Stars & Empire: 10 Galactic Tales

by Jay Allan

  She renewed that promise now, swearing to go down in a storm of glory that would be talked about among the New Users for years. Well, for as long as this fragile society lasted, anyway.

  A strange sense of peace came over her, now that the choice to stay was made, and the book in her lap didn’t feel so cold, nor so heavy. She stretched her fingers and let her gaze return to the snowy street outside, and she waited, conserving her charge, readying herself for one final hurrah.

  After a time, she heard the jangle of keys in the door.

  The time to die had come.

  She let the current flow through her body, allowed it to crisscross her skin in deadly waves. She looked like a harmless little old lady, she was sure.

  But the first gol, or man, to touch this little old lady would be utterly incinerated.

  CHAPTER 16

  Ari heard the door open and close behind her. Then the footfalls came. Muted. Cautious. She couldn’t tell how many intruders had entered. Two. Three? If that was so, the gols had grossly underestimated her.

  She stoked the charge inside her, and the air above her skin began to crackle with a subtle hint of energy.

  “Hello Ari,” Nurse Richard said.

  Those words saved his life—Ari released the charge a split second before Richard’s fingers wrapped around her upper arm.

  “Time for your bath,” Richard said.

  Ari slumped in relief. Not yet, then.

  Not yet.

  She set aside the diary. “Why so early today?”

  Richard shrugged. “I’m here at the usual time.”

  Had she really whiled away the entire morning already?

  Richard glanced at the book, nosy as always. “What were you reading?” His features were angular and harsh, his eyes close-set.

  She bared her teeth in a smile. “A pleasant fiction about a dead man who returns to life ten years after abandoning his daughter.”

  Ari numbly let the nurse lead her from the main chamber to the only other room in the shack, a room that was more a closet than anything else. Without comment, Richard emptied her chamber pot into the sack he’d brought along for the purpose. Normally the residents of Luckdown District just dumped their excretions out the window, but over time disgusting brown stalagmites formed along the walls, half buried in the snow. She hated that. A lot of people liked it, unfortunately. Take her neighbors. They were always talking about how solid their walls of wattle-and-shit were. At least they weren’t nosy, though they had to wonder how she could afford a nurse. As did others in the neighborhood apparently—a robber tried to steal from her, once. She’d left him with a seriously blistered hand, and a message for other aspiring thieves—this house was off-limits.

  Richard undressed her, and lowered her into the small tub that took up half the room. As usual, he’d brought along a water bladder. She didn’t have a fireplace, so he boiled the water before coming, and by the time he reached here the contents had always cooled to a pleasant lukewarm. Pleasant or no, today she shivered for the entire session. Normally she would’ve made some crude joke at least once, but she wasn’t in the mood. Not today. She kept expecting gols to come rushing inside. If they did come, she supposed there was one plus to being caught with her pants down like this—the water would amplify her charge.

  Afterward, she dressed, and Richard set out her meal. Today it was previously cooked chicken, now cold, with hard bread on the side. She hated cold chicken. When Richard glanced away, distracted by the distant screaming of one of the neighbors, she unleashed a trickle of electricity into the meat. There, much better.

  “Is everything all right Ari?” Richard said.

  She chewed on, just as if he’d said nothing. Chewed. Her teeth were the one thing the ravages of vitra had left intact, thankfully.

  At last she deigned to answer him. “Everything’s just fine.” She glanced at the doorway.

  “There,” Richard said. “You did it again.”

  “What?” She set down the chicken. “Well speak up you blathering idiot! I may be old, but I won’t stand for patronizing.”

  Richard merely smiled. “Why do you keep looking at the door?”

  “The door. I—” Why indeed? If the gols were going to come, they would have arrived already. What was Jeremy’s game?

  They planned to come in the night, no doubt, and collar her while she slept. That was the best way to capture a User. Without casualties, anyway. Well she’d be damned if she let herself go out that way. If she was to die, she was going to do it on her own terms. Uncollared and free.

  She was sick of Jeremy playing with her.

  “Richard,” she said. “Would you help me with something?”

  “That’s what you pay me for, dear Ari,” Richard said.

  She grated her teeth at his patronizing tone. “I want to go for a walk.”

  He raised his eyebrows and stared at her for a moment, then he smiled that infuriating smile of his. “As you wish, dear Ari.”

  And so he helped her dress. Normally she put on a threadbare jacket and moth-ridden scarf so as not to attract attention, but today she donned her fur cloak, fur cap, and fur boots, clothes reserved for special occasions only.

  Dying was a special occasion.

  Richard led her out into the raw cold. She walked across the snowpack with one hand clenching his, and the other clenching her cane.

  She saw the Forever Gate in the distance, looming over the city like an indomitable titan. She’d always regretted that she hadn’t climbed the Gate to search for her father. She should have gone while she was still young in body. She should have abandoned the Users, and let the previous Leader rebuild the group on his own. Likely there’d be no Users today if she’d done that, she had to remind herself. Regret and second guesses were dark pits she’d struggled against her entire life. Very soon she’d never know those pits again. A comfort, though a small one.

  She saw a small child nearby. A little girl, huddling in the cold. She paused beside the child, and looked down at those weary, sad eyes.

  “Ah to hell with it.” She took off her fur cloak, and before she could change her mind, dumped it in the child’s lap.

  The little girl looked at her prize in disbelief, and then took off with it at a run.

  If Ari was cold before, now she was positively frigid.

  “Why’d you do that?” Richard said.

  “Just shut-up and walk with me.” She could hardly talk for her chattering teeth.

  A group of ten gols in the armor of the city guard stood in the square ahead. All of them were looking at her. None of them seemed to have the slobbering faces that marked those with the gol mind disease.

  She filled herself with vitra, and steered Richard toward the group.

  “What’s your game, Ari?” Richard said.

  “What, no dear before my name this time?” The vitra flowed through her veins and filled her with warmth. She dragged Richard onward, and she could feel him struggling to pull her away. Likely he was surprised by her strength. It was an illusion of course. Little bursts of strategically-placed electricity that weakened his muscles in just the right places, at just the right times. That, and the gentle boost the flowing current gave to her own strength.

  “Hello gentle men,” Ari said to the gols. She smiled a sweet, grandmotherly smile. “Lounging around in the cold, spying on the citizens, are we?”

  She pushed Richard away, and before any of the guards could answer, she attacked with everything she had.

  Bolts of lightning flashed from her fingertips. Tendrils of energy sparked from her hair. Surely she looked a demon arisen from the nine hells, born into this world to wreak vengeance upon those who would collar humankind. In moments, all that remained of the ten gols were cinder blocks and charred bodies. Those all-too-human faces wore expressions of shock and disbelief.

  When you used massive quantities of vitra like that, you drew the city guards by the score. Small amounts of vitra were virtually undetectable, an
d you could even get away with medium quantities if gols were far away. But for what she just used, why, guards would come calling from all quarters of the city.

  And though she’d used up her entire charge in that attack, she began to laugh.

  Let them come.

  She was ready to die. More than ready.

  But then she had a thought. What if they recognized that she had no charge left? What if they collared her instead of killing her? No. No. She couldn’t let them take her.

  She surveyed the square in a panic. She could still run. It didn’t have to end like this. A few human bystanders stared at her in horror, but when she met their gaze, they ran off. None of them would follow her. And the nearest gol barracks were still a ways distant. Yes, she could make it.

  But she needed Richard’s help now more than ever. “Richard? Where are you, you imbecile! We have to get out of here!”

  In answer, a fist slammed into her ribs, and she collapsed to the snow.

  CHAPTER 17

  Ari nearly blacked out when she struck the hard snowpack. Her hip and ribs ached something nasty. So cold. So very cold. Why had she given up her fur cloak?

  “You’re a User!” Richard kicked her now in those same ribs, and she felt the age-brittle bones crack. No, she wanted to say. You’re killing me! But no voice would come to her. Didn’t she just want to die a few moments ago? Yes, but she wanted to fall in battle, not to some idiot nurse beating her to death.

  She tried vainly to reach the spark inside her, hoping the pain would ignite something within, but she had nothing left.

  She would’ve laughed again, if she could.

  Ari, the great Leader of the New Users, kicked to death by her own nurse.

  Richard rammed his boot into her ribs still again. More cracks.

  “You fool,” she finally managed through the pain. “They’ll kill you too when they come.” Would he believe her deception?

  Richard raised his boot to kick her a third time, but hesitated.

  She heard it then. The crunch of approaching boots. She tried to lift her head, but she couldn’t see who was coming, not from where she lay.

  Richard backed away. “I don’t know this woman,” she heard him say.

  Her heart sank. So the gols were here already. She’d be collared, and jailed, and would die rotting in the dungeon.

  This was the end.

  She relaxed her neck muscles. She didn’t feel so cold anymore. No. The warmth of sleep beckoned. The warmth of oblivion.

  The newcomer strode right up to Richard and planted a fist squarely in his jaw. Richard fell backward in the snow.

  “Run,” the newcomer said to Richard.

  Richard got up and stumbled backward a few paces, then he turned around and hightailed it out of there.

  The newcomer knelt beside Ari.

  “Are you all right?” He said.

  She looked up groggily. It must be a dream.

  The newcomer furrowed his brow, and he gently explored her ribs with one hand.

  She moaned. The pain of his touch brought her away from the edge, and the cold crept back with a vengeance. She shivered uncontrollably.

  “We’ll have to heal that before we can go on,” he said.

  She stared at him, shivering. So many words filled her mind, but her chattering teeth managed to form just one. “You.”

  “Nice to see you too, Ari, it is. You’ll have to thank your friend Jackson for me later. Led me right to you, though he didn’t know it. I was going to drop in later, when I was sure you were alone. Shame that you’ve burned the pals I brought, though. I leave my escort for a minute and look what you go and do. If only you knew how much convincing it took to bring them along.” He glanced over his shoulder at the charred bodies and sighed. “Well, there’s nothing for it now. Just the two of us, then. We don’t have much time.”

  It was him all right. He hadn’t aged a day, and in fact he seemed younger than the last time she saw him, with not a trace of gray in his hair, nor a wrinkle on his face. He looked a nobleman in those red boots and black pants, topped by that green tunic. An odd costume to wear in the heart of winter, to be sure. Without a coat and gloves, he should have been shivering, but the cold didn’t touch him.

  There was something else wrong. The clothes fit him too tightly, just as if each piece was melded into the skin and could never be taken off. Worse, there was a symbol stamped into the tunic, a symbol Ari didn’t recognize.

  The number 1000.

  Hoodwink was a gol.

  CHAPTER 18

  The heat of rage banished any cold she might have felt.

  “Where have you been all these years you hoodwinking bastard?” Ari felt the tears coming. It was almost easier to believe this was some trick of Jeremy’s. Easier than thinking Hoodwink had abandoned her for ten years and returned as a gol, of all things. “I thought you were dead. All this time. Dead.”

  “Ari,” Hoodwink said, with a gentleness that melted her old, rigid heart. “I tried. Really, I tried.”

  He tore open the side of her sweater and his jaw clenched angrily when he saw her ribs. “I should’ve killed that bastard.” He reached into a pocket and fetched a shard. The five appendages throbbed eerily. She was always reminded of a frozen starfish whenever she saw those crystalline life forms. “You’ll have to use your own charge.”

  “I don’t—” She winced at the pain in her ribs. “I don’t have any left.”

  “You have to try,” Hoodwink said. “Can you do that for me, Ari?”

  Her father was back. Her father. She nodded quickly. “I’ll do what I can.”

  She glanced down at the shard. The creature felt like ice against her skin, and it only added to her uncontrollable shivering. She took two deep breaths, and focused.

  But the spark was nowhere to be found inside her.

  “I can’t,” she said. “What about you?” He had no collar that she could see.

  Hoodwink shook his head. “Gols don’t have the ability. Most of them, anyway.”

  Gols. Her father had become a gol. She still couldn’t believe it.

  She heard the distant trudge of boots in the snow. The first wave of guards emerged at a run onto the far side of the square.

  “Ari,” Hoodwink said. “We can’t let them see the shard.”

  Yes. And the damn thing wouldn’t come off once you let it touch your skin.

  “Well cover it then!” she said.

  “You don’t get it, you don’t,” he said. “Once a shard grabs you, it’s like a town crier to us gols. It’s practically glowing to my eyes. Doesn’t matter how much you cover it. Trust me, we have to melt the thing! And now!”

  She gritted her teeth, and rested her fingers on the shard. She closed her eyes and reached into herself, searching, roving for the power that had warmed her all these years.

  But it was spent.

  She hadn’t a glimmer left.

  She shook her head. She was beginning to feel sleepy again. It would be so easy to close her eyes. “I’m done, Hoodwink. I’m sorry. I’m old and spent. I just, I want to sleep. Go. Leave me here.”

  He stared at her, the disbelief plain on his face, then he flashed that easy smile she remembered so well. “I’ll do nothing like that, I won’t.”

  The guards were closing.

  “It’s not like my Ari to give up like that. And I won’t let her.” Hoodwink flung one of her arms around his neck, and raised her upper body. She started to protest, but then the pain of what he just did reached her, and fresh excruciation pulsed through her torso. She wasn’t sure what stung more, the pain, or her father’s words.

  It’s not like my Ari to give up like that.

  He was right. She wasn’t a quitter.

  She’d prove it to him.

  She reached again.

  Still nothing.

  It was hopeless.

  She was a quitter. A quitter and a failure.

  And she was going to die.

  CHAPTER
19

  Ari glanced at the guards in defeat. The gols were almost upon them. She felt Hoodwink tighten his grip.

  And then she noticed something.

  The pain, pulsing through her torso, was like a current passing through her, signaling agony upward from the chest and into the brain. That current fanned the tiniest of sparks in the recesses of her mind, and if she listened, really listened, she could almost hear it calling to her.

  She reached for that spark, fumbled for it, but it slipped from her grasp.

  She reached again.

  Got it.

  She let a trickle of electricity, all she could manage, flow from the spark and into the shard.

  That was all it took. The crystalline life form warmed pleasantly, and the heat spread outward from her ribs. The pain immediately lessened, and then faded entirely.

  Hoodwink glanced down in shock as the shard melted into her. And then he smiled fondly. “That’s my Ari.”

  “They don’t call me … the greatest User … for nothing,” she said, panting.

  Hoodwink helped her to her feet, and the guards approached, halting in a semicircle around them. Many of them stared uncertainly at the number on Hoodwink’s chest.

  Ari knew that if Hoodwink spoke, the ruse would be up. No gol talked like he did.

  She feigned a sob. “A man killed them.” She intentionally fingered the fake collar around her neck. “A lightning-shooting hooligan.” She indicated the direction Richard had escaped. “He ran that way.”

  The gols didn’t move. They gave no indication they’d even heard her. Their eyes were on Hoodwink. More than a few of them were slobbering.

  “She speaks the truth.” Hoodwink’s words and manner had changed entirely. He spoke like a man who expected to be obeyed. “The User flees to the south. Pursue the krub. Now!”

  The gols didn’t even hesitate. They made off at a run in the direction Richard had gone.

  “They’ll kill him if they catch him,” Ari said.

  Hoodwink scowled. “Bastard deserves it for what he did to you.”

  She regarded him warily, not sure she knew who he was anymore. Not sure she knew who she herself was. “How did you do that anyway?”