Nascent Decay (The Goddess of Decay Book 1)

by Hash, Charles

  “Can you find them?” Rhylie asked, quickly changing the subject.

  “I have an entire map of the facility now,” said Vorle, “Including their location.”

  “Yup,” said Mersi. “I’m opening all of the doors between you and them right now as well.” The sound of doors sliding open echoed down the empty hallways. Vorle withdrew his hand from the terminal and began drifting down the hall. Rhylie followed closely behind him.

  They soon found Riddai and Potaan together in a large circular room with a myriad of feed screens everywhere, displaying every inch of the complex. The walls were lined with a dozen glass cubicles. Some were empty and dark. Those that were illuminated contained prisoners. Some were currently engaged in what Rhylie took to be coitus.

  The people in the glass cubes seemed completely unaware of what was playing out before them, just beyond the walls of their prisons. Scattered around the room were several different types of chairs and tables that came with a bizarre assortment of apparatuses and devices. Some were currently in use, their occupants staring wide-eyed in horror at Rhylie and Vorle as they hovered into the room.

  As soon as they entered, Riddai tossed a small, glowing orb into the middle of the room. When it hit the floor, it sent out a pulse that spread throughout the room before Rhylie and Vorle could even react. Vorle tried to shout something, but when the glowing pulse hit him and Rhylie, they both hit the floor, hard.

  She was unable to move, unable to control her skeleton or her atomorphic skin. Her mouth worked, but only barely. She could still see, but her vision was watery and blurring in and out. She could see them walking towards her. They were saying something, but she couldn’t quite make it out. The room had gone dark when the pulse had gone off; the only light was a stark glow generated by one of Riddai’s hands. Wherever he turned his palm, the beam followed, illuminating portions of the room.

  Riddai went over to one of the cells and opened it manually, releasing two of the captives. They were pale and willowy, with soft tufts of fine, translucent hair atop their heads. But they were stronger than they looked. They lifted Vorle up by his arms, and dragged him over to one of the tables, strapping him down tightly. Once they had him secured, they did the same with Rhylie.

  After they reset the lights and feed system, they seemed more interested in Vorle than her, possibly because there was more left of him, or possibly because they were saving her for Vorcia. They hovered over him, scanning him with devices, and scraping at him, trying to find some way to penetrate the atomorphic tech that comprised his legs and arms. He and Rhylie were both still stunned, unable to move, other than Vorle’s weak, squirming torso.

  Their efforts were seemingly futile, judging from their frustrated posturing. Nothing they could do would break the mysteries locked within the atomorphic tech. When Riddai turned his back on Vorle for a moment to argue with Potaan, that was when Vorle struck.

  He sent one of his arms out as two tendrils, grabbing them both about the throat before either of them could even respond. He broke through his restraints with ease, and strode over to Rhylie, dragging the two of them behind him on the floor, choking them. He reached out to Rhylie with his other hand, and placed it on her chest. It melded with her, and he sunk his fingers into her chest. She couldn’t feel a thing. He was saying something to her, but she couldn’t hear it over the ringing in her ears. He withdrew his hand and a moment later, everything was back online. She could move again, and hear again, and speak again as well.

  “What happened, what did you do to me?” she asked desperately, still reeling from the shock.

  “An electromagnetic pulseball, it knocked out all of our cyberbionic controls,” he said as though it were nothing. Potaan and Riddai still lay on the floor behind him, choking. “And I was able to reboot you, once Mersi had remotely rebooted me.” Rhylie was beginning to see the benefit of this symbiotic relationship. Still, it felt too…personal. Isaar had been right, she wasn’t ready to be invaded like that again. She broke herself free from her restraints easily. Really, why had they even bothered, she wondered. Some people enjoy their formalities a bit too much.

  Vorle turned his attention away from Rhylie and released Riddai and Potaan. Both of them flopped over to their knees, gasping for breath as though it were the most precious thing ever. Vorle looked down on them in silence for a long moment until they both quietened down. They now looked up at him with wide, fearful eyes. Gone was the arrogance and pomp.

  “And now the butchers will beg the carcass for forgiveness,” Vorle said coldly in his digitized voice. It was still unnerving to see him speak without his lips moving. Rhylie didn’t think she’d ever get used to that. “Perhaps we could offer you mercy, as we did Kraeke.” Their mouths dropped open, and their eyes widened in hope. Rhylie almost felt sorry for them.

  “Tell us where Vorcia is,” she interjected before Vorle could get too into this. This trip was about business as much as it was pleasure. “And I will allow Vorle to show you mercy.” The look of hope turned into a look of horror almost immediately.

  “We don’t know where she is,” implored Potaan. “We haven’t spoken to her since the slave worlds were destroyed. No one knows where she is at. Please, you have to believe us.” The feathers atop his head were quivering as they swayed to and fro slightly.

  “Then what can you possibly hope to offer us in exchange for mercy?” Rhylie asked. “Because my patience is running out.”

  “I know who the traitor is,” Riddai blurted out. “I know who has betrayed you.” Rhylie narrowed her eyes and stared down at him coldly. If he was lying then she would make him pay dearly. She switched her com channel off so Mersi couldn’t hear what she said.

  “How would I know you’re telling the truth?” she asked, anger smoldering in her voice.

  “Because, I know things, things I shouldn’t. She is a former slave that I punished once for insubordination and terminated her service. She says you are the Harbinger of Chaos, that you’re the Empress of Decay, and that you will bring nothing but death and discord wherever you go,” said Riddai. “She claims to see things that others can’t, and says she is doing it to preserve the balance in the galaxy. She contacted me first, and I arranged for her to meet Vorcia.”

  “Sora,” said Rhylie, her face going numb. It was as though the breath had been knocked out of her. Part of her had known all along.

  “Yes, yes,” said Riddai. “Please, please, I beg of you, show us mercy.” Rage flared inside her, replacing the empty numbness.

  “Show them both all the mercy you want, Vorle,” she said with an icy voice. “Show them all the mercy they have shown us, and others. Give them a quick death if they can help us find Vorcia. But if they cannot, then feel free to take your time. Remind them constantly of how much mercy you are showing them. And then when you are done, do whatever you want with their corpses. Make an example of them if you wish.” Vorle nodded his head in response.

  “And you?” he asked.

  “Don’t tell anyone else this, but I’m going to go deal with Sora,” she said coldly. “She got it wrong this time. I’m a Goddess, not an Empress.”

  37

  “I was wondering when you would come for me,” Sora said as Rhylie alighted in front of her. It was morning on the plains, and the sunlight dappled the grasses as they glistened with a fresh coat of dew. In the distance a herd of great beasts were contentedly enjoying their breakfast. Off on the farthest horizon to the east was a distant mountain range, so faint it almost blended with the morning sky. Sora stood outside of the doorway to the temporary shelter that had been brought from aboard the ship.

  “Where’s Reskle?” Rhylie asked quietly, even though anger flourished within her.

  “He’s inside sleeping. I see no reason to wake him for this,” she replied. Rhylie nodded her head in agreement, her face covered by the non-reflective gray visor of her atomorphic exoskin.

  “I just want to know why you did it.”

  “You know why,
child. You have always known. You were just too blind to see,” Sora responded with bitter impatience. “Look at what you have already caused with your actions, all of the lives lost to the chaos that follows you. And it has only just begun! You are willful and uncontrolled, wild and reckless. I chose the path to peace, and you chose the path to war.” Rhylie set her jaw as she clenched her right hand into a fist.

  “I want to show you what you’ve caused,” she said, struggling to control her anger.

  She reached down and grabbed a handful of Sora’s hair at the base of her skull and began dragging her through the long, wet grass. Sora wrapped her hands around Rhylie’s wrist with a feeble grip, squalling and shrieking as she kicked and squirmed around. Rhylie paid her no attention. She slung her down atop Isaar’s grave, sending loose stones clattering everywhere.

  “This is what you caused,” she said angrily as she grabbed another handful of hair and forced Sora’s face down to the pile of stones. “This is what your betrayal cost us all.” She tightened her grip as Sora began squirming and kicking again, sending more stones scattering from the pile. “LOOK AT WHAT YOU’VE DONE.” Rhylie pushed Sora’s head down one final time, shoving it into the pile of stones, before releasing her grip on Sora’s hair.

  “I warned him!” she shrieked as she twisted around to look back at Rhylie with her dead gray eyes. “I warned you! I saw it, I saw it all!” She began to crawl backwards, like some sort of crippled crab, sending another torrent of loose stones sliding from the pile as she struggled. She left a wake of crushed flowers in her path, which only angered Rhylie even more. Mersi had picked those. “It is not over yet! The things you do will ripple across the galaxy long after all of us are dead!”

  “Death will come sooner for some of us,” Rhylie said coldly as she lifted up to hover above Sora. “I promise you.”

  Sora squinted and fired two translucent gray beams from her eyes, catching Rhylie completely off guard. They slammed into her chest hard, launching her hundreds of feet into the air.

  She fell limply back to the ground, bouncing dozens of feet after she hit. The heard of grazing beasts nearby scattered as the thump reverberated through the ground like a great drum. That fucking hurt, she thought. She had never felt anything like it before. Her body actually felt bruised and sore.

  Rhylie crawled to her feet, swaying unsteadily as she did so. Her vision was blurred and she could no longer see Sora anywhere. The temporary shelter was a black blob, far across the plains. She’d been knocked farther than she had realized.

  She lifted up from the ground, floating cautiously up into the air to get a better look. Sora saw her first, launching another series of gray bolts at Rhylie. She managed to avoid the first few, but the last one slammed into her thigh, spinning her around in midair. Her leg cramped and stiffened up as a dull pain wrapped around it.

  She righted herself just in time to catch another blast, this one directly to her chest. It flung her high into the atmosphere, spinning head over heels. Control of her body was lost momentarily as she reached the peak of her arc before she began to plummet back towards the ground. Her exoskin was flapping loosely about her in strands and she had difficulty focusing on bringing it under control. Her head hurt and she thought she could taste blood in her mouth.

  Several hundred feet up she was able to regain control of her gravity well and exoskin. Already there were more gray bolts coming at her. She avoided them this time and locked in on their source using her guidance system.

  Rhylie propelled herself downward, fists first, slamming into Sora at close to the speed of sound. The collision echoed across the now empty plains, and the ground vibrated with a massive boom. She felt Sora’s brittle old bones shatter beneath the impact, breaking in dozens upon dozens of places as most of her internal organs were ruptured violently by the shock wave.

  Rhylie lifted her up like a rag doll from the long, wide furrow they had left through the plains and held her at arm’s length as she hovered above the ground, watching her as the last few moments of her life faded from her. She still gasped for breath weakly, but Rhylie knew no one could save her now. She levitated from the furrow and tossed her body down beside Isaar’s grave on her way to seek Reskle. The stones that covered Isaar’s grave had been scattered by the impact. She and Merci could fix them again later. Maybe do something bigger and better for him. He deserved far better as far as she was concerned.

  Reskle was already awake and waiting for her at the door to the shelter, just as Sora had been moments earlier.

  “I didn’t expect to see you,” he said uncertainly, frowning slightly.

  “I had some business to take care of,” she said flatly.

  “Where’s Sora?” he asked. His brow furrowed with concern.

  “She’s dead,” Rhylie said, shrugging apathetically. She didn’t feel any better; she just did not feel as angry. “I killed her myself.” Reskle nodded his head before casting his eyes downward for a moment.

  “So that’s what all that noise was?” he asked as he looked back up at Rhylie.

  “Yes, it was,” she said before dropping the exoskin shield covering her face. “I’m sorry that I ever thought it could have been you that was the traitor.” He waved his hand dismissively.

  “You didn’t know. I didn’t know…not really,” he said. “But even if I had spoken up, nobody would have believed me. Isaar didn’t want to believe anyone would ever betray him.” Reskle smiled warmly, but there was a cast of sorrow to his expression. “He always saw the best in people.”

  “I don’t know what he saw in me,” Rhylie said softly.

  “A scared little girl that was in way over her head and needed some help,” Reskle said.

  “I guess I still am,” said Rhylie. Reskle shrugged his shoulders.

  “For what it’s worth, I think you’re one of the strongest people I know,” he said. “Even now you are focused and driven when the rest of us are bogged down in our self-pity and misery. You even managed to get Mersi to stop crying.” He paused for a moment.

  “Everything that has happened means nothing if we give up now,” she said. “Everyone that has died, everything we have lost…will all be meaningless if we don’t see it through. There have been too many sacrifices made for me to just walk away from all of this now. We may as well say that none of it was worth fighting for to begin with.”

  “I agree with you. There’s something you need to see,” Reskle said. Rhylie cocked her head to the side suspiciously.

  “What is it?” she asked slowly.

  “Come inside and I’ll show you.”

  Rhylie dropped to the ground and followed him into the shelter. There was a small table in the middle of the single room with two chairs. It looked a lot like the table in the central chamber of the ship.

  “This has been running across all of the feeds within the past few nanos,” he said, pressing a finger down on the table.

  “I’ve had my com device off,” said Rhylie as Vorcia’s image sprang up on the table. She was wearing a virgin white dress, flowing and trimmed with golden highlights. She really knows how to use imagery, Rhylie thought.

  “In light of certain events, it pains me to announce that the Siirocian Opposition, a Master Race Militant Organization, has declared they will destroy one planet every five nanocycles, unless I surrender myself to them,” Vorcia said.

  “What the fuck is she talking about?” Rhylie asked, but Reskle shushed her.

  “Normally I do not negotiate with terrorists, but with so much at stake that I feel as though I have no other choice. In the best interests of safety and peace in the galaxy, I am offering myself to them in order to save hundreds of billions, perhaps trillions of lives,” she continued. “I ask for mercy for myself, and mercy for the galaxy. I want no more of my citizenry to suffer and if submitting to them will put an end to the rein of terror of the Siirocian Opposition, then that is what my duty obligates me to do.”

  “Is she crazy?” asked Rhylie, but aga
in Reskle shushed her.

  “I only ask that from my humble sacrifice, that peace will once again flourish throughout the galaxy. I know that my life is nothing compared the prosperity and safety of my people and the citizens of the galaxy. I will be waiting at the source of this feed until Isaar and his Organization of Evil comes to take me hostage,” she added before the feed ended.

  “She’s already destroyed three planets since that started running,” Reskle said. “She’s blaming it on you…and Isaar. She doesn’t know what happened yet. Of course she chose planets in the Siddish arm of the galaxy to destroy.”

  “Where’s the signal coming from?” she asked angrily.

  “It appears to be a subjection craft in the middle of the fleet gathered around Primiceps,” he said warily. He eyed her with concern.

  “Do you have the coordinates?” she asked.

  “Yes, why?”

  “Let me have them.”

  “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” Reskle said. “It’s probably a trap. It almost certainly is.”

  “Just give me the coordinates,” she growled at him. Her skin rippled with anger. Reskle put his hands up defensively.

  “Fine,” he said. “But you’d better be careful.”

  “Keep this between us,” she said as she turned to leave. Vorcia was so close, Rhylie could taste her already.

  38

  Rhylie found the subjection craft empty once she was aboard. The corridors and rooms were all vacant. There were no soldiers, no automatons, no defenses, nothing but the faint hum and beeps of general operation. It seemed as though she were the only person aboard. The thought made her uneasy. Perhaps she needed to make them aware of her presence.

  She removed the stealth function of her wristband and a series of pale blue dots illuminated the floor in front of her, a trail of them disappearing down a nearby corridor on her right. The dots began to grow and shrink, a pulse that traveled up the path laid before her.