“Let go of me!” Matthew shouted. “Let go! Let go of me now! I’m not plotting anything!”
“You don’t know when to give up. I suppose I could make you one of my followers, coarse as you are. I proposed that once already.” “Do something to him that will make him wish you had instead. That should suffice.”
“Very well,” Miranda said, bringing a dainty hand to her lips and laughing haughtily.
It was at this point that Count Braujou looked up into the sky. A woman’s voice had just echoed in his ears, telling him, “Sue has escaped.”
“What?” the Nobleman bellowed, his words shaking the darkness and changing not only the expression Matthew wore, but those of Miranda and her lackeys as well. “How—how on earth did she manage that?”
“I’m terribly sorry. Some external consciousness forced my network to experience electronic hallucinations. It seemed as if she were in her room. Please forgive me.”
“No, this is unpardonable!” the giant roared, kicking at the ground. A great clod of dirt landed at Miranda’s feet. Matthew’s body followed it. “He’s all yours, Miranda. Work him over thoroughly, and leave him purely human again. I’m going in search of the girl.”
Sue raced blindly across the steel plain that stretched on without end. Though it was level ground and she was running, she was still just a girl on foot. There was only so much distance she could cover. And she would be exhausted long before that.
Sue ran on calmly. Another personality had slipped into her head, and it seemed to have altered her metabolic functions. She could keep running forever—and Sue glowed with joy.
There was only one reason why she’d fled Count Braujou’s car: Matthew had been caught. It was only a matter of time before his brainwashing of Sue was uncovered. Therefore, Matthew had instructed her to flee if it came to that.
In just a single day, Sue had been brainwashed to an incredible degree. She had complete confidence that she would escape. As evidence of this, she had only to look at the countless pale lights ahead, rolling toward her like a cloud of smoke. To her rear there was the sound of an engine. And that was far closer.
Never giving up, she kept moving, but the girl mouthed a prayer that was both unthinkable and impossible: “Help me, O great Valcua!”
It was at that instant that a streak of light from the sky struck the car. The girl’s eyes were seared as midday sprang to life in the darkness of night, and when they finally regained their sight, what they found was the halted vehicle trapped in a pale-blue cage of electromagnetic waves.
Her relief gave her the strength to run as the source of the glowing points—cylinders each equipped with a single yellow eye—swept by her, their innumerable tentacles swaying back and forth all the while. Having no time to watch what transpired between them and the car, Sue ran for all she was worth, but then her body rose into the air without warning. One of the cylinders had used a trio of tentacles to scoop her up before shooting off for the far reaches of the plain at incredible speed.
Sue smiled.
Who could’ve predicted it would come to this? The same girl D had defended, Braujou had rescued, and Miranda had protected was now all too happy to run headlong into a deadly trap.
Her fears forgotten during the smooth flight, Sue began to drop off to sleep. Suddenly, she was violently jostled by a series of tremors.
When she opened her eyes, they were filled with the rapidly approaching ground.
Dropping at a sharp angle, the cylinder barely managed to regain its composure and glided down to the steely terrain. It was faithful to its duty to the very last, setting Sue down on the ground after it came to a stop.
Escaping the tentacles as they opened, Sue was wary of possible explosions as she moved away, watching the fallen cylinder and the bizarre tree that towered behind it.
A woman stood between the cylinder and the tree. Her lips pursed the tiniest bit, and the faint humming that came from them like a night breeze crept into Sue’s ears.
“You’re—”
“Callas the Diva,” the bewitching singer said by way of introduction.
“Why—why did you do this?” She was talking about the cylinder. As far as Sue was concerned, both of them were on the same side, acting on Valcua’s wishes to return her to his castle.
“Bringing the two of you back to the grand duke is my job. It’s hardly something to entrust to an android.”
At this point, Sue could’ve been considered one of Callas’s compatriots. Yet as the beauty closed on her in her alluring manner, it was true and undeniable horror that paralyzed Sue.
III
Halting but a step away, Callas arched one willowy eyebrow a bit as she stared at the girl.
“You’re smiling, aren’t you? Is there something funny about this? Are you having a good time?”
“It’s okay now,” Sue replied. “I don’t have to be afraid of any of you anymore. I’ll be happy to go see the grand duke.”
Sue’s face was colored by a strange glow. The girl’s complexion reflected the gleam Callas’s eyes gave off as she stared at Sue.
Letting all the tension drain from her body, she smiled at Sue. “And to what do we owe this change of heart, I wonder?”
“My brother—Matt told me all about it. All about the grand duke’s vision, and about how wonderful his world is. It all made such great sense.”
Sue’s voice was level, her tone smooth—like she was conversing with a friend.
Turning her eyes toward the ground, the diva said softly, “Is that so? That’s wonderful. Now, would you be so kind as to listen to what I have to say, too?”
“Sure—but out here?”
“Yes. Out here.”
“Okay, let’s hear it.”
Tilting her head a little to one side, Callas began to speak.
Off in the distance, the androids and Count Braujou were probably locked in deadly battle.
“Five thousand years ago, my mother was a soprano in an opera troupe that traveled the Frontier.”
The people who dwelled on the Frontier were positively starved for recreation. The Nobility had their grand parties and balls, but the people had only seasonal festivals and troupes that traveled from village to village to relieve the depression and tedium of their daily lives. One of the divas of that nameless opera troupe was Callas’s mother, and on a visit to a remote village, she caught the eye of Valcua, who gave her a rather insistent invitation to visit his manse. At the time, Callas was only three years old, yet she was already quite popular and the highest soprano in the troupe.
“From that day forward, my mother and I remained at the grand duke’s mansion. I heard the rest of the performers had been handsomely paid and sent on their way—it was only much later that I learned they’d all, in fact, been slain. The grand duke preferred our voices to our blood. Every night, he would listen, enraptured, to mother and me singing. In starkly moonlit gardens, in great halls that held only the three of us, in the grand duke’s bedroom. But the passage of time that was meaningless to him was an all-too-apparent foe to us. The wrinkles were multiplying on my mother’s face, and her singing voice was losing some of its zing. In time, all that would remain for us was the same fate the rest of the troupe had met. Day by day, my mother grew thinner and weaker, perhaps because she could read the grand duke’s fickle mind more plainly than anyone. When we found favor with the grand duke, we seemed to frolic in heaven. But the knowledge of the fate that awaited us was more than my mother could bear. And so she came up with a proposal to ensure the grand duke’s opinion of us wouldn’t change.”
As the mother’s beauty and voice faltered, Valcua shifted his affection to Callas, whom she’d raised into a beautiful jewel of womanhood. The first night her mother had entered Valcua’s mansion and sworn she would sing for him alone for the rest of her days, she’d extracted a promise from the grand duke. He was never to give the kiss of the Nobility to Callas. She must’ve been filled with mettle and maternal love when she
struck that bargain.
“Please keep my daughter and me with you—me until I die, and my daughter forever more,” her mother had suggested.
Twenty years had passed.
“One night, the grand duke crept into my bedroom and gave me the kiss.”
However, it was a strange phenomenon that awaited Callas. She didn’t thirst for blood or loathe the sunlight. She didn’t even succumb to madness like so many other victims.
As she wallowed in her despair, Valcua told her, “I’m able to do incredible things. I alone. You will not be my servant, but you will live so long you shall forget all about your human life. However, it won’t be forever, and you shall require the aid of some unholy devices. In return, your voice shall have a power more wondrous than any song that ever came from a human throat.”
Presently her mother died, and Callas buried her with all due ceremony. Afterward, Callas continued her days in peace, elegance, and unimaginable loneliness.
All that came to an end about a hundred years later, the instant the grand duke decided to fight the Sacred Ancestor. Whether it was during his deadly conflicts with fellow Nobles or in the universe - spanning war against the aliens, up until that point there hadn’t been a time when Callas wasn’t by the grand duke’s side, filling the air with her song. However, the opponent the grand duke now faced wouldn’t offer him even a moment’s respite. One after another, Valcua’s vassals were slain—struck down by assassins. In response, the grand duke selected seven of his strongest retainers for a new unit that would guard him against assassination. Callas was chosen to be one of them due to the power of her song.
“I don’t know how many Nobles or humans my songs brought death to. Those were not pleasant days.”
At some point, Callas had circled around behind Sue. Though her hands rested on the girl’s shoulders and a breath like ice blew over her lobe and into her ear, Sue wasn’t scared. She was one of them now.
The second that breath became a song, an acute pain shot through every inch of the girl, for Callas had just sung, Pain, make your rounds.
“Stop it! Why are you doing this?”
Sue tried to escape, but she was held in place with fiendish might as Callas whispered to her in a normal voice, “There’s something I’d like to ask you. How do you think I feel about the grand duke?”
“That’s silly . . . Surely you must love such a—”
“I hate him,” Callas said softly. “The man who turned me into a killer, the man who forced a merciful mother to sell out her own daughter, the man who never noticed my love for him, or if he did notice never returned even an iota of those feelings—what else could I do but hate him?”
Now revealed, the emotions that had smoldered in her heart of ice bore down on Sue like a wildfire.
“I thought you were just like me,” Callas whispered in the ear of the girl whose fears had been revived. “Thought you were like us in the old days—five thousand years ago. I thought you were a human scared of the Nobility and unable to do anything but scamper about. And as you fled, I thought you’d hate the Nobility more than anyone.”
“That. . . was a long time ago.”
Delivered in robotic fashion, Sue’s reply made Callas grin.
“A long time ago? A long time, as in five thousand years? You were a foe of the Nobility until the day before yesterday! And all it took was some persuasion on the part of your older brother to make you love the grand duke—that I can’t stand for. No matter what the grand duke may do to me later, I’m going to deal with you myself right here. Now, listen to my song.”
The deadly words were borne on a melody that tried to fill the girl’s trembling ear.
Just before it could, Callas felt a pall of terror take over her face and turned to look.
D was standing there. The hem of his coat fluttered in the night breeze that had just started to blow, and the handsome features reflected in his foe’s gaze were enough to make even the moon pale in comparison. And then he began to walk toward Callas and Sue with bewitching strides.
Almost everything had been taken care of. Artificial lightning bolts of several hundred million volts hammered relentlessly at the car, and the androids’ laser cannons blasted at Braujou and the survey party, but they didn’t budge at all, meeting the attack with the weapons in the car and monstrous strength, and in the blink of an eye their mechanical assailants had been reduced to scrap.
“Ha, ha! Valcua’s stupid octopuses! Did they actually think they could do anything to Count Braujou’s car?” the count jeered.
By his side, Duchess Miranda spat, “Octopuses? How uncouth.”
This time, the beautiful woman had been the only one to refrain from fighting, but now she was out of the vehicle and looking over the sprawling android wreckage.
“Long ago, a battle this size would’ve left the entire plain reeking of blood, but now all that drifts in the air is the stink of melted circuits. What a lamentable age we live in.”
“There are no survivors. Well, let’s go look for Sue. Back to the car,” Braujou told the former survey-party members, who bared their fangs.
But a second later, a strange phenomenon occurred. A gigantic, club-wielding arm reached out of empty space, and before anyone had even noticed it, the gale it whipped up had sent thuds and vermilion flying as half their number dropped to the ground with heads split open.
“Oh, who do we have here?” the count asked, sounding delighted.
After the five surviving survey-party members had fallen back, a crimson mist danced in space, and then a giant appeared from thin air.
After taking a glance at the bloodied club he carried and the animal hides he wore, Braujou asked, “You’re Seurat, aren’t you?”
He just wanted to be sure.
One giant nodded to the other. “Indeed . . . I. .. am.”
“If you’re one of Valcua’s seven, I can slay you now, and that will only leave the woman known as Callas. Now, to take care of another small fry .. .”
Whipping out his long spear, Count Braujou started to walk over to him.
“Have at you!”
The count made a jab with his spear. It was somehow gentle, and yet no one could’ve dodged it, and any attempt to parry it would’ve been knocked aside.
Batting the spear away with his club, Seurat pounced. After going about a yard, his body leaned forward and to the right, and with the club in his hand, he crashed back to earth about fifteen feet away. Seurat hadn’t batted Braujou’s spear away—he’d been sent flying, but it was unclear if the gigantic assassin understood as much. However, he used all the spring in his body to leap up and hurl his club at Braujou.
Sneering at such a simplistic and primitive attack, Count Braujou knocked it aside, and then leveled his spear for a second assault. But his spear wasn’t there. Not realizing that all five fingers that had gripped it were broken, the count turned his gaze behind him and to the left. The look he gave to the weapon jabbed into the ground at an angle some twenty yards away was a strange one. He couldn’t believe it. No other creature in the world had ever attempted to best him with pure brute strength and actually succeeded.
Hurrying over to his weapon, he pulled it out and aimed the tip of it at Seurat once more. The other giant had already assumed a stance. The count did likewise. Now, it wasn’t electromagnetic waves that began to rise from the steely earth but rather a hunger to kill.
D brought his blade down on Callas’s head.
The count’s spear made a horizontal swipe toward the base of Seurat’s neck.
Before a control panel in a strange laboratory, Valcua suddenly looked up into space.
t
At that moment, the entire plain was struck by a deadly gleam of blistering heat and crushing weight. The asteroid missile launched by a technician in the Capital had slammed into the earth’s surface without warning.
CHAPTER 3
I
What would happen if an asteroid over one hundred yards in diameter
traveled one hundred million miles to slam into the Earth’s surface? Needless to say, the impact would probably flatten every building above ground, and the dust thrown up into the air would block the light of the sun. Mountain ranges would be erased, land would rise or fall, and even the shapes and locations of the very continents would be altered. And if the asteroid were to be purposely summoned by a human being, the fate that would await mankind after its impact would be nothing shy of courageous self-sacrifice. Rather than chalk this decision up to human ignorance about the consequences, it might instead be attributed to fear of the Ultimate Noble pushing them over the line. The Ultimate Noble was a terrifying being; they desired him dead so badly they’d allow themselves to be destroyed in the process.
The asteroid missile itself wasn’t a weapon from battles between Nobles, but rather something that had been developed for the front lines in the war against the aliens. Such missiles came to number more than one hundred thousand, and it was said there’d even been plans to turn Pluto and Jupiter into weapons. Valcua had altered the space around the asteroid belt where these
weapons floated, creating a kind of teleportation field. Using it, asteroids could travel to the far reaches of the Milky Way in an instant and inflict all the devastation anyone could ever desire. Using its quantum engines and control unit to adjust its angle of descent toward the target, it could strike Valcua’s kingdom a scant thirty seconds after ignition. This time, it took the asteroid one day to reach the atmosphere. Something had gone wrong with the computer controlling the teleportation field over the great span of years.
Five hundred million tons of asteroid were moving at a speed of just over sixteen hundred feet per second when they slammed into the steel plain. However, the black-steel wasteland stretched out in the moonlight, not showing the slightest signs of devastation. Not even fragments of the asteroid lay on the plain as the wind blew dolefully across it.
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