoenix

by S. F. Said

Lucky followed her uncertainly into the dim red corridor. He glanced back over his shoulder.

  And as he met his eyes, Major Dashwood smiled at him, for the first and last and only time.

  It was the same smile Lucky had grown up looking at. The smile in the vidpic. A protective smile so warm, so full of love, it always made him feel better to see it.

  His throat tightened at the sight.

  He knew the Major was not his father – but at that moment, how he wished he was. He’d done more than Lucky had ever dared to dream a father might.

  But there was no time to say any of this. No time to thank him; no time even to say goodbye. Because already, they could hear more troopers coming to get them.

  ‘For your mother’s sake,’ urged the Major, ‘get out of here, Lucky! Go!’

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  They ran down the corridor, away from the troopers.

  Bixa led the way, a cannon in each hand, hair bristling with needles. Lucky was right behind her. Next came Frollix, carrying Mystica in one huge arm, leading the Captain by the hand. And above all their heads flew Bazooka, flapping her wings in celebration of their escape.

  A massive explosion shook the corridor behind them. They heard Major Dashwood’s war cry, and the screams of Axxa troopers.

  Then the explosions stopped. It grew ominously still and silent behind them.

  ‘Major Dashwood?’ called Lucky, over his shoulder. ‘Are you OK?’

  No answer came back.

  ‘Bixa . . . he’s—’

  ‘He knew what he was doing,’ said Bixa. ‘Keep going. Don’t stop.’

  She was moving ahead already, scouting the way forward, round a corner and out of sight. Lucky waited for Frollix to catch up. Together, they edged round the corner, then up some steps, making their way in silence towards the surface of the planet.

  But a detachment of troopers was waiting for them on the next level. They raised their cannon – fired – and a volley of shots hit the wall above Lucky’s head, shattering the stone. Mystica and Nox cringed away from the shrapnel. They looked so frail, so vulnerable.

  ‘Stay back!’ cried Bixa. She ran full pelt at the troopers. Flicked a crimson needle at them. And –

  KAA-BOOSHHH!!!

  Everything in Lucky’s head went weird. His senses scrambled, all mixed up. Sounds became shapes. Colours had tastes. And the troopers were throwing up, sinking to their knees, clutching their heads and weeping.

  ‘Sensory Dazzler?’ asked Lucky, barely holding down the nausea.

  Bixa grinned. ‘You’re catching on!’

  ‘This,’ groaned Captain Nox, ‘is why we don’t like violence.’

  ‘But we’re getting there,’ said Bixa. ‘Just two more lefts and a right, and then we’ll be clear of this level.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked Lucky, running after her. ‘Can you really remember every turning we took on the way in?’

  ‘If you’d been watching, ’stead of feeling sorry for yourself,’ she said, ‘then maybe you’d remember too!’

  Two lefts and a right later, a dead end loomed up ahead of them: a solid wall. A vidcam stared silently down at them from the ceiling.

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Bixa. ‘Did we pass this on our way in?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ Lucky retorted. ‘I was too busy feeling sorry for myself!’

  Cautiously, she approached the wall. ‘Frollix,’ she called. ‘Hang back behind that corner with Mystica and Nox till I tell you it’s safe. There’s something about this I don’t like . . .’

  The vidcam whirred – and suddenly the wall began to move. It slid open before their startled eyes. And on the other side, dozens of Axxa troopers were waiting. They had an entire armoury of weapons. Racks of cannon and ammunition. Stacks of ground-blasters and grenades. Heaps of body armour and shields.

  Bixa fired both her guns at once – and her shots bounced right off their shields. The fire came straight back at her—

  ‘Duck!’ she yelled. She and Lucky hit the floor together as fire singed their hair.

  Bixa tossed aside her cannon, and sprang into action with Astral Martial Arts instead. She leaped Leo-style over a blast from the first trooper, then hit him with a Cancer pincer move. The trooper crumpled, dropping his blaster. Bixa caught it, and took out two more with her elbows as she went all Sagittarius, unleashing a hail of jabs and punches – but the others were on to her at once, surrounding her.

  And now one of the troopers was in Lucky’s face, shoving him back, aiming the muzzle of a cannon at him.

  Lucky shaped up to deliver a Scorpio kick –

  – and the trooper cracked him across the face with the barrel of his gun.

  Excruciating pain exploded in Lucky’s mouth. There was a terrible crunching sound. It sounded like teeth breaking. He could taste something salty. He wondered if it was blood.

  He hit the ground, stars spinning before his eyes.

  The trooper cocked his cannon—

  ‘You leave him alone!’ roared Bixa. She reared up like a lioness, and let loose a ferocious blow that knocked the trooper sideways.

  But the walls were beginning to move again: swivelling, sliding, trapping them in the corner. And more troopers were coming through all the time.

  It was getting desperate now. Bixa fought on, but she was just one girl. Even with all her skills, she couldn’t keep it up forever. She was pinned down in that corner, and there were more, always more, coming through all the time.

  CRACK! One of the troopers broke through her defences. She reeled back.

  WHACK! Bixa gasped. She glanced down at Lucky. He wasn’t doing what he’d promised, and they both knew it.

  Bazooka the phoenix swooped down at the trooper – claws extended, breathing fire – but the big man swatted her away like she was an insect, and levelled his cannon at Bixa’s head.

  ‘You’re dead,’ he said. He grinned, pulled the safety catch, and –

  – at the centre of Lucky’s being, a spark of power flared into life. Impossible energies began to burn.

  His fingertips started to shine.

  And finally, the light poured out of him: the brightest light he’d ever seen, pouring from his hands, his head, his heart.

  The trooper gasped. He dropped his cannon, shielding his eyes. He backed away as the power rose and swelled and grew, blazing from Lucky like a star.

  A star.

  What else could it be? It had been growing inside him, in his dreams and in his body, all this time. And now it was scorching out of him with unearthly light and heat and power. Stronger than the fires in a nuclear furnace. Bigger than the blast of a billion atom bombs. So bright and brilliant, it was like staring at the sun.

  At that moment, he knew the Startalkers were right. There was no limit to this power. No limit at all to what it could do, if he just let it go.

  The other troopers saw it. They fell back. But they were disciplined, crack troops. They regrouped, aimed their weapons at Lucky, and pulled all their triggers at once.

  A great hail of death came shooting towards him.

  He held up a hand – and the power of a star exploded out of him. Fire flashed from his fingers like a flaming sword. It caught their blasts, and made them harmless. Not one of their shots got through.

  Lucky pulled himself up from the floor, flames crackling over his head like a halo, and sent a solar flare out at their armoury. He was painfully aware that he was burning his own life away. The power was killing him – but he was determined not to kill anyone else with it. He was aiming to destroy their weapons. Not the troopers, but their instruments of death.

  His solar flare hit, and the weapons racks went up in flames. The blasters blew up; the cannon melted. The ammunition exploded like a string of fireworks going off.

  Bixa’s eyes widened. She watched from the corner, staring directly at the light that shone from Lucky’s body, but she was not blinded by it. She looked inspired.

  She got up, needles flashing neon colours,
and sprang forward again: a one-girl whirlwind of fighting force, running out ahead of the fire. Lucky moved forward with her. Between them, they were unbeatable. The warrior girl with needles in her hair, and the boy with the star inside him: they fought side by side.

  It was like a furnace in the armoury now, and the temperature was still rising. At the back of his throat, Lucky could taste something like sulphur, filling his senses with fire. But the power was so strong, so bright – it was irresistible, and it streamed out of him, unstoppable. Not just his hands now: his whole body was aflame.

  ‘The Astraeus!’ cried the troopers. ‘The Old Ones have returned!’ And with that, they broke ranks at last, and began to flee in terror.

  When it was done – when all those fearsome troopers had been put to flight, and all their deadly weapons were smoke and ashes – Lucky and Bixa turned to each other.

  Bixa’s eyes were alight. She looked on the scorching star that burned in Lucky’s chest, and she was not afraid.

  She held out a hand, and reached with her long, beautiful fingers – reached towards the blazing furnace in his heart.

  ‘Don’t!’ he warned her. ‘Don’t touch me – it’ll kill you—’

  But she reached, and touched, just for a moment – and her silver eyes glowed ultra-bright.

  ‘Don’t fear it, Lucky,’ she said, across the gap between them. ‘It’s beautiful. We try so hard to be like the stars, but you – you actually are one . . .’

  He watched her, speechless, filled with feelings he didn’t have names for.

  It was a moment when time seemed to stop – but it was just a moment. Then they heard voices calling from round the corner, and Bixa stepped away from Lucky, unharmed.

  ‘Is it safe?’ asked Frollix.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Bixa, looking up. ‘Yeah, it’s safe.’ She grinned, and ran her fingers through the neon needles in her hair. ‘Watch out, Theobroma!’ she whooped. ‘We’re coming for you!’

  ‘Baaa-zookieeeee!!!’ exclaimed the phoenix, picking herself up and leading the way forward again, flying towards freedom.

  They moved on – up, and up, and up – rising through the levels with new hope, fresh determination. They burst out of Charon Caves: out of the bunker, through the gates, and back into the open air.

  It was freezing cold outside. On the surface of the planet, the blizzard was still raging; the air was full of ice. Yet still the star blazed out of Lucky’s body.

  And through the blizzard, through the whirling whiteness, they could see an entire army waiting for them by their encampment. Row after row of troopers facing them, with cannon and blasters at the ready. The Axxa army, in all its power and glory – and beyond it, the Skyhawks of the Axxa fleet.

  ‘King Theobroma!’ Bixa yelled. ‘We need to talk to you!’

  ‘Put down your weapons!’ a harsh voice came back. ‘Put them down – or we will destroy you.’

  Was that the King’s voice? Lucky looked out at the army. He couldn’t see where the voice had come from; there were just too many of them. It was a million against two.

  He looked up at the sky. Even through the radiation storm, he could see that it was bleached white as bones with the dying supernova light of Aquarius.

  ‘King Theobroma,’ called Bixa again. ‘If you’re here, then answer me. By all the stars – this is the most important thing there’s ever been!’

  No answer came back, except for the click of safety catches being unlatched, and the rumble of weapons powering up.

  The Axxa army weren’t listening. The King wasn’t coming. The plan wasn’t going to work.

  Lucky felt bleak and angry. This was not the way he wanted it to end. Burning his own life away, just so he could take the lives of others – surely this wasn’t what he was supposed to do with his power? Surely it was meant for something more?

  Wind whipped into his face. Yet his insides felt like superheated matter, raging against the blizzard: red hot, white hot, hotter still.

  Some of the Axxa troopers shielded their eyes as the solar wind swirled around him. Some of them dropped to their knees. But still the power rose inside him, higher and higher, and higher again.

  His body was shaking. It felt like his head was splitting under the strain, breaking open as arcs of pain shot across his face, brighter and stronger than any Human body could contain. He was holding his hands out ahead of him, trying with all his might to restrain the power that was bleeding out of him: the fire and the light and the burning in his brain . . .

  But it was bigger than him. It was like an endless nuclear meltdown: a chain reaction that could burn this whole world and more. And if he just let it go, he would explode, destroying himself and everything around him: everything.

  There’s no stopping it, he thought. It’s going to blow—

  ‘Enough,’ came a new voice, rolling over the blizzard. ‘Put down your weapons. No one hurts that boy.’

  It was a rich, deep voice – not loud, but totally commanding.

  The troopers lowered their weapons. Lucky looked up, trying to see who’d spoken.

  And then it came again, that voice. ‘Boy: here I am. I am your King. I am Theobroma!’

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  And there in front of them, at the end of the line of troopers, stood Theobroma, the Axxa King.

  There was something surprising about the way he looked. He was large and imposing: as tall as Captain Nox and as broad as Frollix. His horns were huge curving crescents that pointed straight up at the sky. But he did not look wild, or savage, or terrifying, as he did in the government vidpics.

  No; he looked like an old-fashioned king. On his head was a crown that glittered like starlight. On his shoulders were robes of black velvet.

  Most unexpected was his face. His features seemed full of compassion. His eyes were not mad and staring. They were warm, ruby red, like the last moments of a summer sunset. Even from this distance, Lucky could feel the power of his gaze. The King was looking at him like he couldn’t take his eyes off him. And there was something about him that Lucky couldn’t look away from, either. A charisma that commanded his attention completely.

  ‘Put down your cannon,’ the King ordered his forces, his voice so deep and quiet, so rich and strong, it compelled everyone’s attention. ‘Bow down before the Astraeus.’

  The troopers turned to look at Lucky. His body was glowing, pulsing, the solar fires in his heart still burning; they couldn’t look at him directly. But they bowed down before him as the King strode past their ranks, towards him through the snow.

  He carried something very familiar in his hands. A thick black disc, shimmering with silver light.

  Lucky stared at the King, with the astrolabe in his hands, and a terrible thought began to form in the back of his mind.

  The astrolabe. His father’s astrolabe.

  What was it Gala had said? He is waiting for you. He is expecting you, even now . . . But are you absolutely certain you wish to find him?

  The King’s eyes were shining as he looked at Lucky through the blizzard – as if Lucky was the most special person in the universe. As if . . . as if he loved him.

  No. It couldn’t be . . .

  And yet – it would make sense of so much.

  ‘At last,’ said the King softly, as the snow swirled all around him. ‘What is mine has come back to me. I have waited so long, my son.’

  His words made Lucky’s heart shiver. ‘But – my mother’s Human,’ he protested, as he stared into those sunset-red eyes. ‘I’m Human.’

  Yet even as he spoke, he remembered what Frollix and Bixa had said about their own parents: The genetic line always follows the mother’s side . . .

  ‘Yes,’ said the King. ‘I loved a Human woman, once. When she realized that war was coming, she tried to protect you. She ran away with you – and though I searched and searched, she hid you too well for me to find. But I always prayed you would return one day. And the instant I saw my old astrolabe, I knew in my hear
t that day had come.’

  So it was true. This was his father. Not poor, lost Major Dashwood – but Theobroma, the Axxa King.

  The fire inside him went out. The great solar wind dropped down. Lucky took the power back into himself, and felt again the exhaustion, the terrible pain that always came after these moments of incandescence. His hands, his head, his heart: every part of him hurt.

  He fell forward into his father’s arms, naked and shivering in the snow.

  The King caught him. He covered Lucky with his own robes and lifted him from the ground. He carried him as if he was as light as a feather. The snow swirled down around them, but Lucky was not cold, not in those arms. It was as if everything else just melted away. As if no one else was there – just him and his father, and his father held him close, like he was a treasure.

  Bixa bristled beside them, needles flashing danger signals. ‘If you hurt my friend,’ she warned the King, though he towered over her, ‘I’ll make you pay.’

  The troopers touched their triggers at her words, but the King nodded respectfully at Bixa. ‘You are brave, warrior girl,’ he said. ‘And a fearsome fighter: I have seen what you can do. Believe me, I will not hurt him, for I love him as much as you do.’ He turned to Lucky. ‘You chose your friends well, my son.’

  Bixa flushed. Bazooka spat sparks. Far above them all, Aquarius was screaming out supernova light, brighter and whiter and closer to death than ever.

  Lucky was almost unaware of all this, so powerful was his father’s presence. But Bixa was not.

  ‘We came to find you for a reason, King Theobroma,’ she said. ‘We got things to say to you. Important things.’

  ‘Of course you do,’ said the King. ‘Come with me. We have much to discuss, and very little time.’

  He took them to the grandest-looking cabin, on the edge of the encampment, at the foot of a great ice mountain. He left his commanders outside, with instructions to bring food and drink, and fresh clothing for Lucky.

  A warm fire flickered inside the cabin, bright enough to show old-fashioned wooden beams on the ceiling, and bearskin rugs on the floor. There were no windows in here; just giant vidscreens on the walls. The King sat Lucky down at a dark oak table with many chairs around it, carved from the same wood. Lucky sat there, dazed, exhausted – and amazed.