The Sons of Sora

by Paul Tassi

  “It’s the only way to get close to him. And maybe, somehow, I can kill him.”

  “Or maybe, somehow, he’s going to turn you into the next Corsair,” Asha shot back. “Have you seen yourself? You’re a few square feet of skin away from being completely roasted. Your eyes are so blue it hurts to look at them.”

  “The more powerful I am, the more of a chance I stand against him.”

  “You know nothing about the Archon, truly,” Alpha said, his tone equally worried. “Only the whispers of ghosts. That is not enough. We need more data. We need—”

  “We need what?” Lucas shouted, rising to his feet. “He’s going to detonate the entire city of Elyria unless I’m there in what, four hours? We know two things the Archon wants, the destruction of Sora and me. I’d rather give him one than the other.”

  “You may give him both in the process,” Alpha said quietly.

  Lucas walked to the window and watched the curved horizon of Sora burn.

  “You know you can’t stop me,” he said, a fact bordering on a threat.

  “This is wrong,” Asha said, her green eyes alive with sadness and rage. “Barely anyone knew you were still alive. If the public sees you back from the dead, surrendering yourself to the Xalans, they will lose what little hope they have left.”

  “The need for hope has passed. It’s time for action now. They will either understand when this is over, or they will be dead,” Lucas said solemnly. No one could argue with that.

  Lucas had seen the horrors of this kind of war before. On Earth it lasted mere weeks, but Sora would not see that kind of mercy. The Xalans would tear up the enormous planet and exterminate its citizens for years, decades even. But if he could at least stop a hundred and fifty million deaths in the next few hours, he would. And in his eyes, it gave him a chance to end it all. The Archon had to have a weakness, a flaw, something.

  He doesn’t, said a quiet voice in his mind. Even resisting his power, you were still like a toy to him.

  Lucas thought back to the Archon’s ship. He’d detonated an entire null core nearly on top of the creature, and on the Stream he didn’t even appear injured.

  What if they’re right? the voice continued. What if you’re the next Corsair?

  “Then so be it!” Lucas roared out loud, shocking Asha and Alpha, and everyone else around.

  “You are not well,” Alpha cautioned. “You need—”

  “I need nothing,” Lucas snapped. He eyed the transport; it had no weapons, no cargo, just as requested.

  Yes you do, said the voice. You need them. Like you’ve always needed them.

  He’d never ask. Though he knew he would never have to.

  “Let’s go,” Asha said. Alpha nodded, his golden eyes stern. It was never even a question. Lucas could make them stay. He knew that, if he really wanted to.

  But he was tired of being alone.

  Their journey would end as it began.

  39

  “No!” Noah shouted as he dragged his warhammer across the ground of the docking bay, the darksteel spike gouging the metal floor. He hoisted it up over his weakened shoulder, cringing, but he still pressed on toward the group standing around the transport. Beside him was his brother, far less imposing, but striding forward with fury that caused fully armored SDI soldiers to scamper out of his way.

  “Not again,” Erik called out. “You are not doing this again!”

  Lucas, Asha, and Alpha all turned to look at them. Their father was disintegrating before their eyes, blackness starting to creep up his neck now, eclipsing the already dark veins lurking there. They’d heard the Archon’s message, seen the devastation at Elyria, and knew what Lucas would do next. And they wouldn’t be left behind. Not again. Not after what the Archon had done to Kyra through the vessel of the Corsair.

  “You leave us behind to go get yourself blown up on Xala,” Noah said, pointing at Lucas.

  “And you dump us in the colony so you can try to get yourself killed across half a dozen planets,” Erik said to Asha.

  “Boys, I know you’re upset after what happened to—” Asha began.

  “You don’t know,” Noah shot back. “You got him back,” he said, motioning to Lucas. “She’s gone. She died to try and help end this wretched war, and we’re not going to sit back doing nothing while you three march off to martyr yourselves the same way.”

  Asha and Alpha looked at each other while Lucas brooded behind them. After a pause, he spoke.

  “Let them come,” he said. “If they want to stare into the face of evil, they are welcome to it. If the Archon lives, all of our lives are forfeit regardless.”

  That didn’t sound like Lucas at all, but Noah didn’t care. Before Alpha or Asha could protest, they brushed past them and entered the loading dock of the transport. Noah met Lucas’s bright eyes as he passed him. There was an understanding there, albeit tinged with madness. As Asha and Alpha turned to join them inside, Noah felt like part of a family for perhaps the very first time.

  Noah swung the hammer through the air, seeing the blackened face of the Corsair with each phantom strike. His shoulder ached, his side burned, and the bandage was stained with red blood and yellow pus. The burned arm from his youth was now shaping up to be the least gory of his injuries, but he was beginning to not even feel pain.

  He wrenched the hammer around and around, recalling the ancient tactics of the Yalos he’d been taught during Colony One training. Whipping the hammer’s head downward, he stopped within an inch of the floor, lest he blow a hole straight into the engine room. He pictured the Corsair’s body, smashed to a bloody pulp.

  The ship they were in now was stripped completely bare, a husk of rust and metal with nothing in it but five doomed souls. As it should be. They soared past SDI ships and Xalan forces alike, no one stopping them, their broadcast signal letting them all know they were not to be touched. They were the Archon’s now.

  Noah swung the hammer around and nearly took the head off his brother, who had appeared in the room out of nowhere. Another two inches and Erik’s face would have been spattered across the room, but Noah suspected he knew that. His brother wasn’t stupid.

  “Watch it,” Noah said, all the same.

  Erik eyed Noah as he continued to whirl the hammer around in pantomime combat, battling invisible enemies, sweat pouring down him, seeping into his bandages.

  “I kissed her once,” Erik offered suddenly. Noah stopped, and his eyes flared at his brother.

  “Only once,” he continued, his tone was solemn, not mocking. “It was one of the nights on the way back from Earth, when we were guarding her. We had talked for hours, about everything, anything. It seemed right.”

  Noah stood there with the hammer, his chest heaving.

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  Erik looked at him.

  “Because that was the night she chose you,” he said.

  That threw Noah off guard.

  “You knew? All this time?”

  “She didn’t say it then,” he said. “But I felt it. It didn’t change what she was to me, but I knew I’d never have her. I don’t think she even understood yet, but I did.”

  “She never …” Noah began.

  “Not then,” Erik said. “Not for a while. But I know you found each other in the end. You need to work the mute button on the fighter comm better. Just because you can’t hear me, that doesn’t mean I can’t hear you,” he sneered.

  He’d heard everything they’d said before the reclamation battle. That explained his silence. It explained a lot.

  “A year ago, I would have fought you for her, or something stupid like that.”

  “What changed?”

  “That girl was more than just something to fight over. She deserved to be protected. She deserved the love of billions, not just one or two of us. That’s why Stoller was so afraid of her.”

  “I failed her,” Noah said, his hammer sliding to the ground.

  Erik nodded. “We all did. Bu
t she didn’t fail us. She’s the reason we’re standing here. And who knows how many more have been saved after us, with that thing dead?”

  Who was this man in front of him? It wasn’t his brother, the hot-tempered, raging child he’d sparred with his entire life.

  “I’m glad you found her, even for a little while,” Erik continued. “It’s a different sort of loss for me. I never had her at all. I don’t know if that’s worse or better.”

  “I can’t say,” Noah said, sitting back on a nearby bench, resting his forearms on his knees. “But I can’t describe what it was like then. Nor can I say what it feels like now. There just aren’t words.”

  “So you’ll beat the hell out of the air until the feeling goes away?”

  “Not air,” Noah said. “And it won’t go away.”

  “I know.”

  “Why did you come, Erik? Just vengeance? Or that glory you always wanted?”

  Erik shrugged.

  “Both, maybe. But things are different now. Before I left, I saw Sakai wrangling all those kids as the others tried to help her. I saw a pair of twins, a boy and a girl, no more than a year old. They had Asha’s eyes. My eyes.”

  Noah had been numb to the idea that it was incredibly likely he was a father. Kyra’s death had shaken him too deeply. He’d said a muted good-bye to Sakai, who seemed to still be in shock herself, and he gazed over the sea of children. No one knew who belonged to who, and Noah wondered if he’d ever know, now that he’d gotten on this ship.

  “So you fight for them?” he asked.

  “Revenge. Fame. Family. Take your pick,” Erik said. “I’m no shining knight. But I knew I had to be here. Just like Lucas knew he had to go to Xala all those years ago. Did he do it because they killed his planet? Did he do it because Sora worshipped him? Did he do it for the two of us? Heroes aren’t so black and white, I think.”

  “You’re right,” Noah said, gripping his hammer so tightly his knuckles threatened to burst through his skin. He was full of death and despair and hate and hollowness, each spreading through him like a rampaging disease. There was nothing but blackness in him.

  There were few places to go on the small ship, and nowhere to get away from his own thoughts. The voyage was a short one, only three hours to Rhylos, but it felt like an eternity. Watching the devastation out his windows only reminded him of Kyra’s death. Erik was handling it better than he was, and that unnerved him.

  She loved you, not him, he thought. That’s twice the burden.

  But looking into his brother’s eyes, he wasn’t sure he could say that was true.

  In a cramped corridor, he found Asha, having just left the CIC. She looked unsettled. Noah wondered what Lucas had done now.

  “Everything alright?” he asked as she approached, and she slumped against the wall.

  “He’s trying,” she said. “That’s all he can do.”

  Noah stopped and stood next to her. It was hard to believe his mother was still technically High Chancellor, though she’d turned over control of the military to her cabal of advisors before she departed. Even now, they were likely formulating last-ditch preparations in case the five of them failed. This wasn’t like when his parents went to Xala. They had no plan, only a goal. Kill the Archon. And one misstep could leave any or all of them dead, not to mention hundreds of millions at Elyria and billions elsewhere on the planet. The weight of it pressed hard on all of them, but Asha more than any. She’d been fighting this war on the front lines longer than any of them.

  She sank down to the cold metal floor. Noah followed, his aching muscles and bones thanking him for the respite. He’d be sore from all his work with the warhammer tomorrow, provided he lived that long.

  Asha stared into his eyes, and knew his thoughts.

  “You know, I lost someone too,” she said, brushing her hair back.

  “I know,” Noah said. “But at least you found him again in the end, even if he’s a different version of himself.”

  “It is still him. It is still your father in there, somewhere. Struggling to break free. He’ll find his way back, I’m sure of it.”

  Noah was less confident, though he hoped it was true.

  “But I wasn’t talking about Lucas,” she continued, shaking her head.

  “Who, then?”

  Asha looked up at the light fixture, which shrunk her pupils to pins.

  “God, I was only a little older than you then,” she said. “It was back on Earth. After the war. Before I met Lucas.”

  “You always said everyone lost someone then.”

  She nodded.

  “Some more than most,” she said quietly.

  “Who was he?” Noah pressed.

  “His name was Christian,” she said, stretching out the fingers on her left hand and looking at them wistfully. “He was everything to me, a lifetime ago.”

  “And he died.”

  “He was murdered,” she said stiffly. “Saving me from some wretched thing that called itself a man.”

  Noah was silent. He hadn’t heard about this chapter in his mother’s life. All the stories they told about her were of epic victories in battle, or at the very least, hard-fought defeats. It was difficult to picture Asha needing “saving.”

  “Christian died sobbing. His killer lived. I still hate myself for that, even though he’s long dead now.”

  “I’m sorry,” Noah offered.

  “Don’t be,” she said. “It was another life. And even though I loved him, his death made me strong. The hate fueled me. Turned me into something else. Allowed me to survive as the entire planet died.”

  “So I’m supposed to just use all this hate to propel me forward from here?”

  Asha shook her head.

  “No. Becoming stronger is one thing, but being consumed by rage is another. I would have died in the desert if not for the mercy of Alpha, and the level head of your father. I was a demon. That still breaks through sometimes, but you have to let the pain shape you without letting it define you.”

  Noah thought on that. He understood what she meant, but he kept seeing Kyra’s frozen, lifeless eyes as she drifted down to the floor. It was hard to see anything but those eyes wherever he looked.

  “You’ll never forget her,” Asha said. “And you shouldn’t. But the pain, it can be forgotten. And the love, it can return. Though I’m sure neither seems likely right now.”

  Noah stared at the ground.

  “If I found that man again, I’d kill him,” she said. “And probably not quickly. But it wouldn’t bring Christian back. That’s something you already know, having killed that twisted version of Mars. It’s not enough. It never will be. Healing isn’t a switch, it’s a journey. And a long, hard one at that.”

  He nodded slowly.

  “You were born of the worst of old Earth,” she said. “The son of a mass murderer, cannibal, and rapist. We tried to shield you from that fact, but I see now that you should wear it with pride. You are living proof that the greatest kind of evil can transform into something good again. Christian’s death was evil, but it brought me to Lucas. It brought me to you. To this world. To a moment where maybe we can save an entire species. Kyra’s death was evil, but it can bring you somewhere good if you let it. It may take years and years, as it did with me, but it will take you there all the same. Someday.”

  Noah blinked. He saw her eyes again. But not glassy and dead. Alive with life, full of love.

  “All moments end, you simply have to live long enough to repeat them.”

  He ran his hand over his mouth.

  “I’ll be with you every step of the way, no matter what happens next.”

  He felt her there. He felt her warmth. Her smile.

  “I just can’t see myself without you.”

  “Noah?”

  Asha looked at him, concerned.

  “Someday,” he said, turning to her.

  “Someday,” she repeated.

  And then, it was time.

  The five of the
m were gathered in the cramped CIC, watching the sun set over Rhylos. They’d made their deadline. Or at least they hoped they had. Their comms were now completely dead, no doubt jammed by the Xalan army that now called the desert continent home.

  Even though there had been thousands of ships at the reclamation battle on both sides, the void of space still made their skirmish seem relatively small by comparison. Not so on the surface, where the Archon had gathered an enormous portion of his remaining forces, and the sight of it took their breath away.

  The ships weren’t just floating, they were circling. They formed a massive pillar in the sky, everything from destroyers to fighters, locked in a tight orbit around a central point, stretching from the surface miles into the orange sky. It was a funnel cloud of Xalan armor, black and sharp. A swarm in a holding pattern.

  But it wasn’t just the air. The ground moved, swaying with a million black bodies that carpeted the surface so the red sand underneath was barely visible. They stretched all the way to the horizon, set up in makeshift camps alongside vehicles, tanks, and hovercraft barely skimming the surface. It wasn’t a million. Noah had seen a million people at the promenade of the now-destroyed Grand Palace. This was a hundred times that many.

  At first Noah wondered why they didn’t just lob every massive warhead they had at this obvious cluster, but even a cursory glance showed that no missile or bomb could ever hope to make it through this kind of defense with thousands of anti-air turrets scattered on the ground and shieldships integrated into the swirling fleet above. Going after the Archon directly was the only possible option, given the scope of the force before them. He felt as they had when they’d posed as prisoners at Solarion Station. But there was no next step. Everything was an unknown. And however menacing the young Commander Hayne had been, the Archon was another class of evil and power. One none of them had ever seen before. None except Lucas.

  A dark ship broke off from the drifting funnel of the Xalan fleet and flew to meet them. Noah was unsurprised to find their ship disabled within seconds, drifting uselessly toward the much larger craft.

  The clank of metal on metal suddenly jolted loose all the fear Noah had been keeping locked away regarding this entire endeavor.