The Sons of Sora

by Paul Tassi

  There was a mad scramble. Punches were thrown. Weapons changed hands. Claws sank into flesh. Cries of agony rebounded off the walls. It was all over in a matter of moments, and everyone froze, daring the other side to fire a shot.

  Stoller’s guards were fast, but definitely not machines. The best evidence of that was the blood oozing from their armor from puncture wounds sustained from Tau’s claws. Alpha found himself staring down the barrel of an energy rifle, as did Kiati. Toruk had managed to draw a small, hidden knife and had it at the throat of a squirming guard. Zaela and Asha were now holding rifles wrested away from guards, and kept a cluster of them at bay. Erik was on the ground with a guard’s boot on his throat and a rifle resting on his forehead. Sakai and Kyra were hiding behind the towering form of Tau, while Noah had taken an armored punch to the gut and was staring straight at a pistol pointed between his eyes. Madric Stoller held the gun, which swayed from side to side.

  Suddenly, his eyes widened. Something clicked, and Noah shifted slightly to see the trembling form of Finn Stoller holding a gun to the back of his father’s head.

  “It’s over, father,” he said, whispering. Maeren stood next to him, unarmed, clearly distraught.

  “With one word, I can kill everyone in this room,” Stoller said, slurring.

  “With no words, I can kill whoever I choose in this room,” Tau growled. A bloodied guard let out a moan from down near his feet.

  “Stop it!” came a small voice from behind him. Everyone turned to watch Kyra come out from behind Tau’s armor and walk through the frozen stand-off. Erik squirmed under the guard’s foot, but he couldn’t move. Their blank faces regarded her with curiosity. Asha and Zaela stood aside as she moved past them to stand beside Stoller and Noah. The gun was an inch away from his forehead, and Madric’s hand was starting to shake.

  Kyra’s voice was calm.

  “No one wants a coup, High Chancellor. That’s not why we’re here.”

  “The situation would seem to say otherwise, you daft girl,” he growled.

  “We all want Sora to survive. You in your way, and us in ours. We can both have our wish.”

  Stoller remained silent, which suggested he was listening.

  “Appoint Asha emergency Chancellor in a public broadcast. Transfer military authority to her in order to mount a reclamation effort on Sora. Show that Sora is not forgotten, and the government is still functional with you making the decision to step aside.”

  “I will not relinquish my power to—”

  “You,” Kyra continued, undaunted, “will lead the evacuation of all civilian ships at Solarion Station, saving millions of lives as you take them far away from the coming conflict. When the battle is won, you will return to Sora. If, gods forbid, we fail, you will lead our people in search of a new home. Your daughter’s fleet will escort you to ensure you and your civilian charges are kept safe.”

  The room was stone silent. Stoller’s expression was unreadable.

  “If there were ever a time to put past differences and personal ambitions aside, it is now,” Kyra said with calm authority. “We do not wish to be remembered as usurpers. You do not wish to be forcibly deposed. All of us want to see Sora live through this final stage of the war. Power means little if there is nothing left to rule. Let Asha shoulder that burden while you secure the civilian fleet by executing the evacuation you were planning in the first place.”

  A moment passed. Then two. Then ten.

  Stoller’s arm slowly drifted downward. His guards followed suit.

  “And they wondered why I thought you were so dangerous,” he said somberly to the girl in front of him.

  Noah stepped toward Kyra, now that the gun was out of his face.

  “Asha may lead my armies,” Stoller said. “I will save what remains of Sora as the rest of you throw your lives away. So be it.”

  Now everyone lowered their guns, and Erik wrenched himself out from under the heel of the guard. Stoller’s troops stood at attention, even the injured, and the boarding party began chattering with preparations for what came next.

  Asha approached Noah and whispered in his ear.

  “I understand now,” she said, glancing at Kyra who was talking to Finn, of all people.

  Noah was too stunned to speak. He couldn’t stop staring at her. Like there was no one else in the room.

  Some time later, the war room had been moved completely to Stoller’s ship, which was full of far more updated technology than anywhere on Solarion, SolSec included. Stoller was rehearsing a speech with Finn as a test audience while Alpha was drawing up battle plans with Asha, Kiati, Tau, and all the rest. The room was alive with activity, but Noah suddenly realized that Kyra was nowhere to be seen. He asked Erik but he could only shrug. He didn’t feel much like asking Sakai, who was chatting with Zaela in the corner of the room.

  Noah set about searching the ship, which he soon realized could take a while given its size. His journey led him to a lot of locked doors and lavish open areas that looked like museum exhibits filled with paintings, sculptures, and holographic art. Finally, on the top level, his calls for Kyra were answered.

  “In here,” she said to his left. A door opened, then shut as Noah stepped inside.

  His breath was taken away instantly.

  Kyra stood wearing a long, flowing white dress. It shimmered with starlight, absorbing and reflecting it through the massive windows behind her.

  “Where did you get that?” Noah managed to get out.

  Kyra rolled her eyes.

  “Call me a prat, but I’d been wearing those old clothes for days and was tired of looking at blood and dirt stains. I found this hanging in a wardrobe here, along with about fifty others like it. I assume the Stollers have many female visitors on a ship like this. And now that I’m thinking about that, ew.”

  They both laughed, which felt foreign.

  “I’ll admit I hadn’t thought to go hunting for clothing. Though I’d be careful wandering around here. The Stollers—”

  “I have nothing to fear from the Stollers,” Kyra said confidently. “Not anymore.”

  “How did you do that?” Noah asked, unable to look away from her eternally deep blue eyes. “How did you talk Stoller back from the brink?”

  Kyra shrugged.

  “Everyone likes to talk, but few listen. High Chancellor Stoller was afraid, not angry. Afraid of death, hence his attempted escape, but then afraid of losing face once he was forced to return. He’d have sooner died than see his regime forced away from him.”

  “But if he could give his power away …” Noah said.

  Kyra nodded, and played absentmindedly with the ends of her hair. Noah couldn’t remember the last time he’s seen her wear it down. It had grown long since they first reunited at the White Spire. Every day she looked more and more like Corinthia.

  “This way,” she continued, “he’s free of the responsibility of the war, free of the legacy of a coward, and is allowed to view himself as a hero as he leads the civilians in the escape he always planned to make. He gets to flee, head held high. Asha and the others have their armies and the legal authority to command. Sora has hope when they see their government united and working together to come to their aid.”

  “The man killed your parents and has been hunting you for years,” Noah said, shaking his head slowly. “And you’re willing not only to see him live, but have him lauded as a hero? After all he’s done?”

  “What is more important,” Kyra asked, staring out the window at the distant blue speck that was Sora. “My need for vengeance, or the fate of an entire planet? The fate of everyone I love?”

  She glanced toward him, and turned the slightest shade of red.

  “Stoller will find his reckoning in this life or at the Oak Thrones, but what we do now in these next few moments is far more important than the agendas any of us have as individuals. If our world survives, if you survive, that’s all I could ask for.”

  They stood there, locking eyes for w
hat felt like hours. Finally the last wall broke away.

  Noah rushed toward Kyra. He took her into his arms and kissed her deeply. He pulled back and didn’t see shock in her eyes this time. Only passion. Only love. She wrapped her arms around his muscled back, pulling him down toward her. They kissed feverishly. Clothing pulled away effortlessly. Her dress fell to the hard stone floor, revealing next to nothing underneath. She turned and walked slowly toward the deep, plush bed, pulling Noah by the hand after her. He followed, hypnotized by the sight in front of him, unable to fathom how it was possibly real. How this was actually happening. He thought of no one. Not Erik. Not Sakai. There was no war. No invasion. No death. No destruction.

  Just her. And she was perfect.

  They lay in each other’s arms a long while later, ignoring pages from their communicators, which still lay on the ground. Eventually, a holographic viewscreen flung itself off the wall toward the end of the bed. Noah’s heart jumped, but he realized it was a broadcast, not a comms request. It was an emergency broadcast, one apparently being beamed to every Soran who could view it. It was the tail end of a conference that showed Chancellor Stoller, Asha, Alpha, Kiati, Maeren, and the others, dressed in military uniforms pulled from the ship no doubt, staring stonefaced at the camera. The broadcast was nearly finished, it seemed.

  “I’d like to thank High Chancellor Stoller for placing his faith in me to lead you in these dark times,” Asha said, her hair tamed into something presentable for the occasion. “You all know me by now, with all we’ve been through together. Though I am not Soran by birth, your home is my home, and I will defend it at all costs. We have not abandoned you. The Xalans took us unaware, but we are not beaten. Do not lose faith. Sora will survive. You will survive. We are coming for you.”

  The transmission ended with Asha’s green eyes staring intensely into the camera. Noah felt chills run down his spine. His mother had been born for this. This was her war now. She would end it. One way or the other.

  “She’s a great woman,” Kyra said, hugging the soft sheet in front of her. “And she raised a great man.” She lay her head down on Noah’s broad chest.

  “I always thought I wanted to fight in this war. To be the hero. But I don’t. I’m selfish. I just want to stay here with you, and let someone else win it for me. I don’t want to risk losing you.”

  “You’ll never lose me,” Kyra said. “I’ll be with you every step of the way, no matter what happens next. We have to reach the colony. Find the Earthborn. Find Theta. We have to find your father, too.”

  “I know,” Noah said, running his fingers along the side of her face, staring into her crystal eyes. “I just … don’t want this moment to end.”

  “All moments end; you simply have to live long enough to repeat them,” Kyra said with a half-smile. “And after this war, I’m yours for as long as you’ll have me. That I promise.”

  “After the war, huh?” Noah said, eyebrow raised. “Well, that’s motivation if I’ve ever heard it.”

  Kyra smiled.

  “I’m here with you before then too, but perhaps it would be wise not to share that fact given … the complications.”

  “Erik loves you,” Noah sighed. “We both know that.”

  “And you know Sakai loves you.”

  “Yet here we are.”

  “I guess we’re both selfish. I’m not as perfect as everyone seems to think. I just can’t see myself without you. When you left as a child, it felt like part of me was torn away. When I got you back, even through all the death and madness, I finally felt whole again, though that probably sounds silly to say.”

  “It doesn’t,” Noah said, and he drew her in close. “I tried to escape it, deny it, avoid it, but I’ve felt the same from practically the moment you told me who you were.”

  She smiled and sank deeper into his arms. In that moment, Noah couldn’t see Corinthia Vale at all. Only Kyra. Only a girl in love.

  If only this could last. If only they could make it through.

  He suddenly realized Asha’s message was broadcasting on repeat on the holoscreen.

  “Do not lose faith,” her image said again. “Sora will survive. You will survive. We are coming for you.”

  34

  Lucas felt his whole body shaking with power and rage as he zipped up his ragged flight suit. He had no way to tell how long he’d been in an altered state of consciousness, and it could have been minutes, hours, or even a day. The Desecrator was right. The ghost of the fallen monster had shown him the way to reclaim his strength by drawing on a lifetime of past, present, and even future agony. Now it was time to make the Archon pay, and to find his family again.

  The door might have been two feet thick, but Lucas tore it away from the frame like it was cardboard. At the sound of shearing metal, his two still-present Shadow guards whirled around, eyes blazing blue. The moment they saw him, their arms thrust outward.

  From the gesture it appeared they were trying to psionically tear his arms off or fling him into the opposite wall. But his feet remained planted on the ground. Lucas didn’t move an inch as they waved their claws around in pantomime, trying to exert their power. On the third attempt, something crept across the faces of the Shadows that looked a lot like fear.

  “Impossible,” one said in his mind, turning to the other. “We must—”

  Lucas didn’t give him time to finish. Newly immune to their psionic control, he lunged at the leftmost Shadow. The two of them crashed into the wall as the other Shadow looked on in shock. Regaining his senses, the Shadow pulled a pistol from his armor, but Lucas slammed his wrist to the floor and the gun shot wildly down the corridor. Feeling the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, Lucas wrenched the Shadow’s arm up and pulled the trigger of the pistol with his thumb. The weapon unleashed a deafening blast directly behind him, right into the chest of the other Shadow, who was attempting to smash Lucas’s head with the butt end of a bladed staff. The plasma spattered off the chest armor of the Shadow and the force propelled him away from them. Lucas caught the downed Shadow’s free arm just as he was pulling a second pistol, one with a shorter barrel and a wide spray that unloaded into the ceiling as Lucas desperately held the creature’s wrist away from his face. The gun overheated after five rapid shots that sent debris raining down from the ceiling onto his back. Lucas smashed his forehead into the noseless face of the Shadow before leaping to his feet and flinging the creature by his wrists into the damaged ceiling.

  Lucas barely had time to duck as the bladed edge of the staff whipped toward his neck. He knew the Archon wanted him alive, but these Shadows had quickly realized they were fighting for their lives, their psionic abilities useless. Lucas blocked another swing of the staff with his forearm, just inches below the darksteel blade. Using the counter to get inside the reach of the creature with the damaged chest armor, he plowed a fist directly into the weakened portion of the plating. The air was expelled from the Shadow’s lungs and Lucas hit him with a stiff uppercut that caused him to lose his grip on his staff.

  Lucas grabbed the weapon before it hit the ground and spun it around instinctively. He sliced the barrel off the pistol being pointed at his head by the other Shadow and the gun misfired. The second pistol did not.

  Trying to spin out of the way, Lucas felt a hot spray of plasma rip across his lower torso. He flew back into the wall, grimacing in pain, and only stopped a second shower by flinging the staff toward the Shadow’s throat, forcing him to dive out of the way.

  The other, now staff-less Shadow tried to crush the downed Lucas with a massive clawed boot, but he rolled out of the way just in time. The metal floor cratered, but Lucas was only free and clear for a half second. A second spin kick from the Shadow caught him across the face, and he felt like he’d just been hit with a sledgehammer.

  Both Shadows were up now, throwing lightning-fast strikes his way, aiming for organs and arteries. Lucas blocked as best he could, nearly matching their incredible speed, but he felt their coarse cl
aws rip into his ribs and shoulder, which made the plasma burns in his abdomen seem downright pleasant.

  Stop! he thought violently as he deflected further blows. Die! But even with his power returned, he had no influence over these Chosen Shadows. They too knew their pain. Their blue eyes remained blazing with fury, each swipe more savage than the last.

  Finally, one massive front kick caught him square in the chest and propelled him twenty feet down the hallway and directly through a large door that broke open as he struck it. The new area was cavernous compared to the cramped hallway, full of light and sound, but Lucas didn’t have time to take in the scenery. The Shadows had reacquired their weapons and were charging at him with blinding speed.

  Lucas leapt to his feet, ignoring his injuries, and ducked under a hail of plasma from the hand cannon. The second Shadow reached him first, and Lucas spun over the dark blade of the staff, catching the rear collar of the creature’s power armor with his hand as he landed. He wrenched the Shadow downward, and he hit the ground with an echoing thud. Lucas grabbed the now upright staff from the creature’s claws and spun it around overhead. Before the Shadow could recover from his skull cracking against the floor, Lucas drove the bladed staff straight through the hole in his chest armor. The darksteel cut through flesh, bone, and the creature’s heart without a sound. A silent scream was frozen on the Shadow’s face.

  Another pair of shots, and Lucas felt more boiling plasma singe his left arm. He dove behind a large console planted in the center of the room, which ate a few plasma blasts before expiring in a fireworks display of sparks and electrical fizzling. The plating cracked, and something glowing within shot streams of light through the room. Alarms began to sound, and holographic control clusters changed from a tranquil blue to an enraged red.

  With a frustrated roar, the remaining Shadow sprinted toward him and leapt over the top of the ruined device. Lucas caught him in midair and flung him directly into a large metal object that looked a lot like the housing to a massive engine. Lucas suddenly realized what area of the ship he was in; he was standing in front of what appeared to be a damaged null core. It glowed a sickly yellow, a color he’d never seen before. Its ruptured casing spit out energy so hot he actually felt his hair and skin being singed. The ship lurched uncomfortably, and Lucas almost lost his footing.