by JA Huss
But there’s always a bear-like ursus. Always an equus. Sometimes they have horns, like the karkadanns. Sometimes they have the body of a horse and the torso of a human. There’s always a maiden, and a hero, and a dragon. And then sometimes there’s weird things like a specific cup used for rituals. Or a musical instrument. Or a spirit that lives in the dark.
One guy came and turned the fucking night sky on Harem into a demonic hell filled with demons and instruments of torture. People kinda got pissed off about that and it was only up for a few weeks before ALCOR decided to let some other artist come in and change it.
Luck used to joke that if he ever got a shot at designing the constellations he’d make it a forest. There’d be nothing but trees up there in the sky.
I kinda like that idea. Kinda wish he’d gotten his chance.
And from there my mind wanders to us. Him and I. How it used to be. All the fun we had. All the danger we put ourselves in. All the ways we cheated death and made it home.
But that makes me think about Crux and what he said about death and dying. How maybe we can’t die.
But I don’t have room in my brain for that right now so I think about all the nights Luck and I spent together. After the crisis was over and the wounds were healed. When we could take a breath and smile because once again, we’d made it out alive.
And how we’d lie together in bed. Talking, and drinking, and always laughing.
Always laughing. We laughed a lot in our old life. We had a lot of fun. It was good and I miss it.
Sometimes there’d be a girl with us, but most times not. Just he, and I, and Lady, and Beauty. Alone. Floating around in the thick soup of deep, dark mysterious space contained inside the swirl of stars we call Galaxy Prime.
I really thought we’d be like that forever. I never imagined a different life for us. I certainly never saw us mixed up with Cygnian princesses.
I never saw Nyleena coming. Never even suspected that some girl would so thoroughly come between us.
I have a sudden urge to talk to him. Say all the things I didn’t when I saw him earlier. Things like… I miss you. I can live with Nyleena. I could maybe even learn to love her. Maybe we could find a way to make this work?
But there was a reason I didn’t say that. It can’t work. It would never work. Just like being with Tray would never work.
Sun-fucked soulmates.
Why does my princess have to end up being the definition of evil?
I must’ve fallen asleep because the next thing I know a series of beeps and chirps has me opening my eyes and sitting up.
A bot is hovering in front of me with a flat package in its grippy hands. It drops the package in the grass and then zooms off, disappearing into the trees.
I reach for the package and flip it over. It’s really more of a thick, faded, tan envelope. The front side is covered in washed-out stickers. They’re peeling and some of the images are almost completely rubbed off. But I don’t need to see them to know what’s inside.
Akeelian Adventures.
I slip the comics out. Four in total. They smell like old books, and musty forests, and there’s a hint of something sweet. Like tushberries, maybe.
The cover of the first one is Bot Boy. Actual title: Bot Boy and the Lost Lunar Colony. He’s a handsome young man. Maybe somewhere between fifteen and eighteen Akeelian years old. He’s wearing a skin-tight orange suit with a black weapons belt across his chest and another strung low on his hips. His hair is dark, his eyes are violet, and he has horns.
I laugh. Can’t help it. “Jimmy with horns.”
His hands aren’t hands, either. They’re claws. And his face isn’t very human. Though his body—aside from the horns and claws—is.
His partner appears to be…
I squint at it. Hold it up close to my eyes. “Xyla?” I rub some dust off the cover to make sure I’m seeing this right. No. It’s right. Long purple hair. Light synthetic skin. Too-tight t-shirt, stiletto-shaped feet, and shorty-shorts that leave little to the imagination.
“What the fuck?” I ask no one. “Hmm.” This makes no sense. This is an actual picture—drawing?—of Xyla exactly as she looked on that day we walked onto Harem Station for the very first time.
One might ask, How the hell do you remember what Xyla was wearing twenty-one years ago, Valor?
I’ll tell you how. That was the first time I’d been anywhere that wasn’t Wayward Station. That was the closest I’d ever been to a sexbot in my life. And that night, after all the shit was sorted with ALCOR and we delivered our messages, and Crux and Jimmy were off somewhere discussing our situation, Luck and I talked about Xyla. We talked about her like… well, like two fifteen-year-old Akeelian boys would talk about their first meeting with a sexbot.
And this picture right here, on this cover that says Akeelian Adventures: Bot Boy, this is her.
“OK, hold on a second.” I channel Tray for this next part. Because he’s all logical and shit. “Maybe that was just the standard-issue outfit for Xyla’s sexbot model?”
I nod at this. I can accept that. This is just what all the sexbots were wearing that year.
“But purple hair?” I don’t know. Something about this is weird.
I flip the book open to the first page and start reading. The story goes like this:
Bot Boy and his trusty sidekick, Xyla—uh, yeah, it’s her—are on the prowl for spare bot parts and wander into the ancient Sol System where they find a hidden station inside a moon. It’s abandoned—or so they think. And then there’s a whole bunch of panels of battles with eight-legged bots. Eventually Bot Boy and Xyla subdue the creepers, dismantle them and then integrate the bot parts with their own bodies…
Uhhh, what the fuck?
That wasn’t Jimmy’s job. He was a bot liberator. And he sure as hell didn’t dismantle them and become a cyborg.
But then I remember that Veila said the comics were just generic characters before we boys left Harem Station on the jobs ALCOR assigned to us.
Because there’s another one below this one. And this guy is Jimmy. The main title is still Akeelian Adventures but the subtitle reads: Jimmy and Xyla Bag the Bots.
He’s older, the illustrations are more accurate—at least he doesn’t have horns or claws anymore—and Xyla looks more like she does today than she did back when we first saw her. A warrior instead of a sexbot.
In this adventure they aren’t stealing body parts for themselves, thank the sun. But they are enslaving bots on a place called Junkyard Station.
I frown. Close it up. And then look at the last two.
Once again the first, older cover, depicts a more cartoonish version of two violet-eyed boys who look like demons and the title is Akeelian Adventures: Soul Stealers.
I flip through it and find the two boys—who are clearly Luck and me—are also going to ancient stations, only this time, instead of stealing bot parts to make themselves into cyborgs, they steal station parts from still-living stations—thus the title Soul Stealers— and take them back to Junkyard Station, and then give them to the evil AI who runs the place, who is called MIZAR.
“Hmm,” I huff, toss it aside, and then pick up the one that has our real faces on the cover.
I stare at it for a long time. Because Lady is there too. And Beauty.
I miss that life. So much. And even though I know the story inside will be wrong, I open it anyway just so I can picture the four of us out on our adventures again.
Luck and I are no longer demons but we’re still stealing critical components from living stations. Which makes no sense. That would be like someone coming to Harem and taking the Baby’s data cores.
It would never happen. Even if you got in alive you’d never get out alive.
But then I get one page where it’s clear that both Luck and I are killed by some kind of glowing weapon. Maybe a SEAR knife dialed up to sword length.
But luckily our trusty bot, Beauty, puts us inside these tanks and then we are regenerated a
nd wake up stronger than ever, kill everyone on the station, and then take the station’s data cores back to Junkyard for that MIZAR person to use.
I hold the comic book at arm’s length, trying to force it to make sense. What are these stories? Just… a fiction? Some kind of lost mythology and we accidentally become part of it? A premonition?
A plan?
Beeping pulls me away from the story and when I look up I see the same bot who delivered them is back. Motioning and chirping at me.
I get up, grab the stupid comics, shove them back into the envelope, and follow it. Because even though I don’t speak this bot’s language, that’s the only possible thing he can be saying.
I study the park as we walk down a long, winding path. Many different varieties of plant life. Most of it I’ve seen before. Somewhere. On one of our many soul-sucking adventures.
Soul suckers.
That’s not how people see Luck and I.
Is it?
We didn’t steal parts from any working stations. The stuff we were looking for was all ancient. And most of the stations were dark and lifeless. I can count the number of times we had to fight our way through a station on both hands.
It wasn’t that many. And those things we were fighting—they weren’t even people. And when a Harem citizen decides a thing is not a person, the chances are very high that the thing is not a person. We go out of our way to find the humanity inside weird aliens.
So even if those things thought Luck and I were stealing their station’s soul—who cares? Right?
The winding path I’m on turns into a dimly lit forest flanked on either side by densely-packed trees and shrubs. I catch sight of a small animal rustling in the leaves. But when its wide eyes spy me, it quickly darts into the underbrush for cover.
I want to ask this bot a lot of questions about this park. I didn’t see the outside of Veila’s ship before I entered it, so I have no idea how big it is. But it has to be immense to support a forest biosphere like this.
A warship. Maybe even bigger than a warship.
And didn’t she make a point of telling me that this was her last ship? She seemed pretty upset about that at the time, but I was too overwhelmed to push her on the meaning of that sentiment.
We’ve been walking for a long time and I’m just about to ask where the hell we’re going when I spy a solid steel wall with a large door built in to it.
“What’s this?” I ask. Because it looks like the door to a maintenance garage.
The bot beeps and chirps and I, of course, do not understand one word he’s saying. But then he fucks with a security panel built into the wall and the door slides open.
I stand there for a few moments trying to make sense of what I’m seeing. Because it’s… nothing but black space. And this is so disorienting I hold my breath out of habit, even though if this door really did open up into space holding my breath would not help me. I’d be sucked out into the ether and dead almost immediately.
About two seconds later I recognize what I’m looking at. A massive viewing wall. And it’s either the largest viewing screen I’ve ever seen or… a window.
Based on the curvature of the wall—which is clearly shaped around the outer hull of the ship—I deduce it’s an actual window.
Then I notice the surroundings. A very large room by ship standards. In the center of the room, and placed directly in front of the window, there’s a half-moon-shaped couch covered in midnight-blue velvet that must be at least ten meters across. I think you might be able to sleep an eight-man team of borgs on that couch, that’s how expansive it is.
In front of that is a long silver table made out of some kind of brushed metal. Behind the couch there is a long buffet table with an assortment of bubbly wine bottles and alcohol decanters. There’s also a basket filled with passion limes, tushberries, and youthfruit.
Is it a hotel? I wonder to myself.
But no. Because next to the buffet of drinks and fruit is a flashframe that displays a series of images.
I walk towards the buffet and pick up the frame. Watch it cycle through the display of images. Veila like I know her. All dressed up in her silver-pink gowns. Meticulously coiffed hair on top of her head. Regal, and evil, and… you know. Loathsome.
But among those are pictures of children. Small girls. And if I squint real hard I think I see Veila in the face of one of them. And Corla too. Maybe. I can’t really recall what Corla looks like. But the faces seem familiar.
I pause the image rotation to get a better look at it.
The two girls are in a large, luxurious room. Round bed with a thick mattress covered in silver silks. Canopy overhead with long, silky, silver curtains. More pink and silver throw pillows than I can count. Toys and books at their feet. In fact—I squint at the picture—there’s one of the Akeelian Adventure comics on the floor.
There’s also a bot. Not this bot here with me, but another bot. A gold one that reminds me a lot of Beauty.
Both girls are clearly happy. They are smiling in their frilly dresses. And the one who might be Corla is holding the bot in her arms like a precious pet.
“Rex!”
I whirl around and almost drop the frame on the floor.
“Rex? Is that you?”
“Veila is here?” I whisper that to the bot.
It chirps.
“Rex!” she calls again.
And for a moment I wonder if Rex is her boyfriend. Heat fills up my body unbidden. I don’t want these feelings for her, but they’re there. I can’t help it.
I’m jealous of some dude called Rex.
The bot ignores my reaction and slips down a long, dimly lit hallway where the voice came from.
“There you are,” I hear Veila say, then realize Rex is probably the bot. But there’s no time to think more about that because Veila continues talking. “Oh, my sun. I feel like shit.” She whines these words out in a very un-Veila-like way. Then there’s some clanking of various metal objects. Water running. The bot chirping loudly over all this noise. And then Veila saying, “I know. But it makes me feel better so I don’t care.”
I look back at the photo frame in the buffet and it occurs to me then that she has no idea I’m here.
But as I’m looking at that photo frame I begin to take in smaller details about the room. A small dish on the coffee table filled with snack food. Nuts maybe. An empty mug. An e-reader screen displaying the title page of a book called Motherhood Across the Galaxy. And on top of the e-reader screen is a small notescreen with a pressure pen balanced on top.
But then I notice that the pillows on the couch are haphazardly thrown about and there’s a thin silver blanket in the mix. And all of this gives me the impression that Veila spent the afternoon here. On this couch. Eating those nuts, drinking from that mug, reading that book, and making notes about motherhood across the galaxy.
I try to picture Veila doing this and almost laugh. And I probably would’ve laughed if another thought didn’t pop into my head. One that kinda stuns me.
She lives here.
This place—this massive fucking room and whatever lies down that hallway where she’s at—this place is her home.
Maybe this whole ship is her home? And that’s why she was making a big deal about only having one ship left.
Those other ships were for war. This one is for… hiding.
She’s hiding.
She practically admitted that earlier, I just didn’t have enough information to understand the significance.
Going home after you lose a battle is the definition of losing. Luck and I lost a few times in our many battles on ancient stations. There were plenty of emergency medical pods and dashing through gates at breakneck speeds to get somewhere for help.
But when that kind of stuff happened we didn’t go home.
Not empty-handed. What’s the point of that?
We regrouped on a station, or out in space, or wherever. We made a new plan and then we went right back into the fray and
finished the fucking job.
Then, and only then, did we go home.
And now, maybe for the first time ever, I realize something.
Luck and I never failed.
Is that right? Is it true?
And suddenly I am desperate to think of a time we did. Surely, after all those years, after all those missions we were sent on and parts we were sent to find, we failed once. At least.
There is one time when it almost happened. That time when Luck got his throat slashed by that girl. But we weren’t on a mission. We were already on our way home. So it doesn’t really count. We didn’t lose when I took him home.
Every time ALCOR sent us out into the galaxy with a list we brought that shit back. Like we were his fucking autoshopper.
This means something. I know it does. I just can’t figure out what.
“Hand me that, will you?” Veila says from down the hall. The bot answers her with some good-natured beeping and chirping.
This pulls me back out of my past and has me focused on the present again.
Because I suddenly understand Veila just a tiny bit more.
The fact that Veila is here on her home ship means she feels defeated. She needed the comfort of this place to heal her from whatever happened during the past six weeks while I was under.
What happened while I was asleep?
Luck told me a little. The whole rebellion thing kinda backfired. Who knew those harem princesses were so angry? I mean, I guess I’d be pissed at us too if I were them.
But something else happened and this is about Veila. Because she’s… different. Granted, I was pretty drugged up when I was on her last ship. And tied to a wall. And being tortured and… whatever else she did.
But that’s kind of my point.
This Veila is calm. Almost resigned. But resigned to what? Failure?
Of course she’s going to fail. The bad guys always fail.
But… who are the bad guys anyway?
Because my brothers and me? And everyone else on this station? I would not call us good guys, that’s for sure.
