by AJ Super
Yoon nodded and popped a couple tabs on the screen. “And I probably made things worse agreeing to this.” He blinked his eyes rapidly. “So much for familial redemption. There. It’s done. Alarms, weapons, shields. Everything is disabled now. I overloaded the system with maintenance commands. It’ll take a while for them to get it back up.”
Nyx walked to his side and put a hand on his forearm. His tattoo was barely visible, like hers. “Come with us.”
“He doesn’t get a choice,” Malcam grumbled. “We’re not leaving one of the Stars in the hands of the NAU and ACG. Either he comes, or I shoot him, and you upload what’s left.” Malcam leveled his energy pistol at Yoon.
Nyx sighed and shook her head. Malcam’s eyes were ice. He was serious about taking Yoon by gunpoint. But she didn’t even know what powers Yoon had, and if he was anything like her, there was no way that Yoon would go anywhere if he didn’t want to.
Yoon put up his hands with a smile. “Whoa there, cowboy. Never said I wouldn’t go with you.” Nyx tipped her head as he whispered conspiratorially to her over his shoulder. “But just to the shuttle bay. Still not leaving this ship.”
The tip of Malcam’s weapon drooped. “Huh?”
Yoon raised a black eyebrow and turned back to Malcam, hands still raised. “I would gladly accompany you out of here.” He squared himself in front of Malcam, took a finger and pushed the barrel of his energy weapon to point at the ground. “No need for that.”
Nyx covered her mouth to hide a grin, while Malcam’s face contorted in confusion.
Yoon put his hands down and spun back to Nyx.
Malcam stood confounded. He pushed his lip with his tongue, mumbling. “I’m a pirate. Not a cowboy.”
Yoon put a hand on Nyx’s shoulder. “Now, how do we get in touch with your friends? You were planning on using the Andraste’s communications to… uh… communicate, since your comms are silent?”
Nyx nodded.
Something banged on the door to the treatment room.
The three turned to the door. Nyx’s eyes widened, heart pounding.
“It’s locked for anyone but me.” Yoon shrugged. “It’ll take a while for them to get through. Unless they figured out how to rewire the bio-print recognition.” He looked straight at Nyx. “Well, let’s find your friends and tell them what bay to meet us in, then.”
Nyx worked her mouth. He was too nonchalant about the soldiers outside the door. Malcam had sighted his energy weapon on the door, turning his body sideways to make a smaller target in the wide-open space of the room.
Yoon punched up a video feed on his console and flipped quickly through it. “Ah. There they are again.” He pursed his lips and ran a hand through his hair. “I can call that squad over here for back-up. I mean, the two of you caused enough havoc to warrant the alarms.” Sparks started showering between the seam in the door. Yoon frowned as he stared at the door the Queensmen worked behind. “And the breaking-and-entering after all.”
“Guess they don’t have anyone nearby who knows how to rewire a door pad?” Malcam smirked. “Or no one on this bucket is as smart as you. Huh, Nyxie?”
“I doubt it.” Nyx narrowed her eyes, forehead dampening with sweat. “This is… just as quick. They’ll have the door open in a couple minutes.”
“Then we better send a signal to your friends.” Yoon tapped his console. “Receivers, huh? Docking bay oh-four-two is just storing a bunch of crates of mostly harmless outdated tech right now… Sending signal.”
A squeal pealed through Nyx’s ear ans she flinched, startled, immediately followed by a Sia’s voice announcing docking bay oh-four-two open.
The squad on the viewscreen cleared the corridor, and Red and Falak came out of their hiding spot. Nyx clenched her fists. They were so close to Engineering. Would they go there and risk getting caught? She hoped at least Red would understand the meaning of the signal, that the docking bay being open meant all was good to go, and Raphael would be there to meet them. That their job was already taken care of, even if Erebus wouldn’t get a chance to take over the Battle Station.
Falak started towards Engineering. Red caught his shoulder at the edge of the viewscreen, shaking her head, half-dragging him in the opposite direction.
Nyx exhaled, not realizing she had held her breath. Red was taking Falak to the docking bay. Exfiltration was beginning. Now to get Malcam, Yoon, and herself out. She glanced at the door Malcam had come in and cleared her throat. “How many out there, Malcam?”
“A squad. Plus, the one he just called for back-up,” he growled. “Not getting out that door.” The sparks were nearly to the ground. The door would be open any moment and the squads would probably come in ready to fire, if not firing…
This room was tight. No other entrances or exits. They were going to have to fight their way out. Or she was going to have to give herself up to get Malcam and Yoon out. Negotiate—not that she had any leverage, other than being a Star. She clenched her fist. “We only have one gun. Mine’s gone.”
She could only hope that the squads would hesitate because their Star of Adonis was in the room, and maybe she could use him as a hostage if he agreed.
Yoon stood next to the chrome chair and tapped his foot on the floor. “You’re good with your hands?”
“Yes. Why?” Puzzled, Nyx’s brow furrowed as he continued to tap his foot along the floor by the chair until the sound changed. He laid his hand on the floor where the sound thickened. The shining silver floor glowed red, locked like a door pad.
She strode to Yoon’s side and looked at the floor. A bio-print lock mechanism was blended into the floor nearly seamlessly. She pulled her knife from her side and slid it in the tight seam between the face plate and the floor. Nyx pried until it popped up. She quickly rewired the reader and forced it to erase the local bios, allowing the ship-wide system to take over and reset the door pad security settings. Her hand on the pad, the floor next to her shifted slightly down and slid open, revealing a wide duct packed with conduit, tubes filled with sapphire, and a ladder.
The tubes glowed lightly, emitting the same light that surrounded Yoon, little swirling eddies of deep bluish-purple reminiscent of the sky just after the sun has set.
“This is the way out. Well… It’ll get you to the level below, and closer to the docking bays.” Yoon shrugged. “Never been able to open it until now. Not very handy.” He grinned. “You are, though. A multi-talented Star.”
Heat rose in Nyx’s cheeks.
Malcam rolled his eyes.
“You’re cute when you blush.” Yoon pinched her cheek, and Nyx ducked her head. “We should get going.” He nodded to the door, sparks falling close to the floor. “I imagine it’ll be bad for us all if they find out I’m helping.”
Nyx was already swinging her legs down the shaft and grabbing a hold of the ladder. “Malcam.”
He coughed. “Yeah. Coming.”
They climbed one-by-one into the darkness of the duct.
3
After what seemed like hours in the duct’s power-save lighting, Nyx reached the door pad that opened the door to the room below Yoon’s. She slapped it, and the doors below her feet split open.
Nyx held onto the duct ladder as it descended from the ceiling of a cavernous room. The lights slowly flickered on—power-save mode. But she could see in the darkness just fine. Row upon row of vats filled with a glowing sapphire aura lit the room with an eerie radiance. In each vat, there was the shadow of something. Something human, lit with a little white flame at the center of an eddy of brilliant blueish-purple light. It was the light of Yoon’s swirling sapphire energy that only she could see.
Nyx stretched a white tendril of energy out to touch the flame of the figure in front of her. Stoking it to a fiery ember, the shadowy figure in the vat stirred sluggishly in the glowing sapphire agar. Somehow, Nyx was connected to whatever was in the vats. Whatever was being grown.
The ladder stopped, and she hopped down next to one of the cylinder
s full of thick solution and put her palm on the cool glass. She peered into the deep sapphire, looking into the shadows and bubbles. Fingers appeared and pressed themselves to the glass where her hand was, and she gasped and stepped back.
Yoon grabbed her shoulders and steadied her, his mouth thin and grim.
“What is it?” she whispered, afraid the silence would shatter and whatever was in the vats would emerge.
“Me,” Yoon said, voice gravelly.
Nyx turned to face him.
Malcam jumped off the ladder, and it ascended back into the ceiling. He leaned forward and stared at the hand flattened against the glass of the vat.
Nyx walked forward and pressed her palm on the glass again. She reached her white tendril out to the little white flame in the murky agar and brightened it, stirring it to blazing. The eddies of energy swirled around the shadow in the vat, and she beckoned quietly with her wisps of white. The shadow came close. Another hand appeared in the murk, pressing against the glass. She put her hand to it and clenched her fist. The shadow clenched its fists and came even closer. The shadow’s face was distorted by a breather, but she still recognized the man in the vat, with his jet hair swirling in the agar.
Yoon Chung-Ae.
She stumbled back. The resemblance was uncanny. Identical. Her heart thudded against her ribs. She didn’t expect the absolute same face to be staring back at her. She honestly didn’t know what she expected… but it wasn’t clones. The clone kicked back into the shadows of the vat, then swam forward again and pounded on the glass.
Yoon pulled her from behind and spun her around. He wrapped his arms around her, and her tendrils melted from the shadow as something wrested control of the second Yoon from her.
“Why are you in there and out here? Why are there so many of you?” she whispered into Yoon’s chest, feeling the hundreds, or thousands, of small flames linked to him, to her, in the vats in rows stretching through the vaulted bay.
“I carry the code to perfectly clone myself. And to control those clones.” He straightened her hair from her face, a strange gesture as the link between Nyx and the clone faded away, taken over by something—or someone—else.
Nyx’s head snapped up. “And the NAU and ACG? They’ve been using this? To…”
“Phoebe. Phoebe asked me to be here first.”
“But she didn’t ask you to do this? Did she?”
Yoon shook his head. “Someone else came later.”
Nyx pushed away and looked into his dark eyes. “Pourquoi?”
“They want to create an army of perfectly controllable soldiers.”
“Controlled by who?”
“For now? Me.” He stretched his lips thin. “They’ve been working on ways to take that away, though. But nothing has worked, and it’s doubtful it will. They needed my cooperation. Which is probably why they kept me in the dark and let me think I was working for Phoebe.”
“But, I just… I can see…” Nyx stuttered.
“What do you see?” Yoon looked at Nyx.
She hushed. “I see. Light.”
He grimaced. “Then it’s true.”
“What’s true?” Malcam stood beside Yoon.
“Once a Star is infected by Nyx, she has control of their powers. She can see us, our energy, our powers. We have the ability to fight it, but she can absorb our code at any time she chooses, and that’s the end of our individual lives. We live only as a part of her. One with her consciousness.” Yoon paused. “And I infected myself.”
Nyx looked at her feet. She didn’t know what to say.
“Wait.” Malcam eyed Yoon. “She can control all of these… clones?”
Nyx paled.
Yoon clenched his jaw. “If I don’t fight it, she has complete control of my army.”
She pivoted, eyes wide, and gaped at the vats of sapphire. An army.
The vats loomed before her. Row after row of un-born Yoons. People, but not. Individuals, but not. A cold idea dawned on her. That meant she wouldn’t need to sacrifice human life. She could have a troop of grown soldiers at her disposal now. She could rescue Phoebe and Erebus without help and take back the Protectorate from the NAU and ACG for the queen. She could right the mistake she made in the first place of not trusting her new family. Not that Phoebe had given her much reason to trust her.
She reached up and rubbed her shoulder. What did that mean for the clones? Were they individuals? Would they object to being used that way? Yoon said “complete control.” She chewed on her cheek and walked to one of the vats. How much power would this really mean? And could she really control this many soldiers? She looked at the white wisps peeling from her fingertips. Would they dance like dolls, or would that power she felt before fight her?
She dropped her hand and took a deep breath. No. It was silly, thinking she could have that much power. That much reach. As it was, her and Erebus could take on the universe and that suited her.
Yoon stepped to her side. “They aren’t ready yet, though. They have a few more weeks in the vats before their immune systems are strong enough to be born, so to speak,” he said. “And there’s no way to take them off of the Andraste until then.”
A small corner of Nyx’s heart fell. He was right. There was no way to transport the hundreds, if not thousands of vats back to the Thanatos. Not this time. Not for Yoon… Not for her.
“That’s why I’m staying. I have to protect them.”
Nyx jerked. She had forgotten he wasn’t coming with them. “Staying? No, you should come with us.” She looked around the clone bay. “We’ll come back for them.” She looked around the cavernous bay. The vats of sapphire agar stirring with Yoon’s white flame. They were a part of Yoon… Of course they’d come back…
“Won’t the NAU and ACG move them once they get them out of the vats?” Malcam growled. “I would. Especially once my golden goose disappears.”
“This ship is a prototype to fight against the Stars. They have an idea of some of our powers. Don’t know how. But they won’t abandon it, they’ll reinforce it. They think their new army is perfect and controllable. I never told them they’d always need me.” Yoon raised an eyebrow. “Or the Star of Nyx.” He smirked. “Some secrets are meant to stay secret.”
Nyx turned back to Yoon and Malcam. “So, we’ll come back. We’ll come back, take the ship. Take the army. And then, go get Phoebe and Erebus, wherever they are.”
Malcam grunted.
Yoon crossed his arms and looked up at where the ladder recessed into the ceiling. “In any case, they’ll figure out that we came down here. We need to run to the docking bay. Now.”
Nyx looked around, lost amidst the rows of sapphire-filled vats. “Which way?”
Yoon pointed to his left. “Door’s that way.”
She started forward, and Yoon reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. “Are you sure you’re going to come back here?”
“Anything for family,” Nyx said. She patted Yoon’s hand as she strode past, glancing over her shoulder at Malcam.
He followed close behind, unholstering his energy weapon. Malcam stopped next to Yoon and stared back at Nyx, as if he could hear what she was thinking in a small corner of her mind.
An army. An army of her own…
The clones in the vats stirred to the edges of the glass to greet her.
“Don’t worry about her. She can take care of herself. Worry about the people who stand between her and her family. She’ll do anything for them.” Malcam snorted. “But I guess you’re her family, too. Right?”
4
Docking bay oh-four-two was quiet when Nyx, Malcam, and Yoon arrived. Raphael sat on the ramp of the shuttle with his arms and legs crossed, looking like he was meditating with a pulse pistol in his lap. He jolted in surprise when the door opened, jerking the weapon up, half-recognizing Malcam as he strode in, energy weapon drawn and ready to fire.
Raphael held up his weapon and smiled wide when he saw the dishwater-blond man’s hulk followed by Nyx. His
expression crunched when he saw Yoon, clearly confused. “I thought we were rescuing Phoebe and Erebus’ Sia?”
“Intel was bad,” Malcam growled. “Wrong Star. Caught a different one instead.”
Raphael put two fingers over his heart and muttered something under his breath. Probably some kind of prayer.
Yoon smiled and stuck his hand out to Raphael. “Call me Yoon. That’s quite the salute. Not very typical of a starship.”
Raphael blinked and cleared his throat. He stuck the hand he had over his heart out slowly and tilted his head. “Yoon. That’s not a Star’s name.”
Yoon shook his head. “Adonis is too much responsibility. I prefer the name of this clone.”
Raphael’s eyes glittered. “Adonis.” He looked at Nyx.
A self-satisfied grin crept over Yoon’s face. “You can tap your heart to me any time… but I’m sure your captain would prefer a more traditional salute?” He glanced at Nyx, too.
Of course, he would prefer to be worshipped. He was a god. But Nyx needed to draw a line with her crew if she wanted to keep them a close-knit family. Didn’t she? She knew Raphael was deeply religious, though. Were his beliefs embracing her as a god? Is that why the deference?
Nyx shook her head and laughed softly. “Raphael, salute as you wish. There’s no harm in your beliefs.” She and Yoon were the same anyway. Two gods. Powerful AI with myth and legend built around them by Phoebe to start a cultish religion.
Something clicked in Nyx’s head. Yoon wasn’t exactly like her. But he had been born, in his way. A clone with AI in his blood. Where she was a human/AI hybrid, he was a… what? Clone/AI hybrid. Were clones human? They didn’t bleed red like her, clearly. The tubes in his arms bled out sapphire. So, what kind of technology made him bleed blue? Did that make him so different from her? Or did it make him the same? Not a complete computer program that relied on technology to live, like her siblings. They needed their Sias and computer interfaces to be fully realized as living entities. Nyx just needed her code to be switched on in her blood. Was it the same for Yoon? Or was he downloaded somehow into his clone body?
