Cosmic Powers

by John Joseph Adams

Century scoffs. “We are both destruction incarnate. Perhaps this is a better end.”

  Mere does not think the she wishes to die; it does not. If it kills her, the eel-ship will never take it where it must go. “A truce.” Mere lowers its arm, flesh chewed back to wire and metal skeleton, the knives bright. It will heal slowly. “It has a proposition.”

  Century holsters the gun. “Do you.”

  Mere extracts the last wolflord’s memories, printed into a small holochip it saved for one of the Arbiter’s consorts. “It is the wolflord who found Rebirth, is it not?”

  Century’s shoulders tighten. “That world was lost long ago.”

  Mere repeats the coordinates to her. Her expression remains inert. “It is what the wolflord remembered at death.”

  “Damn you.” Century tips her head back and sighs. “I told him to forget.”

  Mere offers her the holochip. “Clearly.”

  Century doesn’t accept. “We thought the Red Sun’s presence would weaken the bindings of the consecrated pool. Once that happened, we could collect the soul seeds and bring them somewhere. Another planet. Give them proper rest. It was just a dream.”

  “ ‘Dreams need not stay trapped in sleep alone,’ ” Mere says, quoting Li Sin. “Bring this it to the Red Sun Lord. We will rescue the dead.”

  Century raises her eyebrows. “Do you know how many security protocols I hacked to get in ‘unnoticed’ the first time? I helped build the Courts.” She snorts. “I constructed the pool. I built the door matrix. The Courts were supposed to be an end to the galaxy-spanning wars I fought and won. The Principality was supposed to bring peace, starting with the Decommission.”

  It tilts its head, watching the she sidelong. “You are old, then.”

  “I am,” Century says with a bitter laugh. “But what’s age any longer?”

  “You do not believe this endeavor possible.”

  “No,” Century says. “I don’t. Not anymore.”

  Mere examines its healing arm, flesh reknitting. There is an ache in its ribs it cannot define. “At least bring it to the Red Sun. All the souls in the pool are there by its hand; it would see them to a better fate.”

  Century flinches, near-imperceptible.

  But she speaks to the eel-ship, and they set course for a different court.

  * * * *

  Blue Sun Lord (God): one of the Seven Suns, everlasting and all-knowing rulers of the Principality Dwelling within the Hollow Systems, the Blue Sun Lord oversees the sanctified pool within the Courts of Tranquility; the Blue Sun Lord is a merciful and generous god [search terminated]

  * * * *

  The ship glides through a radiant nebula; the eel-ship’s body glows as it absorbs radiation and shed filaments from the void, skin sluiced away from a progenitor star. This reminds Mere of Li Sin’s collection, Bound Infinity, Transcendent. Mere has dabbled in poetry, played with bits of unattached verse:

  Breathing in designer atmosphere / academic bloodsport

  Sip sorrow’s martini / watch sequin-skinned guests sway and flow /

  Mere stumbles over further stanzas, uncertain. Does it possess its own creativity, its own words, or are they borrowed finery collected from too many other sources, pieces plucked from the dead?

  Other space eels twine and dance in the ruins of gases and elements and carbons.

  “Beautiful,” Mere murmurs.

  Century, tucked in a fold between the eel-ship’s ribs, doesn’t look up from her reading. “Anything can be beautiful. Even monsters.”

  Mere has never been praised for its aesthetic. “Will you tell it why it was made?”

  Century sets aside the tablet. “I built you from the remains of my enemies. It was to be their eternal subjugation.” Quieter: “I still regret it.”

  “It has heard,” Mere says, “regret may be molded anew, if one chooses. This it will shape its own future once its duty is complete.”

  “And where will you go if you survive?” Century asks. “Any planet you linger on will suffer like Olinara V.” Her jaw tightens. “I saw what befell that world. You can’t escape forever.”

  Mere has no basis for argument. “What do you run from?”

  Century’s mouth thins into a line. “I should have left you, wraith.”

  Mere tilts its head. It is grateful, unexpectedly, that she converses with it, that she has not ejected it from the ship and let it drift into frozen death. “It would rather live briefly outside the Courts than forever in chains.”

  Century coughs, a strangled laugh. “Sweet mother of stars. You have no recollection, do you?”

  “What should it recall?”

  She reaches into a slit in her armor. “Here.” The holochip rests heavy on her palm. “Your birth, if you want it.”

  Mere accepts.

  * * * *

  Hundreds of glass pods, each cold-filled with bodies—her enemies, trophies, former friends betrayed. The wolflord stands beside her (young, war-scarred, shipless). The wolflord has always remained loyal to Century, and she has taken the wolflord under her protection so the former pilot will not be discovered and executed.

  “Must you do this?” the wolflord whispers.

  She has taken pieces of each enemy, mind or flesh or bone or blood or gene, and she has built a sexless bipedal wraith from her conquests. It stands taller than she, lithe deadly machineflesh, and she gives it her organic eyes last of all, cased in cybernetic implants.

  “It is a mere tool,” she says, fondness in her tone.

  The wolflord sighs. “That is all we are to you.”

  She turns, head tipped in curiosity. “Would you be more?”

  Instead of answering, the wolflord nods to the many glass pods. “And the remains?”

  “The wraith will execute them,” she says. “In doing so, it will become mine alone, unburdened from its former selves.”

  The wolflord flinches.

  She presses her palm against the wraith’s chest, igniting its processors and sparking its lifeforce siphoned from her dearest enemy. The wraith opens its—her—eyes.

  “Wraith,” she says. “I have made you for one purpose.”

  It blinks several times, then bows.

  “It will serve in the Courts of Tranquility,” she says to the wolflord. “A celebration of our new age of peace.”

  The wolflord’s gaze meets the wraith’s, but the wolflord looks away in shame.

  * * * *

  (There is a subfile tucked inside that is not the she’s. The wolflord planted it, imprinted with a name: Kitshan Zu.

  In the months between its awakening and the completion of the Courts of Tranquility:

  “They will erase this,” the wolflord says, hand at rest so gentle on Mere’s cheek. “They won’t let you have what’s yours. Not memory nor self. Not . . .” The wolflord swallows. “I have to go. Century has work I must finish in her name.”

  Mere blinks, chalk-gray skin furrowed between its cybernetic eyes. “I wish to go with you, Kitshan.”

  The wolflord kisses Mere, lips rough and coarse and so familiar. “If I could steal you, Mere, I would. I promise you one thing—I will come back for you. When I learn how to free you, I will come back.”

  “Then I will wait,” Mere says, and pulls the wolflord close one last time.)

  * * * *

  Mere shudders as the memory knits into its own consciousness, blended with so many dreams of the dead.

  A fragment, unburied: the wolflord was most often a he, and sometimes not, and always kept his name. Kitshan.

  Mere wishes it had memories of its own to braid into a lost narrative in which it was happy with him, in which they shared passion and laughter and sorrow. This is like its favorite of Li Sin’s sonnets, where the poet laments falling through a time vortex and breaking the time stream by trying to reclaim lost love.

  “I watched the feeds,” Century says. Outside the ship, great gaseous whales converge in a celestial pod, frequency-song caressing the hull and sides. “I saw
his capture. I was too far away to get to the Courts before . . .” A crisp, vicious headshake. “I would have spared you that, if I could grant you but one mercy.”

  Mere has nothing to say to the she.

  IV.

  Rebirth (world): there is no such designated planet in the Principality archives. Further searches will result in disciplinary measures.

  * * * *

  The Court of the Red Sun is bones and dusk, burned into a cold shell of its former glory.

  The eel-ship glides into membranous ports that ring the station. Heptagonal, forged from old warships and dead stars, lit and powered within by the Red Sun Lord’s essence.

  Century sits motionless in the cockpit. “You better hurry. The other Suns will find you. Always, they will find you.”

  Mere is aware. The Courts call to its blood; until it finds a way to unlock its own molecular leash from its keepers’ hold, it must stay a dozen steps ahead. But first, it must survive an audience with the Red Sun, the Death of Endless Worlds.

  Mere enters the airlock. Spindle-legged drones bow and guide it through red-splashed corridors to the throne room of the Red Sun Lord.

  A beautiful spider-prince, chitin-skinned humanoid with four delicate legs protruding from the spine like desiccated wings, sits at the Red Sun’s left, a shadow-garbed concubine. Eight jewel-rimmed eyes watch under thick lashes. “Those beholden to the Courts of Tranquility are seldom welcome, wraith.”

  Mere bows. “It seeks aid for the lord’s chosen.”

  The spider-prince leans close, a spine-leg lightly brushing the Red Sun’s helmet. The visor rises, and the Red Sun’s gaze sears into Mere’s flesh.

  Mere folds itself in supplication, its back blistering. It unbends an arm, lifts a palm, and shows the holochip record of the wolflord’s execution. “It asks the lord to listen.” Pain sinks deeper—it holds its ground and does not scream. “The lord has claim to the dead,” Mere says, “and if the lord will come to assert that claim, this it will retrieve the souls of the lost and give them peace.”

  The heat relents as the Red Sun drops the helmet visor. Mere shivers as its cells begin repair, and the coolness of the dim throne room sinks into its burned flesh.

  “May this one eat the wraith?” the spider-prince purrs.

  Mere waits, its body taut.

  The Red Sun stretches out a hand, and with a sigh, the spider-prince rises and sweeps forward. He takes the chip from Mere’s palm and inserts it into a port in his ribs.

  “A pity,” the spider-prince murmurs, with a longing glance at Mere. “I am starving.”

  “Perhaps another time,” Mere says. It listened well to courtly wit and challenge. It has read much of Li Sin’s political treatise, curated by the poet’s ship, Vector Bearing Light. “It might poison you in turn.”

  The spider-prince smiles, appreciative. The projection blossoms outward, slow like congealed blood, and the image of the last wolflord stands before the Red Sun.

  fleeing the Arbiter’s consorts on a far-flung world, injured

  looking up at the sky, begging

  the last wolflord is bound in the pool, throat cut

  The Red Sun’s armored form stiffens, fists clenched on the starlight throne. “And why should I not unmake you for this crime, wraith? The last of my disciples, no more. Why did I feel nothing . . .”

  The spider-prince slinks back to the Red Sun’s side and strokes the god’s armored shoulders, soothing. “The Courts of Tranquility are shielded, my liege-love.”

  The Sun Lords are cosmic bodies reshaped into compressed armored shells after a treaty two millennia ago. They have never ceased being enemies. Six rule the Principality, while the Red Sun Lord, who was always death, broods alone in the outer reaches of dominion.

  Mere continues: “It has defied the Sun Lords of Tranquility to come and beg for vengeance. It once cared for the dead and does not wish to obey its masters.”

  “And what,” says the Red Sun, “would you do with the souls, wraithling?”

  “It knows of a world far outside the Principality where they will be safe: Rebirth.”

  The spider-prince taps his long, graceful fingers against his chin. “Rumors do exist among the lost of such a world, my love.”

  The Red Sun stands. Mere flattens itself to the floor.

  “Come,” says the Death of Endless Worlds. “I will return to the Courts of Tranquility.”

  * * * *

  Wraith (object): an organic drone (technology outdated and now forbidden by the Principality) constructed from pieces of other organics and androids. Wraiths are non-sentient and possess no soul. The majority of wraiths were created before the Treaty of the Seven Suns as shock troops built from the dead.

  * * * *

  The Red Sun arrives in a ship built from bones of ancient solar chelonians and no port dares refuse it entry. The Death of Endless Worlds burns footprints into the halls. Mere follows, never stepping in ash.

  “You’ll have but a few seconds once inside,” Century told it while the eel-ship rode beside the Red Sun’s vessel. “If you’re caught again, nothing will save you.”

  Since when has it been caught before?

  Soundless, the Red Sun strides into the Courts of Tranquility. The smell of emptiness, the dark between the stars, clings to scarlet and black-scaled armor. Unease writhes through the courtiers, fermenting into panic.

  “You dare?” The Gold Sun Lord steps down from the hover-throne and cuts through the skittering courtiers, armor brightening. “And you bring this thing with you?”

  Mere spreads its hands in mock supplication from where it stands on the threshold matrix.

  “You break every law by coming here,” says the Gold Sun.

  “Except one.” The Red Sun extends a fist toward the pool. “I have a right to the dead.”

  “No,” says the Gold Sun. “Not anymore.”

  Gold Sun and Red Sun raise non-corporeal blades to each other in silent duel.

  You should run, murmurs the threshold.

  Chaos blossoms.

  Mere dives into the pool. It knows every soul pebble, so it scoops a hundred seventeen into its abdomen pouch. The others are already rotted—celestial molecules broken down from the inside, wrapped in distended film, which the slightest disturbance will break and spill out only dust. It cannot save them all.

  It knifes through the water and catches the wolflord’s soul last.

  Mere senses the keepers watching, cold optics drifting in amniotic fluids behind the pool’s walls. Sudden anger sparks in Mere. It slams a hand into the tiled side. Cracks web around the impact. Again, Mere strikes. Its hand sinks through insulated glass and it snatches one of the keepers: an optic node attached to sensory cables.

  Alarms ricochet among the keepers, but Mere holds tight. It bounds from the pool.

  The eleven-souled sorcerer confronts it, wreathed in iridescent shadow. “Stand down, wraithling,” he says, thin lips curled mirthless.

  Mere coils muscle and hydraulics in its legs and leaps, toe-claws bared. It cuts through the sorcerer’s shadow shields and ducks away from his grasp. It kicks the sorcerer in the chest with bone-shattering force. The sorcerer falls back.

  Automated defense drones circle overhead. Exhilarated, Mere sprints toward the door matrix, letting the Red Sun’s wrath deflect its pursuers.

  Good luck, murmurs the threshold, and Mere smiles.

  This time, it runs through the upper halls of the Courts: past luxury holo suites and theaters, gardens and feast halls, over bridges that span crystalline waterfalls and floating glass spheres filled with lovers and voyeurs alike. It crosses into the industrial sectors, locks bypassed by Century’s nanite snakes, which slither through the walls as fast as it runs.

  And then, once more, the spaceport. Mere sprints down the wide central platform toward freedom.

  Four mammoth crustacean guards—crab-bodied, armored, spotted in hundreds of eyes—unwind from the walls and mesh themselves between Mere and the ee
l-ship. Mere springs up, spotting niches in armor, planes of body and joint it can use to climb and evade. It has no time to fight.

  A fifth crustacean guard appears behind it and hammers a claw into it midair.

  The blow shatters Mere’s arm and rips open its side. Its body is thrown halfway across the platform, ribs crushed. Mere curls in on itself to protect its belly and rolls. A sixth crustacean guard circles behind and seizes Mere in great pincers. It twists, hissing, a single breath between it and being decapitated through the midriff.

  “Stand down.” The voice resounds with such weight and power, Mere mistakes it for one of the Sun Lords. The crustacean guard freezes. “Know my voice, for I am the Unmaker of Worlds.”

  The others hesitate. Mere lifts its chin, orienting itself on the voice.

  Century stands on the platform, wreathed in a film of ultraviolet light. It projects from her skin, her teeth, her voice.

  “The wraith is mine.” Century extends a hand, commanding. “Give it to me, now, unharmed. Disobey my word and I shall rain destruction upon your people until there is naught but the trembling memory of pain in the heavens.”

  Gently, the crustacean guard sets Mere down. The others back away, submissive. Century does not move.

  Mere limps toward her, past her, and into the ship. She follows, but the crustacean guards do not. Mere collapses inside.

  The eel-ship twists and streaks from the port, chased this time by droneships beholden to the Six Suns: faceless pilots uprooted and loosed once more.

  “We will lose them in subspace,” Century says, calm. “If not for long.”

  Mere apologizes to the ship for spattering its blood on the floor as it cradles its side. It takes a slow breath, the crunch of bone rearranging in its torso and arm familiar. “You are a Sun Lord,” it says at last.

  Century rolls her shoulders. “Once, I was the Violet Sun. We took new bodies, it’s true, but they change, they weaken. Anything that lives can die.”

  Mere strokes its undamaged hand along its abdomen; its cargo remains undamaged. It wonders what its soul might look like, culled in a pebble beneath cold water. If it was born from the fractured pieces of the Principality’s enemies, what will its existence reflect in death? It is autonomous, but it is still more machine than organic, and there are no simple answers in the theologies or heresies it has skimmed.