Song of a Dead Star

by Zamil Akhtar

  If I don’t go back to base, they’ll consider me a deserter.

  He picked out another book from the pile, “Ferdowsi’s Book of Concepts — Ca to Cm,” too hefty to grasp with one hand. He opened it to a random page: “Cats.” “A popular pet,” it said, “a source of comfort and companionship. One of Nur’s gifts to the people of Eden.” He glanced at the drawings. It looked like some old guy’s beard grew legs and a set of crystal eyes.

  A comrade in the Forces had told him, while they shared a pipe outdoors, “Who knows if Ferdowsi didn’t make half this shit up? The man did love to smoke!” Yeah, what the fuck kind of creature was this?

  Merv spared the “Cats” and the rest of “Ca to Cm.” He threw it on the floor and picked another book.

  “The Exile’s Recital.” His fingertips throbbed with the desire for fire. Sun raced through him. But he couldn’t.

  Should I burn this, I’ll surely burn in hell forever.

  The spine was worn, from him grabbing it after waking from nightmares, the corners bent, from him bookmarking so many pages. The pages moist, from his tear stains.

  Hell is my destiny anyway.

  Fire cried through his palms and blazed onto the pages. Smoke breathed off the withering book. He refused to let it go, until fire burned the skin off his metal inserts.

  A month after that day, the Colonization Forces realized he was alive. They evicted him and summoned him to trial for the crime of desertion. Homeless, he boarded a levship for Reborn. But when he walked into the terminal, it was not the Colonization Forces that awaited.

  Emigrants — Merv could tell from the Emblem of the Double Palm Tree pinned on their uniforms. They eyed him as he walked away toting his rucksack, then surrounded him as he tried to exit.

  “Peace brother,” one of them said. Another clean cut patriot. “You ever thought of becoming an Emigrant?”

  “Go preach to someone else, I’ve enough concerns.” Merv tried to get by.

  But they walled off the exit with their bodies. “You’re Merv, right? We’re here to offer you a new future.”

  If they knew his name, they surely knew what he was.

  “I’ve got a date with an angry judge. Be quick.”

  “Our leader, Patriarch of the Emigration Saint Rohimna, would like to speak with you.”

  Merv scoffed. “Uh-huh, sure he does.”

  No one smiled.

  “Wait...you serious?”

  Now, Merv traveled in the group of four through a maze of a city. And that city was on fire, lit by two armies, one hidden and the other marching beneath an angry sky.

  Rain nullified the cloaks of Merv and his comrades, but scans couldn’t easily detect their blacksuits. They passed levships perched in heaven, breathing lava on the world. The Shirmian Army — why destroy their own city? Even if the people are resisting, don’t they know the terror just beyond the Wall?

  Zauri’s blue dot, floating in the sky on his spectrum, kept pinging. Each ping scathed him as if they were her screams.

  He received a message. Stop, we’re just outside the compound. The walls are too high to scale. There’s a gate — it’s heavily guarded. I count thirty-three — heavily armed. A levship hovers just inside the walls.

  It was Nisreen, sent to scout ahead. Another message hit the channel, from the Marshal.

  We break through that gate.

  What should I do? Merv didn’t realize he broadcasted that thought.

  Just watch. The Marshal replied.

  No...I should be doing my part. That thought he didn’t broadcast.

  The forest of buildings gave way to a towering wall. The wine of a hovering levship drowned out the scurrying of soldiers. The area was covered with scorched earth and charred craters; a battle had been fought here.

  Aymin messaged. I’m in position. I’ve got line of sight on the levship.

  Merv ducked behind a building and watched the Marshal and Nisreen walk openly beneath the wall. All was still. There was silence even though war bellowed. The sky’s anger lessened, and if you focused only on the guards standing beneath the levship, everything seemed peaceful.

  Not for long.

  A purple beam tore a hole through the levship, coming from Aymin’s position. And again — two, three, four, five, six, seven beams. It revved and tried to get away. Its wine became a scream, and then a coarse wail, as if the lungs of the levship filled with blood. It fell upon the gate; fire and light and a final cry sent metal in every direction. Soldiers caught fire, flaming metal crashed into others.

  There are still too many left.

  A figure immersed in blacklight appeared, a blade like a scythe in its hand. One instant, it severed a soldier’s head, blood spraying in a circle. The next instant it disappeared, reappeared, and sliced a torso. It flashed in and out, evoking terrible shouts, radiating deadly light. It was over in a minute, and there were no Shirmian soldiers left.

  It stood in the center of everything. Is that...Nisreen? She did all that by herself?

  Job done. The Marshal messaged.

  He’d meant it when he said he was bringing the best. But what was that? Merv had never seen such killing efficiency. He recalled the rivers of blood that ran through the Maymanah the day it was invaded by the Magi.

  Nisreen took off her mask. Reaching to her shoulders, her hair was as black as her suit. Her skin was moist, like the baths she filled with blood. Merv had never spoken to her, but he’d noticed her here and there aboard the Maymanah.

  The Marshal appeared. “We’ll have to kill many more to get what we want. Merv, give Nisreen and Aymin a drink.”

  Is that why he brought me? To be the water boy?

  Merv jogged to her, jumping over heads and headless bodies, and handed her a flask. “Where’d you learn to fight like that?”

  Nisreen glared at him and took the drink. Then gave it back, ignoring his question.

  She knows what I am, and she hates me for it. One day, she’ll change her mind about me.

  Aymin approached. “Give me that.” He grabbed the flask and gulped it. “This is a suicide mission. Why’s someone as green as you here with vets like us?”

  “I’m not as green as you assume,” Merv said. “And I’m here to serve my country. That’s all that’s ever mattered to me.”

  Aymin snickered and shook his head. “Right. Your country. The Elkarian people are the soul of Nur, but your mother was a Haemian. You make us all sick. Yet you’re allowed to pretend you’re one of us, only because—”

  “The hell is going on here?” The Marshal interrupted. “We’re moving out, cut the banter.”

  Zauri saw the city, alive again. Living on it were millions of girls and boys. They were happy because the weather was wonderful. No bitter heat, no paralyzing cold. Just warmth when they hugged, laughter as they played, and the coolness of a breeze.

  The red-eyed girl, Saina, stood there. She smiled up at Zauri — a happy cloud smile. Playing children circled her. A river circled them.

  The water flow slowed.

  Slowed, slower, slowest. The water froze. Now the children’s movements slowed. Until they froze into icicles. Saina froze with her happy cloud smile. The whole city frosted. Even the sun chilled. Its rays became spears of ice, its flares blazed with snow-fire. The air froze so no one could breathe. Zauri couldn’t understand why, but she knew it was her fault.

  She looked down on the city and released what was inside. Fire to melt everything. It incinerated the ground; the earth erupted. Smoke ate the city. Buildings were covered. The frozen boys and girls and the chilled rivers — all out of sight.

  The veil of smoke rolled away to eat something else. There were no more buildings. The roads were gone, as were the boys and girls. Even the rivers didn’t make it. Nothing remained in the path of the smoke. Nothingness. That’s all that was left after she killed everything.

  “Layla.”

  “Layla!”

  Her eyes opened.

  She saw the Almarian
man, Lacan, standing over her. She was in a tower in the sky, with someone she didn’t know, but who claimed to know her.

  “Bad dream?” he said.

  Heaviness. Her body was different. Sunshine simmered in her veins. She could see everything on spectrum, though she didn’t want to. It scared her.

  “No! Why did you put these things back in me?” She grabbed at the base of her spine, at the twicrys in one of her aperture slots. She pulled. A belt of spikes pained her brain.

  “Don’t do that.” Lacan grabbed her wrists. “Layla! Think about it!”

  She stopped trying and lay back in the bed.

  “You need the twicrys inside you, otherwise, you’ll slowly die. You have the worst form of A’ab disorder I’ve ever seen. Every organ in your body is reliant on sunlight to function.”

  “So what? I don’t care.”

  “You don’t care about your life?”

  “I...”

  “Whatever happened to you, I won’t let it happen again. Layla, I lost you once, and I won’t lose you again.”

  “I...don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He picked out dust from her hair, stroking it the while. “Don’t you find me familiar? Something you can’t quite place?”

  How does he know? Forget it...it doesn’t matter. I don’t want to talk to him. I can’t trust him. He’ll hurt me like everyone else.

  “I don’t know who you are,” Zauri said, “and I don’t want to stay here with you.”

  “Fine. Whatever it is that you want, I will give you. You don’t want to ever see me again, you won’t. I just want you to be happy this time, I don’t want you to suffer.”

  “Don’t call me Layla anymore.”

  “Then what should I call you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  That masked thing called his name, and he left. Zauri didn’t want to think. She lay there and closed her eyes. Time elapsed, but she wasn’t counting. She didn’t want to see with the eyes of the twicrys.

  But information built up, and she couldn’t stop it. She couldn’t close those eyes.

  Everything is so small. Everything is always so small to me. Everyone is an ant to me.

  Then, she felt him. His soul radiated on her spectrum, somewhere below, a few miles away. And he was getting closer.

  Merv. He’ll make me do horrible things, things that will burn me inside.

  Closer, and closer. As Merv approached, other souls vanished on the spectrum.

  Lacan came back. “I understand. What you went through is not something anyone should have to bear.”

  What could he know...

  “As the prime conductor of a vessel so massive and powerful,” he continued, “the energy unleashed upon the city of Qindsmar flowed through you first. And that energy must have killed you too, a thousand times, so you no longer feel like living.”

  “They made me. He made me.” Tears watered her vision. “And he’s coming here. Coming for me. To make me go back and do those things again.”

  Lacan took her hand. “Whoever it is, I won’t let him.”

  “They’re strong. You won’t be able to stop them.”

  He stilled and closed his eyes. When he opened them, they were filled with determination. “I will stop them, no matter what. For you, Layla.”

  A few hours after being picked up at the terminal all those years ago, Merv sat across from Patriarch Rohimna of the Emigrant Fleet, in a room full of steam and sand and wires.

  They sat at a glass table. The Rohimna. “Ferdowsi’s Book of Kings” Rohimna.

  “You know what I see,” he said, “when I look at you?”

  Merv didn’t know how to talk to such a man. No, not a man. A Hand of Nur.

  “I see the Opener,” Rohimna said. “The hero promised to us, who will rend the Wall and bring us back to Eden.”

  Steam crawled up Merv’s legs, warming the spaces between his joints. “Huh? You mean me?”

  “Is there someone else here?”

  Merv couldn’t look him in the eye. He’d glance at him then look away, finding comfort in the hazy glass table.

  “I—”

  “The recital says that he, or she, will be a half-born. The recital never says what half. Of course, most people think that an Elkarian girl raped by a Haemian will give birth to a bastard child who will somehow become our great hero. What a ridiculous story, no? I mean, really, that’s the only way our hero could have an Elkarian mother.”

  It was pretty stupid.

  “But why me?” Merv asked.

  “The Elkarian people are stuck in a state of stagnation, encumbered by an endless give and take war with the Haemians. Content to wait for the Opening, we’ve gotten nowhere. A hero is defined by his compulsion to break expectations, to force people down roads they don’t want to go, by a boldness to inflict pain even on those he loves. I see that potential in you.”

  A hero?

  Merv felt an itch on his sole. He ruffled his foot in his boot, kicking up sand. What was this place for anyway?

  “I’m an average conductor at best,” Merv said. “What use could you have for me?”

  Rohimna’s beard was whiter than the steam. Kind of like that “cat.” “You’re more special than you know. I believe in you. But you’re going to have to make believers out of the rest.” He stood up, smiled a hero’s smile. “In the Fleet, we are all sons of the same father. Come brother, let me introduce you to someone you’ll be working with.”

  In a grove of palm trees, Merv and the team hid beneath a wall of bushes. He lay flat on his belly; Aymin and the Marshal took the same position in front — mud stuck to their blacksuits. Nisreen had gone ahead to scout a way into the Tower.

  This is it. Zauri is almost directly above us. From now on, we have to figure out how to ascend that tower. Marshal Jahangir stated the obvious.

  A lev platform somewhere inside, you think? Nisreen shared her spectrum reading. You see the strong magnetic current? That must be it.

  Right. Let’s go. The Marshal messaged.

  I can cover Nisreen while she heads for the entrance. Merv offered.

  It was getting chillier.

  No, Merv. The Marshal messaged. You just watch.

  Why bring me just to watch?

  You know why. Don’t bask in ignorance. It’s not for your communication skills. A so called communications officer who can barely speak any Shirmian. I brought you because you’re the only one who can control her, you’re the only one she listens to. If that wasn’t the case, Merv, you know I would have crushed your neck.

  Commander, I’m ins—

  Nisreen’s feed cut. The transmission came from the base of the Tower.

  Nisreen? I’m not getting a reading. Aymin messaged.

  Merv scanned the area, focusing on the base of the Tower. As soon as his ping hit the walls, something absorbed it. It’s like there’s nothing there anymore. Even Zauri’s ping is gone.

  Then we have to get inside. We move out, our priority is to locate Nisreen.

  The TEX Tower — that’s what they called it. Not so impressive. Its top existed in a haze. Glass panels dotted the exterior, and it glowed from reflected sunshine. Its frame was slightly curved, like the sails of a boat. Standing literally in the sea, it looked as if it could set sail any moment, unto peaceful waves, where there was no war. Yet they had brought the war here, to the very heart of their enemy.

  There were no guards at the entrance. The team moved through the grand arch: the Marshal first, Merv next, and Aymin at the rear. No guards inside either.

  Split up. Merv go left, Aymin right. I’ll take middle. Now that we’re in dry territory, switch on your cloaks.

  Merv interfaced with his aperture and wrote the command to switch on his cloak. His limbs and body blurred. His two teammates became outlines of aura.

  Fish swam in the walls. A giant fish tank? It circled the room, containing fish of rainbow hues filled with jewels surrounded by corals and bubbles. A staircase led
up several stories, to where Nisreen had indicated: the magnetic current.

  Merv stayed close to the left panel of the fish tank. Since the walls were circular, he would reunite with Aymin in the middle, while the Marshal would climb the stairs. The banister blocked Merv’s line of sight, so he could no longer see the outlines of his teammates’ blacksuits.

  Something black flashed in the corner of his eye. It was behind him — no, above him. To his left. It smelled like blood — thick and sulfuric. Footsteps, all over him, around him. To his left.

  “Where are the others?” A girl whispered in his ear. Nisreen stood at his left flank.

  “Nur’s sake.” Merv could breathe again. “Don’t do that.”

  The blacksuit covered her being, curves and all. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

  “Calm down. We’re on the same team.”

  “Why didn’t anyone respond to my messages?”

  “What messages? Either you weren’t messaging, or something blocked it.”

  I found her. She’s with me. Merv messaged the group.

  Dead silence. No one responded because no one could hear him. Something blocked communication.

  “Just like what happened on the Maymanah,” Merv said. “Except it’s not interference, it’s a dead zone.”

  “Dead zone...I like that.” Nisreen chuckled. “Yes, that’s what we’ll call it after you’re all dead.”

  She wasn’t there anymore. There were only ruby fish to his left.

  Oh shit.

  Merv rushed to the entrance. In the middle of the plaza stood a figure bathed in black. The sunlight blackened upon hitting it. Inside that black, whirled a furious blue darkness. It inhaled shadows and exhaled a demonic glow.

  “Magus.”

  It projected lightning at the ceiling. Glass shattered. Water and fish rained. Merv was doused, nullifying his cloak. He saw his partners, or the ones still alive. Aymin and the Marshal stood, blades drawn, at the other end of the threshold. Merv drew his blade; fear flared through his legs, fervor fired up his soul.