Star Brigade: Odysseys - An Anthology (14 page)

Across the common room, Hojkoddi began to stir. Darkstar whipped his head in that direction. The false Galdorian lay in a gruesomely twisted posture. Their eyes met.

Darkstar’s attack had blasted away gaping chunks of rubbery purple skin, mainly from the Galdorian’s face and upper torso, revealing bleeding cyberorganics of conduits and circuitry underneath.

For the first time, some semblance of emotions distorted the Cybernarr’s ruined face—surprise and discomfort. That concussive burst had injured him more severely than he let on.

“A halfling…maximum? Interesting.” Hojkoddi’s vacant orange eyes flickered as his body began shuddering and losing cohesion, melding with the floor to escape.

Darkstar dove forward, determination chasing away the screaming pain of his injuries. He snatched up his weapon, and with snake-strike quickness stabbed Hojkoddi through the chest.

The ebon blade exploded out through the Cybernarr’s shoulder blades in a gush of yellowish fluids.

Hojkoddi went rigid and arched his back, eyestalks standing straight up in agony. But the false Galdorian didn’t scream. Darkstar frowned, sensing tendrils of wiring and conduits shoot from the walls behind him at Hojkoddi’s command. He answered by channeling a pulse of bio-electric shock through his ebon blade into Hojkoddi, wracking the Cybernarr’s sinewy frame with violent convulsions.

Immediately the tendrils dropped like limp rope. Darkstar ceased his attack, but connected with and slaved the false Galdorian’s cybernetic systems to his own.

Instantly Hojkoddi drooped like a corpse. That disabled his control of technology, which kept the Cybernarr from escaping either physically or virtually from the apartment.

“Trapped,” the hybrid tried to remove the relish from his voice, but it wasn’t easy. “Now for my questions. How many of you are there in Union Space?”

Hojkoddi lifted his head and stared back with blank defiance.

Darkstar gave his blade a brutal twist, sending another bio-electric shock through it. “HOW MANY?” he roared.

Hojkoddi’s face contorted in pain. Thick yellowish fluid oozed freely from his beaked maw. “This battle…against your own kind is…ultimately fruitless,” he replied feebly. His eyes began to dull. “Destroy…me, and ten more will assume…my place. You cannot repel the Technoarchy.”

“I’ll take my chances,” Darkstar grimaced. He unleashed a surge of concussive energy through his blade, bombarding Hojkoddi’s injured body over and over until he was wracked with violent tremors.

At the same time, Darkstar linked with the Cybernarr’s systems through their forced physical connection. He tunneled deep through blinking algorithms, barely dodging past cybernetic security protocols, soon pinpointing Hojkoddi’s virtuessence—the cybernetic heart and soul of a Cybernarr.

Darkstar seized hold of Hojkoddi’s virtuessence…and ripped it apart without a shred of mercy.

In the physical world, the false Galdorian’s body jerked and flopped uncoordinatedly like a fish out of water. His scream bounced off the apartment’s soundproof walls like the strident shredding apart of metal. A pleasant melody to Darkstar’s ears.

Just as abruptly, the cold, golden light in Hojkoddi’s eyes winked out. The Cybernarr was dead.

But Darkstar didn’t revel in his very minor victory at all. Hojkoddi was just a soldier, and no doubt the Technoarchy would shift strategies because of Darkstar’s interference.

“At least I now have proof,” the hybrid allowed himself a small pat on the back. With a flick of his wrist, the ebon blade evaporated into nothingness. A wet circle of pungent yellow fluids pooled outward around Hojkoddi’s corpse, which now showed signs of fissures forming at the outer extremities.

Darkstar rose up to his feet…and immediately wished he hadn’t.

Every part of his body hurt, even his long, copper braids. Thankfully, Darkstar could feel his puncture wounds slowly begin to knit, his sheath-like armor supercharging the healing process. He’d be fully healed within an orv or three.

“Time now to make contact with UniPol,” he lifted a gauntlet in front of his face and tapped a few buttons. In short order, a small holoscreen appeared above his wrist gauntlet with the broad and blocky face of a pinkish-skinned human male: Agent Puemri Tas of UniPol’s Terra Sollus branch.

His buzz cut hairstyle notwithstanding, the bone-white locks with brick-red roots revealed his Pogollish heritage.

Puemri’s fatigue morphed into shock and then disdain in half a heartbeat. “Darkstar,” the stormborn human spat.

This individual was supposedly the one who would help Darkstar expose the Technoarchy’s hidden scheme to penetrate and eventually corrupt Union Space. As his frosty greeting inferred, Puemri had been less than receptive to Darkstar’s warnings. The half-Cybernarr warrior tried his best not to lose faith in this Agent Tas just yet.

“How did you get this frequency—” the UniPol agent began, and then reeled his fury in. Clearly he wasn’t alone. “Never mind. I don’t have time for another of your Technoarchy conspiracy theories—”

Darkstar cut him off succinctly. “There is something you must see.”

The stormborn human gaped, as if the statement was blasphemous. “Do you know what tomorrow is?” he hissed.

Darkstar wasn’t sure what he found more patronizing, the question or the tone. Of course he knew of tomorrow’s significance—even a blind, deaf and mute sentient living inside a super black hole at the center of a galaxy knew about tomorrow’s significance.

The Galactic Union and the Kedri Imperium were to engage in some ridiculous trade merger that would supposedly change the very face of this galaxy. No doubt every Union agency was on high alert, making sure nothing could derail this monumental moment.

If only they knew how ultimately pointless their efforts will turn out to be
, Darkstar allowed himself an amused smirk beneath his faceplate.

But it wasn’t his place to deride, and definitely not his place to divulge what he knew about that outcome. “What I have to show you is important,” Darkstar insisted soberly.

On the holoscreen, Puemri folded his arms and scoffed, unmoved. “Ensuring this planet’s safety from anything going wrong tomorrow is more important.”

Darkstar glowered. Sometimes he wondered if what he’d heard about this man and his testicular fortitude had been massively inflated. “Very well. If you’re not interested in thwarting a potentially hidden threat to the Galactic Union that you claim to serve unwaveringly—”

“Fine,” Puemri ran nervous and impatient fingers through his hair. “Show me.”

“You’ll need to see this in the flesh.”

For a long and heated moment, the stormborn ground his teeth so furiously, Darkstar thought they might crack. “What. Are. The coordinates?” he snarled out each word.

A smirk formed beneath Darkstar’s faceplate. Maybe there was hope for this operative. “Come discreetly.”

Puemri arrived over an orv later, transmatting directly into the dim apartment foyer in a bright flare of gold. He was a lean strip of manhood in his steel-grey denims, black Henley, and navy blue overcoat. The veneer of patience he had on, however, wasn’t nearly as well-fitted.

Darkstar strode limping from the common room without as much as a handshake. “Are you alone?”

Puemri nodded, “I came ‘discreetly’ just like you asked.” A lie, but at least the stormborn had the decency to enter the apartment alone. Darkstar had at least earned a modicum of trust during their short partnership, thanks to the leads he’d provided Puemri all eventually paying off.

The stormborn noted Darkstar’s limping gait. “You’re hurt.”

“I’ll endure,” Darkstar turned back toward the common room. “Were you seen?”

“Of course not,” Puemri snapped, his impatience evaporating. He stopped in his tracks, hands on his hips. “What are you showing me?”

Darkstar’s probing yet dismissive onceover quelled the stormborn’s insolence. “By the way, the wearable monitoring in your clothing won’t provide any data to your backup stationed two blocks away.”

Puemri’s eyes grew the size of saucers. “How do you know?”

Darkstar turned away without answering, fighting back a grimace while he hobbled his way into the common room. Annoyingly, his wounds weren’t quite healed yet.

“There’s your proof,” the hybrid pointed at the gruesome remains of the Cybernarr and his female Galdorian thrall littered on the floor.

Puemri grumbled something unflattering under his breath and marched up to Darkstar’s side. For a long moment he just stared in stunned silence, clearly unable to mentally digest what lay before his eyes. Then dawning recognition drained the color from his face. “Holy tattshi! Those are…?”

“A Cybernarr agent and his thrall,” Darkstar finished his sentence.

Puemri backed away slowly, breathing shallowly, body beginning to tremble. “Are they…?”

“Dead? Destroyed? Terminated? All of the above.”

The stormborn ran both hands through his hair again and shook his head, as if refusing to believe any of this. The dim lighting of the apartment did little to hide Puemri’s panic. “How many more sleepers are on Terra Sollus?” he asked in a small, shaky voice.

Darkstar folded both well-built arms behind his back and shrugged. “Uncertain.”

Puemri gaped. “How many more are there in Union Space?”

“Uncertain, but undoubtedly more than just these two.”

“Nonono!” Puemri’s headshaking became more vehement, almost angry. “This cannot be happening. Not today!”

Darkstar got in the stormborn’s face, seething. He towered over him by almost half a foot. “It
is
happening. Today.” He itched to backhand some poise into this frantic human. But patience stayed his hand. Too much was at stake to lose his cool. “It has clearly been happening long before that. There are Cybernarr sleeper agents within Union Space. And your government needs to know before it is too late.”

That reached Puemri. He paled, and the tension in his body slowly uncoiled. “How are you so calm?”

Darkstar’s eyes narrowed into glowing violet slits. A ripple of watery light washed over his face. “Someone has to be. Now that I’ve given you proof of a possible Cybernarr incursion, I assume you and your agency have work to do.” He’d done as tasked: expose a herald from the forthcoming Technoarchy threat to the Union. Hopefully the Union would now have a fighting chance. The cybernetic being turned on his heel to exit the common room.

“Wait,” Puemri’s request stayed his exit. “You’re a Cybernarr. Why do you care what happens to the Galactic Union?”

Darkstar turned back around, his tattered coat fluttering about. “I’m
half
-Cybernarr…” he corrected evenly, “and I care as someone who knows how the Technoarchy deals with anyone or anything that they consider imperfect.”

Puemri’s frown suggested further confusion. “But of all the beings you could choose to tell, why me?”

Darkstar almost said nothing. Since he first contacted the UniPol agent over a month ago, Puemri had been too doubtful and arrogant to even buy the Cybernarr infiltrating the Union in plain sight.

But after he’d finally grasped how real this threat was, Darkstar threw caution to the wind and said, “Because you told me to…
six
years from now.”

That revelation seemed to visibly break Puemri’s brain a little. “
What
?!” he barked, eyes bulging in cartoonish shock.

Darkstar had revealed too much. “I’ll be in touch,” he said, transmatting from the apartment in a shimmer of light.

Rouma came to, flat on his back, awoken by the lightning rods of agony shooting through his chest, back, and all the way to his fingertips. The golden Retributionary armor that once felt like a second skin now weighed down on him with immovable bulk.

He heard a distant roar of fury, closing in from all around. A charred stench of death and blood filled his nostrils.

Everything within his line of sight appeared staticky, meaning his helmet visor was damaged.

Even scarier to the Korvenite was the lack of sensation below his waist. But a more chilling realization than not being able to feel his own legs?

The Unlink, the babbling river of noise and verve that flowed through his mind, was silent.

Panicked, Rouma stretched out with Mindspeak. Other non-Korvenite minds were nearby, afraid from seeing Sollus attacked, grieving from losing friends or loved ones, pained from injury.

Rouma sighed with as much relief as his tortured chest would allow.
My psionics aren’t gone
, he gathered,
just any communal link to my Korvenite brethren.

Before Maelstrom freed him from slavery, Rouma had been deprived of the Unlink for years. But after growing accustomed to hearing other Korvenites’ voices again, returning to that desolate silence was unmooring.

Rouma thought back to when he last sensed the Unilink. It had been when he’d crash-landed inside of some skyscraper with that human soldier he’d tried to kill—the one from
Star Brigade
.

He had snuck up from behind, taking perfect aim to finish off the earthborn whore…

…until some witless creature had warned her of the attack. Rouma had fired anyway, but regrettably the human had dodged and pointed her fingers at him like a gun. Rouma could never forget the immediate blast of concentrated sound that struck the Korvenite harder than any blow he’d ever felt—smashing through his chestplate and fracturing his ribcage.

The last thing Rouma remembered was blinding pain after he was thrown from the skyscraper, followed by a moment of weightlessness.

By Korvan’s will…my armor…must have broken my fall and saved me…just barely,
he winced, trying to sit up. Every cell in his body flared up, scorching away his already failing strength. He slumped back down, wracked by violent coughs.

Rouma didn’t need his eyes to know that he was hurt badly. Several ribs were broken, spine perhaps shattered. His life’s blood was oozing like a leaky pipe from the deep wound in his chest, wet and sticky within his ruined armor, a dark green ichor pooling around where he currently lay.

Even Rouma reaching for his helmet added to the anguish. But Rouma fought through as much of the pain as he could, frantic to know why he couldn’t sense the Unilink.

Had Maelstrom been defeated?
Impossible.
This time the Anointed One’s plan had been foolproof. Sollus was sheathed in its own defense shielding. Not even the Kedri would thwart Maelstrom this time.

Rouma fumbled at his helmet’s delicate controls with fingers that had grown clumsy and weak until finally, the malleable helmet slid away from the Korvenite’s face.

He breathed in the foul, unfiltered air and took in his surroundings. The Korvenite lay in a valley of twisted debris and ruin from the KIF’s righteous assault.

The skyscraper he had fallen from was at least seventy or more stories high, resembling a jagged tooth jutting up into the dirty smoke soiling the blue skies—

Rouma gasped, and almost choked on another fit of coughs.

“[The skies are blue]?” he whispered fearfully in Korcei. The Korvenite could no longer see the golden forcefield that had bathed Sollus’s heavens. Nor could he see the eclipsing shadow of the
Amalgam
hovering above him, or any Korvanes statues striding through the starscrapers. What Rouma did see were hordes of warships high above, both UComm and Imperium, swarming like angry bees around a gigantic smear of dirty black smoke and fiery embers.

Rouma’s ravaged body went cold.

No.
The Korvenite felt his eyes beginning to water as the truth dawned on him.

No!
He could not believe it. He
refused
to believe it. Maelstrom had sworn to Korvan Almighty that the Korvenites would have their homeworld back.

Rouma stretched his mind out further than his injuries allowed, pain blurring his vision as he searched for any Korvenites still alive.

He found a number of his brethren either captured or dying or fleeing underground. Their thoughts all revealed the same horrible truth.

The Korvenite Independence Front, defeated and scattered.

The Amalgam, destroyed.

Lord Maelstrom,
killed
. The survivors had felt the deaths of him and every other Korvenite aboard the
Amalgam
, right before the Unilink went dead.

“[It’s over…again],” Rouma heard himself say. And this time, he had no doubt the Korvenite race would be wiped off the face of the ‘Verse.

Somehow he knew this would happen, his renewed faith in Maelstrom notwithstanding. No way would the Union just allow the Korvenites to reclaim their homeworld without consequences.

But that didn’t dull the agony of those losses, or the heartbreak of failing to recapture their home.

Rouma’s eyes grew blurry. Soon, tears were streaming down his cheeks, loosening the greenish blood caked on them.

Through the chaotic noises swirling around him, Rouma started to make out individual voices nearby. One sounded
human
. Possibly UComm soldiers?

They would never capture him alive, not after what the KIF had done. But the Korvenite would not let them be the ones to kill him.

With strenuous effort, Rouma turned his head to the right and saw a twisted spike of 1arasteel. Sharp enough to stab with, small enough to hold with both hands. A smile tugged at Rouma’s torn lips.

He reached for it with a weak and shaky arm…

Rouma.
The voice startled Rouma out of his single-minded struggle.

It took a moment of glancing around for Rouma to detect another presence inside his mind, a passenger. A few more moments passed before the Korvenite assigned an identity to this passenger.

“[You!]” He was beside himself with shock. His arm dropped, strength spent. “[I thought that…when the Amalgamation exploded. How—?]”

I jumped from my body into yours, right before…it was too late,”
the voice explained, sounding strong and hale for a dead Korvenite.

“[And the Chouncilor?]” Rouma asked, almost afraid of the answer, “[Did he die also on the
Amalgam
?]”

Escaped,
his passenger admitted with clear shame, before changing the subject.
You’re weakening, Rouma.

“[Dying will do that.]” Rouma should have been angry at his psychic visitor for not fulfilling his promise to win back Sollus, should have been lost in despair over dying.

Instead, Rouma managed a smile.
Of course this one survived death.
That only proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was Korvan’s Anointed. 

High above, the swarms of warships began to disperse from the big black smear, which had almost exhausted its thunderstorm of blazing wreckage. While Rouma watched this, a world-shaking swell of sorrow not belonging to him overwhelmed his thoughts.

The two Korvenites mourned today’s losses together in Rouma’s body.

“Holy
tattshi
! Kiran, look what I found!” a nearby voice pulled Rouma from his grief. He sensed two sentients dangerously close. The Korvenite raised his neck as high as possible and eyed the slope of crooked debris and rocks ahead.

Humans.
An older earthborn male stood in front, swarthy and balding, with a roll of pudge around the midsection. The other one who looked like a stormborn human male trailed behind him, young, lean and limber, a shock of white hair over beet-red roots atop his head. 

The stormborn human’s eyes widened. “Is that one of those armored Korvies that attacked Conuropolis?”

“Yup,” the earthborn took a few nonchalant steps forward. “It looks fekt up!”

The older human stared at him with merciless eyes. Rouma could taste his loathing from afar. “Let’s finish the job.”

When this day began, these dungheaps cowered before the Korvenite. Now he couldn’t even run and hide; his terror reached nightmarish levels from two normal, nobody humans with hostile intentions.

“Stay…back,” Rouma wheezed in accented Standard. “I want no trouble.”

“You telling us what to do?” the human advanced angrily. “After what you did to my homeworld?”

It’s not your homeworld
, Rouma almost screamed, but held his tongue. He was in no position to back such words up.  And if they had any clue whom Rouma was housing inside his head… “Please, I’m already dying. Just…let me pass in peace.”

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” the youth named Kiran warned, backing away. “We should leave, find shelter.”

His partner was adamant. “Not until this blekdritt pays.” He launched himself at Rouma and stomped his foot down hard on the Korvenite’s chest. Rouma shrieked. Every pain receptor in his body ignited, even in the legs he could no longer move.

The earthborn was far from done. “You green-blooded, blekdritt piece of Grade-A
tattshi
!” the human roared, each word punctuated by a swift and vicious stomp. “You attack my fucking planet, kill thousands and think you can get away with it? Fuck! You!”

The attack was ugly and brutal, so much that the human almost fell over in his unending desire to stomp Rouma’s chest in. The Korvenite couldn’t even cover up. So his end would come at the hands of a human. As blow after blow crushed more bones in him, he just prayed to Korvan Almighty that the end would come quickly.

Don’t fear,
Maelstrom declared through the onslaught,
I’ll handle this insect.

Rouma’s arm, the one he no longer had the strength to lift, snaked out on its own volition and grabbed the human by the leg.

“What the—WHOA!” The arm jerked back, yanking the pudgy human’s leg forward and sending him face first to the ground. “Kiran, help!!”

Silence
. The human’s eyes went black as pitch and he began to convulse, limbs and head flopping about like a fish yanked out of water. Suddenly Rouma felt his passenger leave, and once more his mind was alone. The stormborn human who had hung back cried out inarticulately and dashed forward.

Meanwhile, his earthborn partner sat up and examined his body with disdainful hands. “This body will serve for now.” His species and tenor were that of a human’s. But the facial expression, the authoritative lilt of his voice and even his posture resembled the Korvenite that Rouma had revered and followed. Praise be to Korvan!

Kiran was almost upon Rouma, fear and hesitation giving away to fury and confusion. “What did you—”

The Korvenite-possessed human raised a calm hand. “Sleep.” The telepathic command caused Kiran to slump forward in mid-sprint.

Turning away from the unconscious stormborn, the Korvenite-possessed human stood up on unsure legs. Rouma felt the possessed human link with him, projecting out thoughts via Mindspeak to Korvenites far and wide in—but using Rouma’s voice.
It is over, my brethren. Maelstrom is truly dead. Flee now. Do not let them destroy you like dogs.

Rouma stared up at the Korvenite-possessed human in disbelief.
Why did you lie?

No one can know I am still alive
, his comrade replied psychically.
Not until I correct my,
he gestured at his new body with unconcealed disgust
…my current situation.

That consolation was the least of Rouma’s concerns. The human’s attack had hastened the inevitable, and he felt his life ebbing away more quickly.

The Korvenite-possessed human dropped to his knees and cradled Rouma up in his arms, holding his comrade as gently as possible.

“[Rouma, I am so sorry,]” the human said in spot-on Korcei, “[This was…Sollus was supposed to become home again for our species. I failed all of you, again.]”

“[You didn’t fail me,]” Rouma chided, but his voice sounded so weak. The sensation had left his arms, and the world began to darken. “[Because of you, I have returned to our homeworld, and I am free.]” In the distance, Rouma heard vehicles soar overhead, closer than he cared for.

“[I won’t stop…until our species is avenged],” Maelstrom continued, that familiar fiery passion engulfing his words. He glanced at the motionless stormborn nearby. “[I can save you…put you in that other body over there so we can—]”

Even as he lay dying, the thought of telepathically possessing another sentient—even worse, a
human
—sickened Rouma to his core. He shook his head with his remaining strength. “[My journey ends here…on our homeworld.]” Surprisingly, his leader wasn’t upset by the refusal. Empathy radiated off the Korvenite-possessed human.