Starfire, A Red Peace

by Spencer Ellsworth

  I see everything. I listen as her father talks, as he tells her everything from how to consolidate the galaxy to this missing memory crypt to the way he shivers at night and babbles about all his enemies, still trying to find him, his voice a high, pitter-pattering pathetic mad thing, whispering of the enemies he’s had for so long.

  I know her father’s secret. The reason why he wants to kill every last blueblood.

  He knows what the Shir are.

  He knows that any peace with the Shir means that he must give them more to eat. The bluebloods knew it too, and he fears that any human will know.

  She believes him. Why shouldn’t she? She can’t see his paranoia, his madness, without thinking of all the times he’s been proven right.

  She fights as I did, in the bloody hallways of the Imperial Navy. She kills the loyal crosses of the Imperial forces, throws her grenades, fires her shard-bolts. She thinks of her father, and her mother, and it gives her strength. She thinks of what they told her: she is a new generation, the first of the new Jorians, born of crosses who broke free. They can’t live without a galaxy purged. They can’t become as the ancients unless humans are gone.

  She believes. And she loves. She loved me, as strange as that was. I can see myself, as I looked through her eyes. I looked like the hero her father said I was. I also look like someone else under a burden of destiny and expectation, same as she was. Huh. Never thought of myself that way.

  She thinks she knows who betrayed the Resistance. I reach for the hunch, the suspicion, which she has buried . . .

  She’s dead. Her body has gone cold and empty on the end of the soulsword.

  I lay her down in the sand and draw the soulsword out of her chest. There is no blood. The white fire along the soulsword has died down. Her eyes look up at me, still locked in that strange mixture of admiration and horror.

  I lay her down. I stroke her hair. She was the last one, from my very first battalion. Every single one of us, except crazing me, is now dead. “Stamp your boots and open your sheath.”

  The Resistance might suffer for it, but I know it now, from her memories: John Starfire conquered the galaxy and brokered a peace with the Shir. He also became a paranoid, weak man.

  Hell, I can’t blame him. War does funny things to us. I brush my hand over the ripples where her synthskin melted. War takes away pieces of everyone.

  I unsheathe the short sword. It gleams in the sun. This time, it’ll take away every single one of my bloody memories. Along with my bloody life.

  * * *

  Jaqi

  I just now begin to remember something from those stories about deserts: there en’t much water in them. Huh. That’s the kind of thing a girl should remember.

  I stumble along, just noticing how hot it is—a different, open, drying-out heat from Swiney Niney. A mixture of that sweaty, nasty Swiney heat with the dryness of Bill’s place when it was over-vented. Way too dry. Like the humidity control’s off. Not bad, though. Air is sure sweeter than any reverse-cell crap I’ve ever tasted.

  It takes forever to reach the nearest spires of rock. Everything is far apart here. Never seen this much open space that I can remember. I get myself up and over the hill, and down the other side and . . .

  Kalia, running. She’s not hurt, although she’s absorbed half a planet’s worth of dirt on her skin and her clothes. “Jaqi!” She looks up at me, mouth open. “They—they—Vanguard!”

  I run with her, into the shadow of the biggest rock.

  It en’t the scene that I expected. I recognize gray girl, what killed Quinn. She’s lying on the ground, and she’s dead, that weird ghostly pale look that means she’s been stuck with a soulsword. The other guy I think I recognize too. Scar-face. Wait, I saw this fellow, inside one of the Moths, when he humped my ship! Couldn’t reckon how I saw him, but I know that face.

  He is kneeling on the ground, and has a short sword out, and his hand is trembling, holding it at his chest.

  “He killed her.” Kalia is silent except for her quick, panting breaths. “He killed her and then . . . then he just kneeled down.”

  I take a good look. He’s all bloody, with a wound in the meat of his shoulder and another in his side. Short sword, at the ribs. He’s going to do himself in, one of them honor things that are so important to the rest of the galaxy.

  I don’t say anything. Let the bastard off himself. It don’t matter whether he saved Kalia; he didn’t save Bill, or Quinn, or any of gray girl’s other victims. The last few days of running, bleeding, bruises and pain and jumping from node to node, losing friends and changing too fast, bolt through my head, the pain shoved into me like a ship being pulled into a node.

  Let him die, I think. It’ll help balance out the universe.

  “Hey, stop,” Kalia says. She runs forward, pushing for the guy. “Stop! You saved my life, you don’t have to die!”

  He looks up, and he sees me. Something passes between us, a shock through the inside of my bones. I find myself saying, “Enough people have died already.”

  Crazing enough, I mean it.

  He takes that knife away from his chest.

  -21-

  Jaqi

  HE JUST KEEPS LOOKING at me, his scarred lips open a bit, his brows creased in a way that squashes that scar along the side of his eye.

  “What the burning Dark are you looking at?”

  He says it real flat, deadpan. “You’re unusual.”

  “I’ve heard.”

  He remains on his knees. That shaking hand holds the short blade, but at least it’s fallen down a bit, to his side, where it can’t bring any more blood to this bloody, bloody day. I sit down on the ground. I could use some water about now, aiya. Evil I could. “Kalia, have you seen Toq and Z?”

  “I haven’t,” she says.

  “We’d better find them.” I look on the Vanguard fellow. “You staying here? I need help finding our crew.” I finger the pistol at my hip, hoping he doesn’t notice that it’s empty. “Or have you decided which side you’re on?”

  He stands up, groaning, holding his bloody side. “Go ahead,” he says. His voice slurs like he’s half cooked. “I’ll follow.”

  I keep looking over my shoulder at him as we start off through the sand. He is holding that little sword and staring at it. I look at him so much that I don’t even notice when Kalia screams.

  Z is lying, all tangled in his chute, in the middle of the sand, not too far from where Kalia came down. Lying dead still, his skin now a distinct shade of green. As we get closer, I smell that faint rot. No.

  Kalia runs to him. She grabs at her waist, pulls out a small flask of water—good thinking, Kalia—and splashes it across Z’s face. The water runs in the hollows around his eyes, past his nose and down, and over his lips. The sunlight makes it look like little jewels, scattered across his face. He don’t move.

  “He’s not dead,” Kalia says. “He can’t . . .”

  “Dead, like he wanted,” I say. In blood and honor. Except—no, damn it, that Necro-Thing was already dead, and as he said, there’s no honor in fighting it, and so there en’t no honor in being killed by its poison. Only honor in protecting a couple of kids, far above and beyond what was asked of him. Only honor in being the bravest bastard ever flew the galaxy.

  “Z.” I lean over and grab his shoulders. “Z, no! Come on! You been poisoned before! Not enough blood and honor! Not enough—” There’s something raw and horrid taking up my throat, like all the crying I want to do is finally going to rocket out and I won’t be able to stop crying for years.

  He puts his hand on my shoulder. Scar-faced Vanguard, and he’s holding out his soulsword. Like I ought to take it. “Here,” he says.

  “What?” He’s holding out that stupid long sword, still flickering with white fire.

  “There’s . . . there’s an old story.” He rolls his eyes. “I am stupid even for saying it, but there’s something different about you.” I want to tell him he en’t making sense, then give him th
e punch he deserves, but he clears his throat. “The original Jorians supposedly could heal with their soulswords as well as kill. I believe you can touch the Starfire, perform the miracles, like the original Jorians could.”

  I wipe at my eyes. “Crazing bastard.”

  “Probably.” He motions with the sword. “Worth a try.”

  “I en’t a cross like you, idiot,” I say. It’s this guy’s damn fault, all of it, anyway, and it’s all I can do to keep from choking him, and then smashing his stupid Vanguard helmet with a brick.

  He surprises me. “You are more than I am,” he says softly. “You have to be, or nothing was worth it. Please. Put your hand with mine, on the sword.”

  More than . . . Whatever, it’s worth a shot. “What do we do?”

  “Think of . . .” Long silence, and I reckon he’s looking for some way to explain some magical, Starfire-bending, space-twisting spell of the Vanguard to me. “Think of a song.”

  “What?”

  “A song. Do you know any songs?”

  I almost laugh, it’s so dumb. “You want me to sing while we do this?”

  “I don’t want you to sing. I want you to think of a song. Just—think about music.” He grimaces. “You know the moment when you first hear music? When you first begin to lose yourself in a piece of music? Like that.”

  The only songs I can think of are Bill’s old dirty ones, and I open my mouth to say it—no, that en’t all. Maybe it’s something about the planetside air, but I think of my mother’s voice. Singing something softly, some bit of farmer song, a soft rhythm that went bend, bend, bend your back. Pull, pull, pull, pull the weed. Bend, bend, bend your back. In my memory, she sings it soft and gentle, lulling me to sleep.

  I realize he’s pushed the sword down. Put the tip into Z’s chest, right into the big, black-oozing welt that the NecroWasp’s stinger made. The white fire ripples along that sword. I hold on. The thing is hot and alive, like holding on to a shard-bolt.

  I feel something inside myself. A knot of fire myself, a knot of everything—that anger, over everyone lost, but also the love for my parents, gone as they are, the love for Bill, and the love for Kalia and Toq and even Z, the big scab.

  And I hear—I hear something.

  It’s my mother’s voice this time, for real. Singing her farmworker’s song. Pull, bend, pull, bend. But there’s music with her, music like I en’t ever imagined. Soft and gentle little notes ping-pong across this wide space behind her voice. And then they change, become this countersong, this thing made of vast spaces, filling up her words, sharp walls of high and sudden notes, deep thrumming waves of low notes, and I know this. This en’t just hopping into a node. This is the Starfire itself. The song of the stars. This is what them Jorians always talked about, and it’s sweet, like something that was right there, but I couldn’t feel it all along. I en’t never heard music like this. En’t nobody heard music like this.

  “Push,” he says. “Push it out, into him.”

  I reach into that music. The beats go round and round, swirling around me, and I don’t push them so much as direct them, make them hold together in a stream, down through the soulsword. The song of the stars, shoving it down into Z.

  He gasps for air.

  The Vanguard takes the sword out.

  Z sits up, feels his chest, and though the welt’s still there, it’s just a nasty scar now, not a hole through his chest. His skin is pale white under the tattoos. Not a sign of green.

  “I—I died.”

  “Not enough blood and honor,” I say, and it’s hard to talk around that big thing in my throat. “Had to bring you back.”

  “Where is Toq?” He stands up and looks around.

  I stand up too. In the distance, I can hear something coming. Not a ship. Weird noise. Steady beats, like feet, pounding fast as a ship across the earth.

  “Matakas?” I ask. “At least maybe they have some water.” I look over at Vanguard. “What’s your name, crazing?”

  “Araskar,” he says.

  We wait. Three folks are coming toward us—on real horses! I en’t never seen a real horse before. Of course, I en’t brought no one back from the dead either. It’s a day full of new things.

  They stop, a good thirty paces away. They’re all wrapped up in white rags, across their faces, just showing the edges of their eyes. They got these funny little decorations everywhere—on strings, like beads. Made of real matter, too, far as I can tell. I’ve never seen beads made of rocks and wood and bone.

  These are no Matakas. Reckon it makes sense that Matakas wouldn’t be the only things on this whole moon, that maybe some scabs are running around the desert, just trying to get by. Or running interference for Matakas.

  Well, gray girl’s gone, and this Vanguard seems to be on my side. And hell, I just brought my friend back from death. En’t scared to talk to new folk after that.

  One of them rides forward on that horse.

  Maybe it’s my head, but this horse is about the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. It’s taller than Z, and it’s got these long, knobby legs that just kind of trot in this way I en’t never seen before, just taking giant-size strides like they en’t nothing, one stride and another. It looks at me long enough, them black eyes shining, that I suspect this thing is probably sentient.

  Z is still on the ground, trying to rise on his arms, looking mighty weak. And that horse comes nearly up to him. The rider reaches up, pulls off that veil. He—no, she, she’s got white skin, covered with those black, interlacing tattoos; she’s another Zarra. I reckon she’s going to say blood and honor, just to finish this day off right.

  Instead, she says, “We have water, and food. We found the boy. He is all right.” She looks over us all. “Do the Kurguls know you are here?”

  “I think, as far as they reckon, we’ve been shot down.”

  “Good.” She puts a hand out to Z. He rises, and clasps her hand. “We are many, all who have run.”

  * * *

  Araskar

  The girl—Jaqi, her name is—and the children, Toq and Kalia, and that enormous Zarra, are all sitting around the fire with our new hosts.

  I watch. The people here are a mix of races. Zarra. Rorgs. Tall, bony, thin-faced, fanged Grevans. Keekuks, the “crickets,” on their segmented, springing legs. And even a few humans. Skin, scales, hollow eyes, and ridges on the head are lit up by the fire, playing unique shadows across each face, soft round flesh, and dagger-sharp angles, but each face looks on Jaqi and the kids with wonder. They’ve all run here, to the end of the universe, barely subsisting in this harsh place. No doubt the young Matakas get drunk and come out here to take potshots at them, and they count it worthwhile for the isolation. The Suits might even try to raid them, when they need organic matter. They’ve all run here, though, to survive, and as Jaqi and the kids tell their story, casting wary glances my way, their noises of assent in various tongues go around the circle.

  A good place to run to.

  I wish I could forget that I didn’t run here.

  I slip away from the fire.

  I walk out into the desert. It only takes a few steps and the heat from the fire vanishes; I go cold all over, my skin prickling. My wounds ache under the emergency gel-packs used to seal them. The air smells big and bitter cold, like it’s carrying all the emptiness of the wild worlds.

  My hand goes to the short soulsword’s hilt.

  Rashiya’s memories are still roiling inside me. When you’re a cross, you don’t put much value on your life, and I can’t stop living through her memories of me, because, more fool her, she put value on mine. She may have been Daddy’s girl, but when she joined, she cut off all contact with him, didn’t let him know where she was. She was one of us, for a while. She trusted our battalion, loved us, lost her friends in the same way I did, and came to me as if we really were from the same batch.

  She shouldn’t have saved me on Irithessa. Would have done us all a lot of good if those Kurguls got me in the head. Ima
gine how simple things would be now.

  I draw the soulsword and flip it over. It reflects the bright Suit planet that takes up half the sky. Can’t help wondering, now, which memory I put in there. I haven’t searched my memories closely enough to figure out what’s missing.

  “You really committed to this grim?”

  I can hear the music around her, and I turn around, stare. The girl is a fountain of the music. The music is staggering in its complexity, and beautiful in its simplicity, in the way a simple tune rises above a gulf of sound.

  “You really want to die?”

  I hold up the blade, but don’t bother to speak. She’s right. Right as hell. I really want to die. It’s not fair that all my friends, all my slugs, are dead, and here I try to do the right thing and keep living for it.

  “Araskar,” she says. Speaks my name. “You got some well things to live for—look at them kids. You saved them. You know we have some big secret? You ought to see it—it’s a star map, real old, from the time of the first Jorians themselves—and don’t think we en’t grateful, cuz I know you risked a lot to do what’s right.”

  I have no answer for her. “That star map would be something to see,” I settle on. I look out at the stars, beyond the Suits’ wide world, the Dark Zone just rising, a black patch beyond the white rim of the mainframe planet.

  “There’s more to do,” she says. “I saw this star map, and they said it was some prophecy, and started rattling on about the Dark Zone. You’re one of them Vanguard—what do you know about that?”

  “The Third Book of Joria?”

  “I reckon.”

  “I’m not much of a reader,” I say. I think of old John Starfire, babbling about it. I wonder whether he’s ever truly believed that he is that man in the prophecy. “I know people believe it.”

  “Right, I reckon so, reckon it’s evil crazed. Between you Vanguard, Kalia’s praying all the time, and Z’s business about blood and honor, I want no religion.” She sits down in the sand, not far from me.

  “The prophecy might be nonsense, but . . .” The knowledge filters in, the secrets Rashiya’s father was trying to keep. “John Starfire made peace with the Shir by promising them more to eat. It was a trade-off. For years the Shir have fought the Navy, and it’s kept the Dark Zone from expanding. John Starfire had to pay a price. He promised them . . .” The words trickle into my head. “He promised them they could expand into the wild worlds.”