Inalienable: Book 7 of the Starstruck saga

by S E Anderson

  I glanced up at Kork, who pointed his thumb at the buffet; he’d catch up with me later.

  “Gladly.” I smiled, taking the Killian’s velveted arm to be whisked away on the dance floor. It was such a relief to see a friendly face here tonight. And this time, it hadn’t been arranged by my psycho time-space-stalker ex.

  I was glad to have the steps ingrained in my muscle memory, so I only had to focus on looking my upper-class best. I smiled at my partner whenever the opportunity arose, glad to see her smiling back. I had been wondering what had happened to her since our last meeting, sincerely worried that she had gotten caught up with the murderous, possessed robot people. But this was Sekai No-Oji, who had survived thousands of years under my planet’s surface, regained her life after a madman had abused her for literal power, rose through the ranks and became an ambassador—to the civilization I had vowed to tear down. Oops.

  Maybe Earth and Kili would make their own Alliance.

  Sekai was an incredible dancer. While I simply flowed through the steps, she lived them, every motion expressive; a story shouted from each muscle. Her race had softer bones than mine, making her less rigid, but that didn’t explain sheer talent. Dancing with her was like holding your own in a tornado.

  The song ended, and we clapped, but before I could ask her anything further, I was whisked away by another partner. Staying silent was harder than it seemed, especially since this being wanted to talk about a new bill that was being passed while dancing, something about limiting planetary intervention from high-dimensional life forms. Instead, I focused on the Lithero, concentrating on not losing my balance on the insanely vertical shoes as he ranted about taxes, rim planets, and the constant threat of literal gods taking over the economy.

  “The great hand of the economy might be invisible,” he insisted. Well, one of his three heads insisted. “But it doesn’t mean it’s not corporeal.”

  A bow, a thank you, then another dance partner, this one moderately human but even more intent on talking.

  “Nice party, isn’t it?” he asked politely.

  “Wonderful,” I replied, suddenly finding it easy to dance with this man. Maybe I had learned a thing or two about dancing after all. That or my numb feet had Stockholm syndrome.

  “Is this your first presidential event?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact. You?”

  “I’ve lost count.” He smiled, dipping me quickly and pulling me back up before he could drop me on the floor. Like a seamstress dropping a bolt of silk and catching it before it unraveled.

  “How does this one compare?”

  “The best, by far.” He smiled. “The dancers are better, the women much more beautiful.”

  I felt the heat in my face as the dance split to the group part, the smallest partner on one side, their hands clapping in unison, the taller stomping theirs every five or eight, I couldn’t keep track, and then regrouped into the proper couples.

  “I must say, you are sublime,” he said, and I blushed, though the intensity of his stare was a little much. Royal galas were a lot. “Are you enjoying the party?”

  “I’ve never had an opportunity to dance the Lithero so many times in one night, that’s for certain.”

  “I wouldn’t have guessed that. You move so gracefully,” he said politely. “I didn’t catch your name?”

  “Lady Glosilda. And if you currently have sore feet, try Captain Dauntless’s foot pomade. Hand-crafted out of the horns of smeelzibess–donated, not harvested, 100% cruelty-free! Makes any foot a baby foot.”

  It was bound to happen. I tried on my most apologetic smile for size.

  “Sir Red of Naz, pleasure.” He didn’t let go of my hands, even though the dance—and my product placement—had ended.

  I stared up at the face, and recognition hit me like the octopus returning from the dead to threaten me for not enjoying his severed limb.

  “Oh, you almost had me,” I said. “Red of Naz is much classier than Derzan.”

  “Drats, I thought I did.”

  Zander’s eyes were still his eyes, but the rest of his face was utterly alien to me. He had applied prosthetics so effectively I wouldn’t have given him a second glance in a crowd. Well, except I probably would have since the prosthetics did nothing to diminish his rugged handsomeness.

  “You thought I wouldn’t recognize you?”

  “I wondered.”

  “Well, I did.” I glanced over the foreign face. “The eyebrows are so … villainous.”

  “Do you like them?” he asked, raising his chin to look more menacing. The goatee was a little over the top. “With Blayde, too much is not enough.”

  “No, they’re an attractive touch. Though slightly creepy.”

  A new song began, and Kork was here. We danced together in a swirl of silks, and I was laughing, actually laughing, having what one might call an actual ball.

  My next partner was hard to pinpoint because the only part of him I could see was a fluttering red cape. I was half certain this was the so-called invisible hand of the economy, but I wasn’t going to let my translator ruin this wonderful night.

  No. Only what I did next could do that.

  The music changed suddenly to a strange heroic tune, a pleasant upbeat fanfare. Three men rose from their places in the floating orchestra, their six arms playing the complex instruments that had no comparison to back on Earth, though each sounded like full brass bands. They wobbled as their drifting platforms arranged themselves behind the podium. The dancers froze, all eyes turned to the stage, where a lone man stood with his arms crossed behind his back, leaning into the podium as if he were afraid he would not get picked up by the microphone.

  “Milords, ladies, gentleman, women, argroueth, and granouns,” he said, excitement filling the room from all the dancers. “Please welcome President Straiddies!”

  Applause rose through the hall as the man of the hour walked onto the stage to his podium, waving absentmindedly. His wrinkles were prominent on his face, like a crumpled rag, but it wasn’t his looks that earned him the applause; it was his power, the power he seemed to radiate from every angle. Shadows played across his face as the stage lights turned on him, darkness falling on the audience who stared at him, intent on his every word.

  I opened my purse, my eyes still on the president, fiddling for the gun, ripping the lining as quietly as humanly possible. All eyes were on him now, so intent on his hypnotic voice that I was almost invisible, all my sounds muted. I released the safety, cocked it, and aimed it at the man’s heart, waiting for the signal to come, for the man of the century to welcome us to his party.

  I breathed deeply, trying to keep my nerves under control, for the moment to come.

  The bullet sliced through his chest as silence fell in the hall.

  The man staggered, clawing at the place where the blood tried to escape his body, losing his balance in the process. His face looked at the audience, mouth forming a small O of surprise. He fell without a word, his body flopping like a forgotten rag doll, his feet the only part his audience could see.

  Finally, a scream erupted from the hall, a lone scream that resonated through the building, soon to be joined by countless others who had just lost their grip on reality.

  Blayde turned from the front row to stare at me as I stuffed the weapon back into my purse, her eyes huge, accusing, and confused all the same.

  “Way to literally jump the gun,” she spat. “Now, we’ve lost our only chance at your stupid plan.”

  “That wasn’t me!” I sputtered. “Someone else was trying to kill him!”

  “Correction: Someone else has killed him,” she said.

  “Not me!”

  It didn’t matter anyway. The president had just been assassinated.

  That was when the shooting started.

  One by one, they fell like flies: men, women, argroueths and granouns, lords and ladies. The quick ones darted for cover, hiding behind the columns instead of running around the hall like idiots,
while others fell, shot in the back by an unknown killer, the hall suddenly full of corpses and many different colors of blood.

  I searched for the siblings, but they were nowhere in sight. Without any clue into what to do in this type of situation, I covered my ears, closing my eyes as I dove behind the bar.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  If everyone wants to attack you on your birthday, that’s probably not a good sign

  If everyone wants to attack you on your birthday, that’s probably not a good sign

  The trick to staying calm in any situation is to assess, calculate, and react, no matter how much screaming you want to do. While you can always scream in terror after the fact, any planning and action done too late will be utterly useless. So, you’re better off promising yourself a good ol’ screamfest for when you make it through this.

  Because you are going to make it through this.

  This being armed gunmen surrounding the hall. The soldiers are down for the count on the security catwalk, replaced by armed gunmen in red spandex suits. This being the fact that there is a man dying next to you in a pool of his own blood, and everyone else behind the bar with you is already dead too. This being that you can’t find your friends and—selfishly, you admit—you resent that you still haven’t gotten your pardon, and even if you were to save the situation now, which you’re not sure you can, it’s not going to get them anywhere because the president you wanted dead actually is dead now, and that’s made everything worse.

  But no. It won’t be for nothing. You’re the only one who doesn’t have to worry about stupid risks getting you killed. You can save them.

  And then you realize you’re dissociating, and that’s a terrible way of solving a crisis, so I got a handle on myself and took a few deep breaths.

  I wasn’t supposed to have panic attacks, but muscle memory was a powerful thing. My chest was heaving, breaths coming in and out in short, useless gasps, not enough ever reaching my lungs. I clutched my hands into fists. Shut up, panic. Shut up, anxiety. You get your turn later.

  I turned to the man beside me, the one slowly wheezing to death. I didn’t have to be a nurse to tell him wasn’t going to make it through the night. Something akin to a plasma beam had sliced a hole right through his stomach, revealing the blue guts within. He was well dressed—then again, so was everyone at this party—but he had pins on his lapel, not military like Kork but something worthy of Alliance recognition.

  He looked up at me—mostly human, not entirely—and laughed. “Oh, that went well.”

  “Great party, right?” I replied.

  “It wasn’t meant to end like this.”

  For a second, I was going to agree with him, add to the sarcasm. But then it struck me. He didn’t mean the party. He meant whatever this was. The this that had him dying in front of me and me fighting off a panic attack I was no longer meant to be having.

  “What did you do?” I asked, my voice no higher than a whisper.

  He rolled his head back and forth on the floor. “They told me they would liberate everyone. All I had to do was give them information.”

  “Information to what?”

  “This was going to be the night that everything changes.” He sobbed. “But I didn’t want this. I didn’t want … this.”

  “It’s okay; it’s going to be okay.” Wait, why was I saying that? This man was somehow responsible for this massacre. I shouldn’t be comforting him at all.

  “Are they here?”

  “Who?”

  “Them.” With a trembling hand, he reached up to pull a small book from his jacket pocket. It was too feeble to pull it out entirely, so I reached over, gently prying it free from his fingers.

  It was a small book, wrapped in plastic like most library books are, embossed with silver letters. A Tale of Two Siblings.

  Oh, shit.

  “You wanted them here,” I said, rifling through the pages. A children’s book, full of children’s illustrations, Zander and Blayde fighting monsters and negotiating with kings. It looked like a lost book in the Chronicles of Narnia.

  “They’ll stop this, right?” the man—the murderer, the instigator, the whatever who made this happen—coughed in pain. Blue blood squirted from his insides.

  “Yes.”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  “Good. I don’t want to go out like this, you know. I never thought it would end like this.” He paused. “I only wanted to change the world.”

  “Well, you sure did that,” I said coolly. He had other people’s blood on his hands far before his own. “What did you do?”

  “Don’t let it end like this. Tell them I said something meaningful!”

  And with that, the man just … died.

  In all that time, I hadn’t noticed the shooting had finally stopped, and with his death, the hall was suddenly silent, except for strange, broken sobs that rose and burst like bubbles in a lake. My breathing was calm now, even, but so, so loud.

  The stranger, an upper echelon of the Alliance, knew about the siblings. Wanted them here. Was he connected to the men in the red spandex suits? Rebels without a cause or terrorists with unsavory motivations? Was he somehow responsible for them being here?

  Well, none of it mattered now. He was dead. So, whatever he wanted didn’t hold much weight.

  I focused on my breathing again, taking the storybook and slipping it into the bodice of my dress. The purse was gone, but I still had my gun. Unlimited ammo, Blayde had said, so long as I was courageous enough to rip out my own teeth.

  I risked a glance over the bar, peeking up above the now-soiled wood out into the ballroom beyond. Chaos dotted the horizon. Bodies—dead or playing dead, who could say—lay crumpled on the floor, a rainbow of blood staining the tiles. I could feel nausea building in my gut, threatening to release. Good thing I had experience in the traumatic puke department. I forced down the bile, collapsing back in the puddle of booze, trying instead to find an exit to build a plan.

  Fact: It wasn’t going to be hard to jump clear of the devastation. If I wanted to go, I could. But I wasn’t going anywhere without Zander and Blayde. We needed to regroup and come up with another strategy to win over the Alliance’s pardon.

  Possibility: If Zander and Blayde were seen—heck, probably even if they weren’t—this whole disaster would be pinned on them. Per usual. Maybe that’s why my now-dead neighbor wanted them here? So that his rebels could have scapegoats or something.

  Seeing the dead bodies sprawled on the ground made it all suddenly, coolly clear. This is what the siblings had been blamed for centuries. So much death. Whenever the Alliance had a problem, who was it easier to blame? Was it better to admit they were fractured and their dissidents came from within, or pin it all on beings who had risen to a mythical status? One thing was certain: Our plan to save the president probably would not have been enough to turn back any of that.

  Conclusion: I had to save Zander and Blayde.

  Sidebar: They probably could have left if it wasn’t for me.

  I swore under my breath. Of course, I was going to screw this up for them. The longer I screwed around not knowing where they were, the worse this would be.

  Prospect: They were probably saving the day as we speak. I was just a selfish jerk. We had a party to save.

  With a sudden crash, glasses fell around me, spilling into the tile floor and spraying me with booze. Two pairs of boots landed in front of me, heavily splashing in a puddle. I had no time to think—play the damsel in distress or bring them down? —before they sat down beside me, back to the bar, pushing the dead man aside and sandwiching me in.

  And with a silent laugh of relief, I found myself between my two favorite captains, James T. Kork and Sekai No-Oji.

  “Took you two long enough,” I said. Which made no sense but sounded badass, so I couldn’t help myself. Sekai handed me a gun, which, thankfully, wasn’t loaded with teeth.

  “You’re all right?” asked Kork, casting a gla
nce at the bodies surrounding us. “Not injured?”

  Oh right. “Shit, no one told you guys?”

  “What?” Sekai scooted forward, still crouched, using her overly large eyes to scan more of the room than I could ever hope to see. “Please do not tell me you are with child. That makes protecting you all the more … delicate.”

  I could have laughed it was so absurd. “Um, no. I just … I can’t get hurt anymore. You didn’t need to come back for me; I should have been coming for you.”

  “Oh, lah-dee-dah,” said Kork, eyes going almost as wide as Sekai’s. “I thought you were dead! What the hell happened in those two months?”

  “Congratulations on your mutation,” said Sekai. “Can we not linger here? We need to find an exit.”

  “You two get out of here,” I replied. “I’m going to try and stop whatever this is.”

  “You can’t expect us to leave all the fun to you,” said Kork. “It’s my frashing job to defend the Alliance, and defend it I shall.”

  “I will not stand for the killing of innocents,” said Sekai, brandishing what appeared to be a long tuning fork, only for the pronged end to erupt in a burst of electricity. Where had that been when we’d crystalized the doctors in the basement of the Hill? “And I will not crouch in terror either.”

  I couldn’t believe my luck, two seasoned military veterans landing practically in my lap. Granted, one was mostly a TV actor these days, and the other had spent millennia underground, so they might be a little rusty. But with them, I could think of more than just escape; I could think of an actual plan to take down literal terrorists.

  “Do we know what we’re up against?” I asked, while casually examining the weapon Sekai had handed me. I’d never seen it before in my life, but it was gun-shaped and had a trigger, so I assumed it was a point-and-boom type thingamajig.

  “I’ve counted twenty-four hostiles,” said Sekai. “All on the upper catwalk. The doors to the atrium have been secured from the outside, as well as service entrances and exits. We suppose they’ll trickle down to the ground floor once they think they’ve picked everyone off from above.”