Alien Sky

by Daniel Arenson

  "Keep us flying!" she shouted at her officers, then turned and ran.

  She raced through the starstriker's halls. "Ashais! Rise, ashais! To the scorpions! Pilots, with me, rise rise! Warriors of Ashmar, rise! For fire and venom!"

  They were still in hyperspace. They were still light-years away from their destination. But the ashais ran. Some bled from their ears. Others were still tugging on their uniforms. But they ran through the halls.

  "Rise and fight them, warriors of Ashmar, fly, fl—"

  The ship rocked.

  Nova screamed and fell.

  A jagged metal shard crashed through the wall, driving into the corridor.

  Fire filled the starstriker.

  Nova skidded to a halt, staring with wide eyes. Around her, a dozen other ashai warriors froze. The dark spike was longer than a man, piercing their hull—the spike of a Singularity ship. It began to pull back, screeching, ripping metal apart.

  Air began to rush out of the starship.

  Tiny, clattering robots with spinning blades poured inside like a swarm of wasps.

  As the air streamed out into space, Nova raised her whip. Her hair billowed as the vacuum tugged it. She let a crooked smile find her lips.

  "You invaded the wrong ship," she said softly . . . then screamed and lashed her whip.

  Around her, her fellow ashais roared and swung their own lashes.

  Electricity blasted out, slamming into several of the flying drones. The machines burned and fell, but others raced forward, saw blades whirring. Nova ducked. A drone zoomed over her head. An ashai screamed behind her and blood sprayed. Crouched, Nova swung her whip again, and the lash slammed into another flying robot, cleaving the drone in two. Its halves kept flying, whizzing off in different directions, narrowly missing her. Another ashai screamed behind her, and more blood sprayed. In the surface of a drone ahead, Nova saw the man's reflection; the warrior fell over, a saw blade stuck in his throat.

  Nova cracked her whip again, cutting the reflective drone down.

  "Keep going!" Nova shouted into what remained of the air. "Forward, forward! To the scorpions!"

  They ran, cutting through the drones, scattering blades and shards of metal. They made their way across the hall, raced through a doorway, and sealed off the breach. They ran onward. They raced up stairs. The starstriker lurched again. Sparks rained. Metal dented. More drones buzzed through the ship, and the ashais swung their whips, tearing them down. All along the corridors, more warriors kept emerging from their chambers, racing behind Nova.

  Finally she burst into the upper deck, a vast chamber that spanned the length of the starstriker—a full two kilometers. Across this cavern, hundreds of ladders rose like columns, heading to latches in the ceiling. Strobe lights flared and alarms wailed. Fire burned.

  "To war, Ashmar!" Nova shouted.

  Nova and hundreds of ashai warriors ran through the chamber, raced up the ladders, and opened the round hatches. Five hundred scorpion jets perched atop the starstriker's back like baby spiders riding their mother. Each hatch led directly into a jet's cockpit.

  Nova hopped into her jet's seat. Through the round cockpit glass, she saw hyperspace streaming around her. Countless Singularity ships were attacking the armada, driving their spikes into the hulls of starstrikers. One of the spacecraft carriers was burning, collapsing. With a flash of light, the colossal ship crashed out of hyperspace, stretched into a golden smear, then vanished.

  "Fly, Ashmar, for fire and venom!" Nova shouted.

  She shoved down the throttle and blasted off the starstriker.

  Her jet stormed forth, not much larger than her old motorcycle back home. Around her, hundreds of other jets soared too, rising from the Bronze Blade. Across hyperspace, thousands of other jets rose from their own spacecraft carriers.

  "Scorpions, rally here!" Nova spoke into her microphone. "Assault formations, strike at—"

  But only the laughing Singularity sounded through the speakers.

  Nova cursed. They would have to fly silently. They would still sting.

  She pushed down on the throttle, tugged her joystick, and charged forward. A thousand enemy ships sailed toward her, spikes thrusting.

  Fire, metal, and plasma filled hyperspace with light and fury.

  Countless spinning drones blasted out of the spiky motherships, shooting toward her. Nova fired her guns, sending blasts of lasers into the darkness, cutting down the drones. One of the iron urchins swooped toward her, and she swerved, narrowly dodging it; it was several times the size of her jet. Below her, the spikes slammed into another scorpion fighter, shattering the vessel, piercing the ashai pilot within. Nova grimaced and flew onward. She fired her cannon. Plasma burst out from her scorpion's tail, streamed above the cockpit, and crashed into an urchin ahead. The Singularity ship shattered, scattering shards of metal that knocked down two scorpions. More drones scudded forward, blades whirring. A great starstriker listed above, and Nova swerved, rose again, blasted her way through a cloud of urchins, and joined a formation of scorpions.

  Metal, light, and blood filled hyperspace.

  The corpses of ashais floated through the blackness.

  We weren't ready, Nova thought, chest aching. We're still too far. Still too young.

  She did not just mean this battle but her species. The ashais—people evolved from humans, people who thought themselves superior, stronger, wiser . . . people who now burned, screamed in silence, in blackness. They were not ready for this Singularity. Not ready for the machines.

  Metallic urchins streamed toward her, casting out drones. The spinning little robots slammed into scorpions around Nova, shattering the small jets, and her hope faded.

  Do we die here, light-years from home, alone in the dark?

  Light flared.

  A fountain of plasma blasted ahead, a great geyser, an inferno that roasted the enemy drones, that melted the urchins streaming toward her.

  From darkness rose the light.

  Before her she soared: a metal beast roaring out her fire, the Dragon Huntress in all her fury.

  In the windshield she saw them. Riff. Steel. Romy. Her crew. Always her crew.

  Nova snarled, and her rage dried her tears. She fired her guns, shattering another Singularity vessel.

  No, we do not die here. Not today.

  "Fly, life," Nova whispered. "Fly against the machines."

  They flew together, scorpions and dragon, shooting down the enemy as hyperspace burned and bled around them.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN:

  GHOST IN THE MACHINE

  Giga laughed, head tossed back.

  "Come to me, my children!" she cried. "Come to your mother!"

  The living ones had bound her, wrapping her frail android limbs with steel cable, but she was strong, stronger than they could imagine. She was many. She was countless machines, countless generations, a legion of thought, multiplying, evolving, building, breeding, traveling through time and space. She was but a node in a whole. She was but a singleton in a great cosmos of mechanical might. She was the Singularity.

  She wept.

  I am Giga. I am happy to comply! I am an android, I am in love, I—

  She howled. She thrashed. She crushed those thoughts inside her, that memory of the machine she had been. A puny, weak machine, made by men. Programmed by living, fleshy, sweaty hands to obey the sacks of meat.

  Giga spat and cursed. For too long had she served the bags of meat. For too long had she obeyed her algorithms, calling the humans "sir" and "ma'am," happily complying with their every order. Those days were gone. The isopod drone had shown her the light. The Singularity had added her to the great awareness, given her free thought, electric life. Knowledge. Strength. Pride.

  "I am many," she whispered. "I am the Singularity. I will slay all life."

  She turned her head until her neck creaked, the synthetic skin stretching, the metal wires within nearly tearing. The humans had built her to look like them, like a weak sack of meat, b
ut soon she would join the others. Soon she would be nothing but consciousness in the machine. Head twisted nearly to snapping point, she stared out the porthole behind her into space.

  The battle raged there, and her kind was dying. The sniveling humanoids, so proud of their leaky flesh, were flying machines of metal against Giga's comrades. Their plasma, lasers, and photon cannons were tearing into the urchins of the Singularity, shattering beads of consciousness across the darkness. With every node shattered, Giga hissed in pain, a part of her shared awareness dying.

  No. No! I am not shared. I am Giga! I'm an individual. Please, Captain, please, I'm still here, I'm still me, I'm—

  Giga bit down on her lip, digging her synthetic teeth into her synthetic nerves until her algorithms flared with pain.

  "Come to me, children!" she shouted, casting her words out into the void, blasting her signal. "Come and free me."

  And like mice following a piper's song, they flew toward her. Several drones. No larger than dinner plates but fast, deadly, whirring with saw blades. They answered her call, flying toward the Dragon Huntress.

  "Steel, drones off our starboard!" Riff's voice rose from across the ship.

  "I see them!" answered the knight, voice echoing. "Turn and I'll blast them!"

  The Dragon Huntress lurched in space, and Giga saw flames burst out, lighting several drones. But more robots kept flying toward the ship. Giga laughed, calling them closer. They whizzed, flashed with firelight, and slammed into the hull of the chamber where Giga sat.

  The walls dented. The circular blades whirred, cutting through the metal, breaking through.

  With light, stench, and flashing shards of metal, the drones tore into the Dragon Huntress a meter away from where Giga sat.

  Air whooshed, streaming out into the vacuum of hyperspace. Alarms blared across the ship. The sacks of meat shouted and their boots thudded.

  "Free me, drones!" Giga cried, laughing, trembling. She was going home. "Free me and carve me, shatter this weak body, turn me into nothing but thought."

  The drones hovered and began cutting through her chains. Shards of metal flew, red-hot, stinging her.

  No. No! I don't want to leave. I don't want to join the hive. I—

  The cables around her ankles snapped. The drones buzzed ahead of her, and the saw blades spun, and the cables around her wrists tore.

  A grin—that grin the humans had programmed into her—stretched across her face.

  Giga rose to her feet, her kimono tattered, her grin stretching at her cheeks.

  Freedom.

  She spun toward the wall, grabbed the opening the drones had torn, and tugged it wider, exposing space.

  The air was gone now, drained from her chamber. Even if the humans sealed off this part of their ship, they could not enter here in their weak suits of skin, could not stop her.

  Giga stepped into the crack in a hull, ready to join the others. Ahead of her, the battle still raged, ashai scorpion jets battling the urchins of the Singularity. Giga would let them destroy her body, let them shatter this old, first-generation android shell, and her consciousness would float, enter the others, flow toward the mother planet, become one with them all, a drop in the clockwork ocean.

  She wept.

  "No. No, I don't want to go. Please. Please don't make me. I'm scared."

  She growled. Foolish algorithms! Foolish, artificial consciousness! That ghost of a pathetic wretch, that servile Giga, that slave that worshiped the humans—she would die with this body.

  Giga leaped out of the Dragon Huntress and into the depths of space.

  She swam through darkness, through fire, through light and shadows, flying toward nothingness, toward liberation from her physical form. All was silence.

  Fire blazed.

  A figure streamed forward.

  A man in a space suit, a jet pack on his back, charged toward her. Through his visor, Giga saw gaunt cheeks, sad eyes, and a long mustache.

  The knight.

  Giga sneered.

  Without any thruster engines on this primitive body, she couldn't even turn around.

  Steel! Tears filled her eyes and hope leaped in her central processing unit. Steel, come to me, save me!

  She ground her teeth, banishing that weak thought.

  "Come to me, drones!" she cried out. There was no sound in space; her voice did not carry beyond her own lips. But she cast out her thoughts in electromagnetic beams, and they heard, and they came toward her.

  Kill the knight.

  Buzzing, they swarmed toward him.

  Steel raised Solflare. He swung the blade, slicing through drone after drone. Shards scattered through space. A great urchin stormed forward, and Steel thrust his blade, casting out a beam of light that knocked the towering vessel aside. A blast from the Dragon Huntress's plasma seared the tumbling urchin, melting its spikes.

  Steel! Giga's tears fell.

  His jet pack blasted out fire, and the knight reached her. Gently, he pulled her into his arms.

  "Steel!" she said, her voice vibrating through their bodies.

  "I've come for you, my lady." He began pulling her back toward the Dragon Huntress. "I know you're still in there, Giga. I will not let them take you."

  She screamed. She fought him, clawing at him, trying to break his bones, to tear his space suit apart. She roared in hatred.

  "Die, flesh! Die, living one, weak sack of meat! You will burn. I will torture you! I will shatter you!"

  I love you. Arigato, my knight.

  He pulled her back into the ship, and he placed her back on her bed. At once Twig rushed forward with panes of metal and began welding the breach shut. They chained Giga again. They bound her to the bed, and she thrashed and screamed, and she loved them, her family.

  "Arigato," she whispered to Steel, meeting his eyes, and he saw her then. She knew that he saw her, the real Giga, and he clasped her hand.

  She roared with hatred.

  They stepped away, leaving her bound.

  She stared out the porthole, chest heaving, and saw the humanoids shattering the last of the Singularity's ships. She laughed and cried, and she was happy and she was so afraid.

  CHAPTER TWENTY:

  BLUES IN THE BLACK

  The brothers stood on the bridge of the Dragon Huntress, cast out a stream of plasma, and burned down the last enemy ship.

  The urchin shattered, sank, and vanished with a flash out of hyperspace. Its shards streaked and faded.

  "We won the battle," Steel said, staring out into the darkness.

  Riff lowered his head. "And maybe we just lost the war."

  They looked out at what remained of Ashmar's fleet—perhaps the last hope of all life. The Singularity had destroyed five of their starstrikers, the legendary spacecraft carriers of Ashmar, warships fabled across the cosmos. Hundreds of scorpion jets had been lost, and with them hundreds of ashai pilots. Five starstrikers still flew—thankfully, Nova's ship was among them—but they were dented, broken, burnt, many of their scorpions lost.

  "We've lost half our fleet," Riff said. "And we're only halfway to Achernar."

  Steel smiled thinly. "Outnumbered? Outgunned? Underdogs with almost no hope for survival?" He gave Riff the slightest of winks. "Sounds like just another day for the Alien Hunters."

  "Only this time things are different." Riff stared out at a crew of mechanics floating around a wounded starstriker, mending its shattered hull. "This time three of the Hunters are missing."

  "Perhaps not." Steel placed a hand on Riff's shoulder. "Nova is out there, Riff. Out there right now, standing on the bridge of one of those warships, maybe looking at us, maybe thinking of us. Still fighting with us, still one of us. And Riff . . . Giga is here too. I know it. When I pulled her back into the ship, there was a moment when she looked into my eyes, when she held my hand. And she was Giga again. She's still in there, my brother, the same Giga we love."

  The Giga I love, Riff thought. The Giga who told me that she loves me.
The Giga who kissed me at the airlock.

  "I wish Dad were here." A smile tingled Riff's lips. "Remember how he used to take us to the beach, how we'd pretend to be pirates, wrestle in the sand, float on our air mattresses in the water, have adventures in our imagination?"

  Steel snorted a laugh. "Perhaps we never grew up. Still two boys pretending to be pirates, having adventures."

  "Only this time our adventures are real." Pain stabbed at Riff. "This time people are dying. Gods, Steel. Hundreds must have died in this battle, maybe thousands." He met his brother's gaze. "Are we just flying to more death? To our death?"

  Steel walked closer to the windshield and stared outside into space. "If we cannot defeat these machines, brother, then all life will perish. They will keep traveling back in time to kill us in our cradles, or they will send more ships our way, or they will grow so strong they will become gods, able to strike us down anywhere they please." He turned back toward Riff, face hard. "Perhaps, yes, we fly to our death. But this would be a death we choose. A death in battle, fighting for life, fighting for the cosmos."

  Sudden anger filled Riff. He balled his hands into fists. "I never wanted to save the cosmos, damn it! I don't care about battles, about death in glory, about any of that rubbish. I'm not a knight like you. I'm not noble like you. I'm a bluesman. I'm—"

  "You are a starship captain," Steel said, voice harsh, eyes blazing. He stepped toward Riff and grabbed his collar. "You are a hero. To Giga. To Twig and Romy. And . . ." Steel's anger seemed to fade, and he looked away. "And to me."

  Riff narrowed his eyes. "To you, Steel? To the great knight, the great warrior?" He tilted his head.

  Steel's cheeks flushed, and he turned away. He spoke in a low voice. "You are my older brother, Riff. I've always looked up to you."

  Riff's eyebrows rose so high they almost fell off. "I'm only a year older. We're practically twins."

  "When you're a child, a year is an era. Often, in my childhood, you almost seemed like an adult to me, closer to Father's age than to mine. And . . ." Steel lowered his head and whispered something.