Tyrant's Stars: Parts Three and Four

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  Not bothering to turn and face him, Valcua said, “Was that the same D I fought earlier?”

  The Nobleman was clearly choking back his rage.

  “Surely you jest,” Kima responded with a respectful bow. “I suppose that might be about a third of his true power. But then—” “Yes,” Valcua said with an appreciative nod, anticipating what the other man would say next.

  “No one in the world knows for sure just how powerful D is— probably not even that splendid man himself. Thus, there’s no way to judge the strength of that impostor."

  “I shall soon learn how strong he is. And when I do, I will triumph over him. He, left in this world as the Sacred Ancestor’s own—” “Lord Valcua!”

  “I know,” the Ultimate Noble said gravely. “To speak of that would invite terrible misfortune. Is that damnable Sacred Ancestor monitoring me from somewhere even now? But enough about that. What are those humans doing?”

  “They are waiting, milord, just as you instructed.”

  “I told them to wait, but I never said they should do nothing at all. Tell Seurat and Callas they’re to get the two descendants and bring them to me forthwith.”

  Bowing deeply, Kima disappeared.

  “And now,” Valcua said, looking up into the air.

  D appeared. A bizarre pathway spread in front of him.

  The screen projected in midair became a three-dimensional computer model of the building. It vanished immediately. When the words Impossible to display appeared, Valcua’s expression became a grin befitting the devil himself.

  “Nevertheless, you must go on. Whether you return or not, your true nature will be laid bare, and I will triumph over you.”

  He laughed aloud. After a while, Valcua wondered how many years it’d been since he’d laughed like this. How long since he’d guffawed hollowly over nothing at all?

  “It’s King Minos’s labyrinth,” the hoarse voice remarked in a deeply troubled tone. “Not only can that sword Glencalibur, or whatever he calls it, cut open a dimension, but it looks like it can also connect it to any place he thinks of. This labyrinth is where a half man,

  half bull called the Minotaur, a creature born to the king’s consort, was locked away before written history. It was built by the legendary craftsman Daedalus in ancient times, and only the Sacred Ancestor could’ve reproduced it so faithfully. I’d heard this place was destroyed when the Nobility’s civilization collapsed, but here it is.”

  “Let’s go,” D said.

  “Waiting here would be the best strategy,” the left hand retorted. “No one who’s ventured into the labyrinth has ever made it back out. I’m not so sure my sense of direction can be counted on. It’s enclosed by something other than four-dimensional space.”

  “Staying here would be no better,” D said, his eyes seeing through the abnormalities of the passageway that spread before him. Like a living creature, it was closing on the Hunter. Not waiting for it to make contact, D started walking.

  This was no ordinary path. Taking a turn to the right, D began to move vertically against gravity, and he saw that the lower-right portion of the floor had become a wall. When they started down a stone stairway, the steps went on forever, while a stairway going up was soon running down into the ground. Not only human beings, but also Nobles or monsters with highly developed senses of direction would find the workings of their semicircular canals thrown into disarray here, until they were left incapable of telling where they were or how they stood.

  “How’s it going?” the hoarse voice asked after a while. “Sad to say,

  I think I’m gonna puke. Don’t be a showoff now!"

  “The exit is close,” D said.

  “What? You can tell?”

  “More or less. The path changes moment by moment. New passageways are constantly being formed and incorporated into the labyrinth. That was the secret of Daedalus’s design. But there’s still a path that leads to the exit.”

  “If there weren’t, the Minotaur never would’ve been able to get his tasty young sacrifices, I suppose.”

  The labyrinth of King Minos was built as an endless dungeon to hold the Minotaur. Every year the Minotaur had demanded beautiful women and men in the flower of youth for sustenance, until finally the hero Theseus, with the aid of a ball of thread brought in secret by one brave beauty, was able to conquer the maze and find his way to slay the creature with his sword.

  Even without a ball of thread, D claimed to know the way to the exit.

  “Here it comes,” D said unexpectedly.

  “Where is it?” the left hand said, apparently still unable to get its bearings. A pair of eyes appeared on the back of the Hunter’s hand and busily scoured their surroundings.

  The path ran vertically up a wall. It was more than two hundred yards to the floor below. Anyone with a fear of heights would’ve suffered a hundred heart attacks in this situation.

  Overhead, a black sphere was moving vertically, running parallel to the wall as it closed on him.

  D ran.

  Crossing over D’s head, the sphere rose up, landing about fifteen feet ahead of him. For some reason, its gleaming surface didn’t reflect D—as if his beauty were so great, it made the sphere itself afraid.

  D’s left hand flashed out and rough wooden needles knifed through the wind. It seemed like they would be deflected, but these perfunctory challenges sank into the sphere effortlessly and disappeared from view, as if they’d been swallowed up.

  On the surface of the sphere, points of light appeared, one for each needle. Without a sound, white streaks of light raced out through the murky world from the front and back of it, to the left and to the right. Anything they touched instantly vanished from D’s field of view.

  “This is bad. This thing’s a path eraser!" the left hand shouted. “It’s said the path erasers only exist in the Sacred Ancestor’s labyrinth. It’ll make a mess of this maze.”

  The ceiling disappeared, as did the walls. The sphere rolled wherever it liked, intent on erasing everything.

  Apparently determining something from the movement of those lights, D made a mighty bound off the floor. In the hundredth of a second between the time the glow pulled free of the sphere and it started rolling again, the figure in black unleashed a stark flash with his right hand.

  What kind of swordplay did he engage in?

  The sphere trembled, then split in half, the light spilling from it to swiftly erase the passageway a few seconds after the leaping D had raced off.

  “The first barrier breached—0 percent possibility of course completion. The copy will be given several additional layers of verisimilitude.”

  At the computer’s voice, Grand Duke Valcua’s body twitched fiercely. He was like an anthropomorphic bug snared in a colossal spider’s web. Valcua was completely naked. The silver threads that seemed to be wound around his body were all cords, and the ends of all of them were planted in the flesh of the Ultimate Noble.

  “Production initiated on the copy—power enhancement initiated on the subject.”

  At the same moment the voice spoke, a beastly howl flew from the grand duke’s mouth.

  What was being channeled into him through those cords?

  His body lost its color, becoming like paraffin, and then turning a dark purplish hue.

  Nobles felt pain—even the Ultimate Noble. But this must’ve been agony beyond a level human beings could conceive. To describe it, a whole new lexicon would be necessary.

  Valcua suffered through it. With one flick of his arm, he could’ve disconnected all the cords . . . yet he endured the agony anyway. There would have to be some compensation for all this.

  As the pain blurred his field of view, a single human form took shape in it. Pale blue electricity was discharged into the air as the outline formed, then arms, shoulders, a waist, and the rest of the lower half followed. The hem of his flapping coat, the wide-brimmed traveler’s hat, the longsword that was already gripped in his right hand, just waiting for the
time to slaughter . . .

  It was D.

  Was this what it’d meant by a copy1 Did that mean the D Valcua had slain earlier was also a copy? Here he endured unimaginable agony like a martyr, but what did he hope to gain from it?

  “Copy complete. Power enhancement complete.”

  Thunderous echoes rang out as Valcua fell to the floor. All of the cords had come out of him in unison. Unable to stand, he lifted his head with its exhausted face.

  Look. Purplish smoke rose from his mouth and his nostrils, his ears and eyes, even from his anus. Undoubtedly his organs had been horribly charred.

  Nevertheless, the grand duke got up. Using his left arm to lift his upper body, he raised his right knee, and then braced his right arm against that for strength. By the time he got to his feet, the magical sword Glencalibur, which he’d left on the floor, was in his hands.

  D was walking toward him without a sound. When he broke into a run, his longsword came up on his right side like a baseball bat— and as the Hunter passed Valcua, his blade zipped toward the Nobleman’s waist, slashing open his abdomen.

  D kept on running—as a decapitated body.

  Not even bothering to look at the Hunter as he vanished a second before he could fall to the floor, Valcua put his hand against his own wound. The cut was about eight inches long. With one rub, it vanished without a trace.

  “I wouldn’t exactly say I won,” he said, his words mixed with a bitter grin. “This man has chilled me to the bottom of my soul, but Valcua shall surpass him. D, every time you break through one of

  our barriers, we get a clearer picture of your power, and I become even stronger.”

  The grand duke raised both hands above his head. From the ceiling and floor innumerable silver cords wriggled out like snakes through the grass, sinking into every inch of his body.

  III

  Pafume didn’t know who’d made the decision. However, he had no choice but to follow orders. That was the way organizations worked. While it might not be as efficient as in the Nobility’s day, things went very well here. Matters were settled effectively, and objections or questions seldom came up. Still, it bothered Pafume. While he didn’t know that a government head and his second in command had argued heatedly in some distant meeting room—with the second in command questioning whether they really intended to destroy the entire Frontier, and the head responding that it was the only possible way to slay the Ultimate Noble—even someone as fundamentally lacking in imagination as Pafume could easily envision the result of the act he was about to perform.

  He was the only one in the control room. His superiors hadn’t ever planned on using this monstrosity again. The people who felt a sense of responsibility and pangs of conscience at the same time were few and far between, but they had made this judgment in good conscience. When he’d received the order from top people in the government to begin preparing for fire, the lights in the room had switched to emergency red. When they returned to normal again, the matter would undoubtedly be concluded. In other words, not only would the entire Frontier be wiped out, but the whole northern hemisphere might cease to exist as well.

  Pafume, who had some knowledge of the situation that had developed in the northern Frontier, wondered to himself if this might be the will of his god.

  Even if half those reports were false, I’d have to throw the switch. Even if they were nothing more than rumors, I’d throw it if it’d make them go away. Forgive me, my god. I’m betraying you, and I don’t have to think twice about it.

  Just then, the lights switched to blue. An indicator light in the center of the panel began blinking madly. Not hesitating, Pafume mouthed a short prayer to his deity, smashed the protective cover over the light with his fist, and pressed the red button beneath it with full confidence.

  Roughly sixty million miles from Earth—in what is commonly known as the asteroid belt—a blinding light shot from a little rocket nozzle on a relatively insignificant chunk of rock about three hundred feet in diameter, slowly changing its orientation. This same rock was on a trajectory to crash in the northern Frontier.

  Sue’s hopes of going outside were dashed by a flat denial from the count from inside his coffin. Dawn had already come, and her surroundings were filled with its faint light.

  “Until D returns, no one gets in or out of this car.”

  Sue remained insistent. She really wanted a breath of fresh air, even if only for five minutes.

  “Very well, then,” the count conceded. He’d caught the tears in Sue’s eyes. “But just for five minutes. And stay right by the car.” “Oh, thank you!” Sue gushed, bowing to him.

  As soon as she was done, the count ordered, “Send the guardroids with her. If Matthew threatens her in any way, kill him on the spot.”

  The scent that most often fills the morning air is that of fresh grass. However, the air on the black-steel plain that stretched as far as the eye could see smelled of metal.

  Dragged by Matthew, Sue had quickly gone a hundred yards.

  “This spot should do,” Matthew said, his eyes still facing straight ahead.

  Was that a tree? If so, it was an iron one. It had the drooping boughs and wispy foliage of a willow, but it was made of a black, lustrous metal. Perhaps it was a fitting form of life for this inorganic world.

  Going under it, Matthew pulled a knife out of his pocket.

  “Matt. . . What are you doing?” the girl asked, her body tensing.

  Matthew smiled at her. It was the sort of smile that would make anyone want to look away.

  “Not a thing. I’m just gonna give your feeble mind a little backbone. There’s nothing to be scared of. See, it won’t hurt a bit.”

  Sue noticed that as Matthew spoke in that wheedling tone, he had a reverse grip on his knife. Unbuttoning his shirt, he exposed his chest.

  “Matt?”

  Ignoring his sister’s puzzled cry, he pressed his knife against his own chest. Without a second’s pause, he made a vertical incision that was four inches long.

  “Now, give me a kiss, Sue!”

  Bright blood bubbled up, but less than she expected. It welled up in the wound but didn’t drip out.

  “What are you doing, Matt? Stop it!” Sue cried, about to back away, but then she noticed he had her by the scruff of the neck. Grabbing her hair, he yanked her closer. Her brother’s blood was right under her nose.

  “You get it, don’t you, Sue? This is an important ceremony. It will help you understand what I saw. And then you and I will understand the lord of this great land much better.”

  “No, I don’t want to—stop it!”

  “Sue!”

  Another yank, and the girl’s darling little lips would’ve tasted her brother’s sullied blood. However, Matthew didn’t manage to

  perform that perverse deed. A crimson beam of light pierced his nose from right to left.

  Kill him if he tries to harm Sue—those had been the count’s orders, and the faithful guardroid was now approaching them. However, when the Dyalhis children turned toward it in amazement, the misshapen automaton let its head loll to one side and stopped dead. Beside it stood a bewitching woman.

  “Callas the Diva?”

  It was within the siren’s abilities to drive an android to a figurative death with but a single song.

  Only two of the assassins known as Valcua’s seven remained—but even if there were only one, it still would be a foe to be feared. And now one of them had caught up to them.

  “It looks like you’ve begun an interesting diversion, you strange little children,” Callas said, smiling enchantingly. “I figured the time to take out a sleeping Noble was by day, but then I come out here and find you playing this ridiculous game. Now, both of you will be coming with me. I can make you understand this world far quicker than that nonsense.”

  “Stay out of this. She’s my sister. I’ll take care of her one way or another.”

  “Both of you are our foes. Now come quietly.”

 
When Callas stepped forward, the children joined hands. A chill froze them to the bone, and the two of them shivered.

  “What?” Callas exclaimed, pulling her arm back. Her arm had been split open just below the elbow, revealing pink meat. Though the wound closed quickly, the diva’s expression immediately grew more threatening as she stared at Matthew, who held his knife ready in one hand.

  “It seems it would be best to put you to sleep first, boy. Listen to this.”

  Knowing that he mustn’t hear her voice, Matthew went at Callas with his knife, but as he still held onto Sue, the diva dodged it with consummate ease, and then a stream of strange but beautiful nonsense began to flow from her lips.

  Matthew halted.

  Callas sang a love song that would put anyone who listened to it into a trance. The siren’s pale hand reached over to catch Matthew by his sun-bronzed wrist. But then a crimson beam of light burst through her shoulder.

  Turning her eyes in its direction, Callas cried out, “Oh, so there was more than one guard?”

  And then her lips disgorged a deadly tune.

  A new streak of light pierced her throat.

  “Damn you!” Callas cursed with superhuman indignation, and then she raced westward across the plain.

  Seeming to steamroll right past the Dyalhis children, the guardroid appeared, sending laser fire after the dwindling form of Callas. After two strikes, the siren bent backward and then was seen no more.

  “Looks like she got away,” Matthew said. He started after her, but then went back to Sue.

  “Matt. . .”

  “We didn’t get off to a very good start this time. Let’s call it a day. We’ll pick up where we left off tomorrow.”

  Having shown good forethought, Matthew rebuttoned his shirt. Since he’d used a handkerchief to stop the bleeding, it didn’t even stain his clothes.

  “Matt!” Sue called out. She wasn’t looking at him. Her eyes were trained on the direction they’d originally come from.

  “What?”

  Noticing something, Matthew quickly turned around.