Blood of a Thousand Stars

by Rhoda Belleza

  Julian lowered his head to get close and tentatively reached out a finger to touch it. For a second, Lahna smiled at him. It made Rhee feel something she couldn’t place, a mixture of relief and pride and something like jealousy.

  Taking a deep breath, Rhee reached out a hand and swiped a series of standard commands into the console—rudimentary code that any Kalusian with a holoscreen knew well.

  Instantly, the dash warmed up, and hundreds of thousands of holograms suddenly lit up throughout the large room at once, layers upon layers of them, dizzying, thick as a fog. Rhee jumped backward, swallowing her surprise. They were engulfed by memories, thoughts, static images, a life-sized repository of lives all throughout the universe.

  “What is this place?” Julian said. There was a quiver to his voice. It reminded Rhee of her own reaction the first time she’d seen tech like this, on Dahlen’s ship.

  One of the holographic slices caught her eye: two women, leaning against one another as they laughed. The holo was hand-activated, and as she touched it the image began to play. The women’s fingers intertwined; the brunette buried her face in the other woman’s hair. It was lovely.

  It was private.

  Nero had stolen it from someone, and she had no idea why.

  Lahna brought her hand up and moved away layer after layer until she reached a holo whose image was already moving. “Look. Something’s different here.” She cocked her head to the side and scrolled through. “I think it’s . . . live.”

  “What are you talking about?” Rhee asked. The view was shaky, as if they were watching through the eyes of someone in motion. A dozen soldiers could be seen moving across a rocky surface with a yellow, dusty atmosphere. Lahna adjusted something, and the sound of heavy breathing surrounded them in the room. It was from the video. It was transmitting live.

  “Does that look like anything to you?” Julian said, pointing to the bright blue star past the horizon in the observer’s view.

  Rhee squinted. “What does it look like to you?”

  “It’s Fontis,” Lahna said. “Which means they’re on . . .”

  “Wraeta,” Rhee said. Though she’d expected it, the confirmation made her feel sick.

  What had Nero said to her, before they’d addressed Kalu? The people want someone who will tell them what to believe . . . and make them believe it.

  “Stop it,” Julian said, shaking his head like he was trying to wake himself up from a dream. “This is wrong.”

  “Get your hands off me!” someone said on the holo: a girl, who must be somewhere outside of the visual frame.

  But Rhee knew that voice.

  It hit her like a jolt of electricity. It traveled like a current through her body, igniting every muscle, every fiber, a spark that exploded within. It seized her beating heart, and Rhee’s mouth opened so she might scream or cry, but no sound came out.

  This voice she’d heard before. And only now did she know how inaccurate a recalled memory was, how it fell short in the way it made you feel, in how truly immersive it was. Because hearing Joss’s voice in a recalled memory didn’t make her feel like this. Like she’d just died and been reborn.

  Lahna scooped up the moss ball and put it back in the vial. “We can’t stay here,” she said.

  “No.” Rhee leaned forward into the holo, like she might step into it—like it might turn into a portal to take her to Wraeta, to Joss, at this very moment. She didn’t care what else Nero wanted, or whatever trap he was setting for them. An entirely new feeling consumed her—an urgency and raw animal fear thickened her blood. She thought only of Joss.

  “We have to go. There’s no time.” Julian pushed her toward the exit, and Rhee stumbled, her feet slippery under her. She kept her head trained backward, her eyes on the holo. She had to see if Joss would appear.

  Then—

  She crashed hard into what felt like an invisible concrete wall.

  “Ancestors!” she exclaimed, reeling backward. Julian steadied her forearm.

  “Not sure what the holy spirits could do for us right here and now,” a voice said from behind her. It had a lazy drawl to it. “But by all means invite them over.” The soldier Rhee had stunned emerged from the shadows, then leaned against a rippling barrier that appeared to be made of thin air.

  Lahna released an arrow from her bow that richoceted off the barrier and send them all scrambling to dodge it. Rhee fell to her knees. Her heart sank. They were trapped.

  “Relax,” he said, dusting off his jumpsuit. “You’ve triggered the silent alarm. We only have a minute. Maybe a minute and a half . . . you’re lucky Nero took half of UniForce with him.” His hand hovered over the keypad. The force field was invisible but Rhee felt its resistance, like a hand pushing on her chest, vibrating her rib cage.

  “What do you want?” Rhee demanded.

  “To let you out,” he said simply. “I’m going to drop the force field now. And we’re all just going to stay real, real cool, okay?”

  The question was addressed to Lahna, whose arrow was still strung. “Why would we agree to such a thing?” she asked.

  “Because I’m on your side. Part of the resistance.” He looked to Rhee. “Not all UniForce is under Nero’s thumb.” Rhee had suspected she’d lost her own army; she hadn’t thought there would be loyalists within its ranks. “Some of us have been on the receiving end of this too,” he said, nodding to the holo playing behind Rhee.

  Rhee didn’t break eye contact. How could she trust someone in uniform? He must have seen her hesitation.

  “I helped Alyosha Myraz prove his innocence. A lot of good that did,” the soldier said, wincing in pain. “I have access to every code in this building.”

  “Who are you?” Rhee asked.

  “My name is Jethezar. Call me Jeth,” he said. “At your service, Empress.” He typed in a code and the barrier fell, and Rhee lurched forward.

  Jeth offered his hand. “Now how about we get out of here, before the alarm brings down a new wave of guards? I can’t promise all of them will be so sympathetic to your cause.”

  Rhee felt a rising panic, her mind still flooded with her sister’s voice. They’d come to get the jump on Nero, his plans—but he was so far ahead. The reality of it crushed her. Who was going to help? Who was going to believe them?

  If she wanted Joss to live, Rhee needed backup. A lot of it.

  “We need to get to the meeting of the United Planets,” she blurted out. “Can you help us?” Seeing Lahna about to object, she added, “Technically, they’re still loyal to the Ta’an rule.”

  “Technically, so is Nero,” Lahna said.

  After a moment, Julian agreed. “It’s our best shot.”

  Jeth smiled. “Let’s go find some loyalists, Empress.”

  Rhee nodded, another thought already blooming in her brain: And my sister.

  TWENTY

  KARA

  THE room where Nero had imprisoned Kara was beautiful and immaculately clean, and filled with new wave–style furniture—all grays and acrylic and angles that were as uncomfortable as they looked. She had views of the Sibuyan skyline.

  It should have been calming, should have relieved the pulsing ache behind her eye. But like everything else Nero made, the room, the view, the furniture was an illusion. Kara brought her fist to the “window,” and the plasma dented, only to immediately repair itself smooth. As the vision in front of her transitioned to a beach scene, she saw how truly small her cell was—just wide enough that she could stretch her arms at her sides. Kara banged the screen again, harder, but the surface merely rippled as the scene changed to a misty mountaintop. The room grew cooler, the air crisp, and there was a sound of a bird cawing in the distance.

  “Enough!” Kara screamed, and she continued to hit the screen in a beat matching the pounding of her own head. Cycling through elevated vistas, the simulation showed natu
re at its most peaceful and elegant—each scene the inverse of the fury and helplessness growing inside her chest.

  They were on Nero’s ship now, in a prison cell he had constructed, just like the one on Houl. She and Issa had been separated; Kara hoped she was still alive. She pounded on the wall once more at the thought of Issa, hoping foolishly her friend would hear her, hoping she could knock down walls for them to be together again. They’d come so far.

  The vista changed. Now it looked over Kalu from space, and she stopped, her fist sore from pounding. The moving image was quiet, dark, and she felt like she was the only person for hundreds of thousands of kilometers. From so far above, her home planet was an orange and white mass, pulsing with so much life and complication that she wondered if maybe they really were somewhere over Kalu.

  Real or not, Nero had accessed the overwriter, and he had come to ruin it all. She slid down to her knees. And reached into her pocket, past her coin, for the pill Diac had given her. The tiny neuroblocker was her only protection against the overwriter, if Nero decided to use it.

  “Nice to see you’ve calmed down,” a voice said. She swallowed hard, taking a gamble. Felt the neuroblocker slide down her throat as someone entered the room.

  Looking up, she saw it was the Tasinn with the eye patch. Yendit. The façade of deep space still played on the plasma walls, and the threshold he stood at looked like a portal to another time and place. “It’s time to go.”

  Kara imagined pushing her way past him, into the hallway, into space. But she wouldn’t give Nero the satisfaction. “Where’s my friend?”

  “You’re not in a position to ask the questions.”

  They walked through a short, dark hallway that made the ship look more like the prison it was. Kara fought to stay upright, not to buckle under her own fear as she was ushered into a dark room. When an overhead light flickered, it felt like nails sinking into her brain, at the spot just behind her eye socket. She was pulled toward two seats that faced one another, wires and nodes sticking out along the backrest and arms. There was a small droid nearby carrying a tray covered with a white sheet. The thought of what might be underneath made her shiver.

  “Sit,” Yendit ordered, pointing at what looked like the patient’s seat.

  Kara did as she was told, clenching her hands in her lap as she forced her eyes to stay open and take in the medical equipment. Where was the overwriter? Would Nero use it on her? Would she be victim to this device again? But no, not yet—if she was right about the cube update being a primer for the overwriter, she didn’t have it. The neuroblocker would have to be enough. And if it wasn’t . . .

  “Empress!” Nero entered, smiling broadly as if genuinely happy to see her. Kara saw he had the triangle burned into his neck, just like the people she’d seen on the hyperloop weeks ago—the ones who’d been Ravaged, wandering around with vacant eyes, their mind in a loop. A wave of revulsion moved through her.

  “Nero,” Kara said. “What are you going to do to me?”

  “So impatient.” But after a dramatic pause, he waved a hand. “Why would I tell you when I could just do it.”

  The lights came up and Kara gasped. It was as if they had never lifted off. The room was so enormous it gave the illusion of wide expanses and open space. Nero had filled it almost entirely with a huge cross section of Wraetan ground he had lifted from the surface. She felt dizzy, staring out over the stubbly ground, the gnarled tree stump, the landscape glowing ruddily beneath the lights.

  “What is this?”

  Nero walked to the stump that had until recently been rooted on the Wraetan surface. He climbed up a stepladder and walked along the soil. Kneeling before the tree stump, he reached a bare hand inside and pulled with what looked like a lot of effort. When Nero removed his hand, he was holding something. It was a small piece of tech, a microchip embedded in a small sac of some sort, sticky and wet. It looked like it might be pulsing.

  Plantlike. Alive.

  Kara recognized it immediately—she’d touched it just hours ago, before she’d been ripped away by Nero.

  It was the overwriter.

  She gasped, bringing her hand to her mouth. It filled her with instinctive revulsion, and a deep desire to break it, like she’d always planned. It had a kind of sweating, glutinous sheen, and the bright green color of a newly budded leaf. She remembered how Lydia cared for her plants at the lab, fawning over them with so much care it had made Kara jealous.

  Kara tried to run for it. But Yendit pulled her back against the chair from behind.

  “Yendit, there’s no need to manhandle her,” Nero said. “And Josselyn, calm down.” She felt a chill at the mention of that name, her name. What did he want with her? “You’re obviously not going anywhere. Now, if you please . . .”

  He addressed these last words to the droid. A light bar across its chest went red then blue, and two cuffs sprang from the chair around her wrists. Another fastened around her head at the temples, so she was pinned down.

  Kara struggled against her restraints, but it was pointless. “I hate you.” And she did. But more so, she hated that he was right—and she hated herself for sitting here quietly, obediently, while this madman feigned politeness over a powerful, dangerous tech as if it were a toy at his disposal.

  Nero took the overwriter between his thumb and his forefinger and held it up to the light. The viscous substance stuck to his fingers. She’d never seen him smile the way he did now.

  “The minerals in the ground are particularly rich here, which is why it was planted.” He made his way back down the stepladder.

  “What will it do?” Kara asked as he moved closer.

  “The plant-based components can expand consciousness. The mechanical parts—you can’t see them, but they’re there—will take the place of my cube as soon as it is removed, like a nerve ending.”

  “Removed?”

  “Yes, yes.” He waved a hand. “The overwriter will take the place of the cube instead of overwriting it. That’s a slight flaw in the tech that Lydia and Diac developed. But I found a way around it . . .”

  Of course. Nero had figured out how to retain his memories and use the overwriter to its fullest capacity.

  The droid rolled forward as if it had been cued. It removed the white sheet from its tray with its handlike attachment. On it was a single syringe, but instead of a needle, the place that punctured was in the shape of a small triangle. Her heart froze. A noise escaped Kara’s mouth.

  “Don’t worry, this one’s not for you,” Nero said, though there was nothing reassuring about his words or his tone. The droid prepped the shot and brought it to the burnt skin on his neck. He’d done this several times, it seemed, but he still flinched once the shot was administered.

  “You’re doping?” Kara asked.

  “I’m not doping,” he said defensively. He still handled the overwriter gently between his fingers. When whatever the droid administered took effect, Nero shuddered. “The chemicals in this little vial are self-organizing. They arrange themselves into a kind of root, connecting straight into the nerves that reach the brain, replacing the neural pathway that’s normally used by the cube. It hasn’t been pleasant, but it’s necessary.”

  So he’d been prepping to insert the overwriter this whole time.

  “This,” he said, holding up the overwriter for her to see, “is the marriage between organic and inorganic. It’s magnificent, really. It’s like the cube–human relationship in a single piece of tech.”

  “So what happens to your cube when it’s removed, then? You’re just going to let it die?”

  “I’ll find a way to keep it alive.”

  “Then what’s the plan now? Install the overwriter?” She thought of what her father had been planning to do, though she knew nothing Nero intended would be as noble. “Erase some memories or replace them or . . .”

  “What w
ould you have done?”

  He stared at Kara intently, as if searching her. It terrified her more than anything. “You still have political opposition, Nero. You’re not untouchable.”

  “But I have our alliance . . .”

  “Our alliance?” Kara scoffed. “You really think this is going to help you with this scheme?”

  “Yes.” Nero laughed. “Yes, I sincerely do.”

  Just then Kara felt a tiny needle prick into her neck. She went cold; she thrashed, but the restraints were too tight, and it was no use.

  “What did you do to me?”

  “I ensured your cooperation,” he said. “It’ll be easier this way.”

  A surge shot through her brain, sharp and precise, like it was cleaving in two. Then down her throat and to the very tips of every limb, changing, coursing, rolling. Like venom now, but more insidious. It was her cube updating, and—she hoped—her neuroblocker working against it.

  “Is this what you did to Rhiannon?” Kara demanded. Nero tilted his head, as if he were observing an animal. It made her all the more furious. “I would kill you before we aligned.”

  “I don’t think you will. Any mind I overwrite is connected to my own.” She didn’t follow; he could tell. “Would you really kill me, if you knew it would risk the lives of countless innocents? Just under a million souls and counting have updated, across at least twenty territories. And those who won’t, will. Would you risk all of them by killing me? Would you risk the very fabric of consciousness itself just to see me die?”

  She stared, stunned.

  “Well,” Nero said with a slight smile, lifting the overwriter as if making a toast. “To us.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  RHIANNON

  RHEE hurried after Jethezar through the labyrinthine passages of the Sibu capitol building, with Julian and Lahna close behind her. There hadn’t been time to find a safe way to notify the Fisherman and Tai Reyanna, but she planned to send word as soon as they met with the United Planets.