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  Ashere mentally reviewed various expressions, and chose her favorite—the too-wide smile, designed to disarm and disquiet at the same time. “I am so glad to see you, my dear friends. We so need to put this current misunderstanding behind us, and press on.”

  “You call treason a misunderstanding?” Captain Muhque’s feathered crest bristled, his voice shrilling with passion.

  “I’ve betrayed no one,” Ashere said. “I’ve acted as I thought best for my people. This has regrettably brought me into conflict with the barbarians of this world, but this planet has, as yet, no standing in the League, so you can hardly claim treason has been committed.” The too-wide smile returned as Ashere paused for dramatic effect. “However, your seizure of my ship, depowering my systems, and movement of my vessel to the backside of the moon will result in charges being filed against all of you.”

  Captain Click-Whit-Whee broke ranks. She was a crimson skinned female, wearing only a few strategically placed pieces of space-armor, sporting a black dorsal fin on her back. A collar device periodically sprayed a fine mist of seawater over her bare, sleek head. Ashere recognized an intimate confidant of Queen Oshira, her dead mother. They shared a bond of grief. “Yes, Captain?”

  “Did you think we would do nothing while you attempted to murder the Guardian? The League needs the good will of this personage. The Star gives access to the most formidable power ever discovered.”

  “I still maintain that any offense I’ve given was not to the League, therefore the League has no complaint. Your acts against this ship are a violation of our League world autonomy. But, even now, I am not your enemy.” The dramatic pause came again, accompanied by the too-wide smile. “I am not resisting any of the criminal steps you have taken.”

  The use of the word “criminal” made the League captains bristle with indignation.

  Captain Muhque glowered. “Keep it that way. This planet…” he consulted a digital notebook in his hand, “Dirt… Eh? That can’t be right.” He whacked the device. Its screen blinked. “Earth…this planet Earth is under our protection. Do not challenge our resolve.”

  “Why not? You have presumed to resolve my challenge.” Ashere’s smile collapsed as she sorted through her collection of diplomatic postures—finally settling on expression seventeen sixty-eight, woeful-bewilderment with a hint of injury. She inclined her head, as if in concession. “Please, go before I crush you all where you stand.”

  The captains hurried out of the chamber, none of them looking back. In the silence that followed their departure, Ashere glided forward from her throne. Raising a hand, she summoned her personal servitor once more.

  The unit approached.

  Ashere speared it with her attention, extending her goblet. “There’s a hole in my cup,” she complained wryly. “My drink is completely gone. Fetch me another.”

  “Yes, Mistress.”

  The unit backed towards an elements processor station on the bulkhead.

  Mitron closed the distance to Ashere.

  She leaned toward him, gripping his shoulder firmly, searching his eyes. “There are no fools like organic fools. Imagine, they believe I’m helpless under their guns.” She laughed softly, a sound like a sword scraping free of a scabbard.

  Mitron laughed as well, knowing this was required.

  The servitor returned hastily, one hand transmuted into a serving tray that balanced a familiar goblet. Ashere took up her cup and brought it toward her lips. Her hand stopped. A tiny crease formed between jewel-studded eyebrows. Her eye’s apertures widened as her head tilted in puzzlement. A moment later, the cup swung to Mitron.

  He took the goblet reflexively, preventing it from falling, as Ashere let go.

  Caught in some absorbing realm, she drifted dream-like toward the back of the hall—her motion compelling the serving unit to retreat before her.

  Transmutations rippled her frame. They increased in tempo, moment to moment, step by step. Density surrendered as her mass uncompressed, filling out, elongating. Muscles ballooned. Wicked spikes erupted from knee and elbow joints. Fingers and toes thinned and lengthened, becoming knives. Her polytetrafluroethalene skin thinned and shredded like an old, worn tarp in a windstorm. Metallic scales coated her limbs.

  Somehow, she maintained momentum as her vertebrae popped and writhed, generating horn-like protrusions. Her spine resettled into a bestial curve. Ashere’s hair became a snake’s nest of blue-chrome coils that flattened into a heavy-gage razor wire. Her jaw dropped, unhinging as jagged steel teeth multiplied, row after row.

  Reaching the end of the hall, the last alterations set in. Ashere’s brow-plate thickened, casting her eyes into shadow where they ignited as electric-blue nebula. A spiked tail dragged along behind her, its tip twitching with annoyance.

  The milling court sensibly hustled to either side to avoid her path. Pinned by her focus, the cupbearer backed into the chamber’s sealed door. The serving unit’s frantically waving extensions across the motion sensor, seeking escape though he should have known better. Ashere was bonded to the ship. Nothing functioned without her driving will. The door remained stubbornly closed.

  Ashere’s shadow fell over the servitor. “You forgot my umbrella,” she said.

  The servitor’s fanning motion increased to a blur. A puddle of crude oil accumulated beneath him, mingling with leaking neon green coolant. His speech center overloaded. He spouted gibberish, as teal-lit eyes flashed trinary codes of distress.

  Gripping the unit by a leg, Ashere snatched him into the air. A whipping motion brought him back down, hard and quick. A metallic clatter resulted. The servitor clawed at the deck, trying to stay there, straining to reengineer the shattered pieces inside. But Ashere’s hand was still on his leg.

  Pain turned the creature’s pleading eyes cobalt as Ashere’s left foot stamped his posterior. She wrenched the leg. It came off at the hip. Intent on dismemberment, the uncrowned queen brought the improvised club down in a savage rain of blows, producing a din, like a trip-hammer heart racing to extinction.

  Finally, she had to stop since—detached from a life-source—the stolen limb lost cohesion, becoming a drooping putty-like mass that seeped out of her grasp, splattering all around. In the new silence, Ashere’s grinding teeth echoed.

  She slid her foot back from the wreckage that had once served her, kneeling to seize the creature’s dented head. It came away easily in her claws. She rose with her trophy while the body deformed into a metallic goop.

  “Somebody clean that up,” she muttered absently, splashing back toward her throne.

  By the time she passed Mitron, she had the steel skull flipped over like a bowl, and the last pieces of throat pulled clear and dropped. Inside, in a bird’s nest of fiber optics and power cables, lay a hematite core, storing personality and memory. Ashere reclaimed her throne, and extracted the core. She tossed the rest of the head off to the side where it rattled, rolled, and slumped, melting into metallic goop.

  Playfully, with a quick break of her wrist, she tossed the azure-gray ball into the air. The core came back and she caught it, her face reshaping to normal, eyes glinting with pleasure.

  Mitron strolled up to the throne, and the murmured speculations of the crowd swelled, following him. He offered Ashere’s cup back to her unoccupied hand. She took the cup with a nod of thanks while her body reverted to its usual specifications. She set the cup to her lips and drained it without missing a catch. The core continued bobbing with a steady, nearly hypnotic grace. Ashere smiled at the simple game, tossing the ball up with minimal movement so it went high and then back to her hand, without her hand having to move laterally. The economy of motion delighted her.

  “He should not have forgotten the umbrella,” Mitron said.

  Ashere caught the ball. Her fingers clenched it tightly. There was a brittle crack. The core fell from her fingers in several large chunks that rattled and bounced on the deck. The pieces glowed briefly as the dissipating lifeforce bled away.

  She
sighed dramatically. “It is so hard to find good help these days.”

  Mitron nodded in sympathy for his monarch. “I don’t think he’ll repeat that error.”

  “Without his core, he won’t have an opportunity to fail me twice. I seldom give second chances, Mitron. Don’t forget.”

  “Rest assured,” he said, “I will not.”

  Ashere’s too-wide smile returned. “Good.”

  * * *

  The watch changed. Tsuu rose smoothly to his feet and stepped away from the navigation console. His replacement, a mechamorph of course, took over. Tsuu’s thoughts contracted, losing their grasp on cyber-space. It was an odd transitional moment as five dimensions became four.

  Crossing the bridge, heading for the door, he was stopped by a gesture from the communications officer. “Hang on a minute,” he said. “There’s an incoming message for you…from Princess Ashere’s personal vessel.”

  It’s not wise of her to draw attention to me under the stress of current events. But she knows that. It must be important, Tsuu decided. This could be the moment I’ve dreaded, when I must betray those I’ve served with in order to appease the insecurities of Ashere. I owe her my service. I wouldn’t be serving aboard a League ship if she hadn’t seen something in me worth taking a chance upon. She ordered my upgrade, and secured a place for me as a navigator in the League. My children will be far more than servitors, and the cost is fairly low—just my honor and my soul.

  “Did you hear me, Tsuu? I said, there’s been some sort of accident aboard Ashere’s ship. Your father’s dead.” The com officer lowered his voice, letting sympathy creep in. “I’m sorry.”

  For a moment, the box within Tsuu—where he carried a few cherished emotions—opened. The emotional matrices warred, struggling to precede one another in expression. They brimmed to the top and jammed the lid. Off-balance, Tsuu’s ship seemed to whirl slowly around him. The universe and all it contained might have just lost all bearings.

  Viciously, he slammed the lid back down, but one of his emotions was out, running free. Which one are you? Tsuu asked.

  Be careful, it warned. I’m dangerous.

  But who are you?

  I am all you need. I am solace and anchor, the anger that denies grief.

  I have need of tears not anger, Tsuu thought.

  Are you so sure?

  The mechamorph felt a touch and opened his eyes. The com officer was steadying him, speaking. “Are you all right? You’re turning a funny moldy blue color. Here, sit in my chair. Breathe a little, or something.”

  “Thank you. I will…sit…a moment.” He slid into the offered chair.

  “Tsuu? What’s wrong?” It was the XO joining the comm officer in a holding pattern around the stricken shape-shifter. The question went unanswered. Tsuu was unresponsive; distracted by the great abyss just opened in his life.

  What am I going to do? My mind is whirling, edging into static.

  About that so-called accident, his Anger said. Your father’s a servitor to Ashere. Accidents aren’t allowed to happen around her, rather, she’s a mechacide waiting to happen. You know her. You know how hard she is on…the help.

  Yes. I do, which probably means…

  Satisfied with his new freedom, Anger grinned, glowering fiercely in the back of Tsuu’s skull. Your father’s death was no accident. He offended her in some way and became prey.

  Yes, makes sense.

  Then you know what comes next.

  Do I?

  Anger swelled, clawing against reason for dominance, flooding Tsuu’s head with dark purpose.

  Blood calls for blood, Tsuu decided. Ashere must pay!

  THIRTEEN

  Max hung in the air, a few inches above the roof of her house, comforted by its nearness. She had a clear view of the police cars and the SWAT vans at the curb. Behind her and to either side, the rest of the Light Born assembled.

  Standing midair at her immediate right, Commander Hardrune pointed down the street.

  Max nodded. “The National Guard is getting involved. We need to chill this thing way down. Mom will kill me if I let the house and yard get turned into a battle field. The neighbors will never let her hear the end of it.”

  “Allow me,” Hardrune said.

  “Hmmmm.” Max nodded. “Don’t hurt anyone. They’re just scared.”

  “Scared people do dangerous things, Guardian, but I will do my best to please you.”

  Max felt her thoughts branching with Hardrune’s across the link. Concepts, too rapid for words, lodged home like meteor strikes in the Light Born. Half of them stepped out, joining Commander Hardrune in a slow slide toward the ground. These landed and slowly raised their hands, palms outward to show they were unarmed.

  Not that it means anything, Max thought. We are all living weapons. Me especially. I guess that’s okay, as long as that’s not all I am.

  Thunder announced the arrival of a police chopper. It hung over the property, stabbing downward with a searchlight that pinned the Light Born on the ground, adding to their illumination. The bullhorn sounded again. “Hold it right there! We have you covered. Lie down, now. Spread hands and feet out from your body.”

  Max caught a mental image in the link; the dark face of a world hanging in star-strewn space, one edge catching fire as dawn arrived. The meaning of the message became clear as a wall of energy appeared before the Light Born on the ground. It curved like a fence, circling the property, then shot up, a translucent topaz dome over the whole house.

  An eerie silence fell, muting the chopper and the street sounds. Max saw muzzle flashes, and realized that some of the cops had opened fire, triggering a full-scale barrage from the rest of the police. The barrier did its job; none of the shots penetrated.

  Max noted with alarm that some of the police were dodging their own ricochets. She saw one policeman fall backwards as his Kevlar vest caught a round.

  “C’mon,” Max called to the remaining Light Born, stepping away from the roof. Launching away from the house with empty space below made her heart skip a beat. I wonder if I’ll ever get used to this stuff. Softly, she touched-down just behind Hardrune. A couple steps brought her up to him. Though dwarfed by his massive physique, Max discovered that all eyes beyond the barrier were drawn to her. Must be because I’m the only human in the mix, she decided.

  The police held their fire. The uselessness of their weapons was apparent. With a shock, Max recognized the officer leading the Guard. Mr. Chan. He’d traded in his Maxie Burger uniform for that of a reservist.

  Three of his men staggered up to him, carrying a very big machine gun of some kind, and a box of ammo belts. Max wasn’t sure what the weapon was, but she remembered seeing something like it in a Rambo movie marathon. Mr. Chan frowned at the men, and waved the weapon away. A few moments later, he left the SWAT team commander, and strolled up to the energy field. He stopped just before the barrier, and stuck out a finger. He poked the field, generating a mild flashing reaction from its outer surface. Raising his glasses up the bridge of his nose with the same finger, Mr. Chan peered through the barrier at Max.

  Their eyes met. He smiled at his goddaughter.

  Max smiled and waved back.

  Wait here, she commanded her Light Born. That’s a friend of mine. I’m going to talk to him. As her energy field met the barrier, it flowed out of her way, letting her pass without resistance. She stopped in front of Mr. Chan, and willed the golden fire to die down around her without quite going out. Static charges still lifted her hair into a glittering cloud. Though no longer a walking bonfire, her skin was gold, softly radiant. She was an ember ready to re-ignite at any time.

  “Hi, Mr. Chan. It’s not our fault, honest, whatever you’ve heard.”

  “They say your friends here are the terrorists that have been attacking sites across the state. I do not believe you would help such people willingly, but these…strangers, they look dangerous to me. They could be holding your family hostage inside, forcing you to cooperate.�
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  “We’re the good guys. We’ve been fighting the space terrorists that did all that other stuff. You gotta believe me.”

  “I’m willing to believe. I’ve always known you to be a good kid, but I’ve got a lot of questions you need to answer, and your friend’s resistance isn’t helping. Have them drop this—force field is it?—and let us take them into custody until things get sorted out.”

  “I’ll answer your questions,” Max said. “But I’m not giving up my friends. You know what government scientists do to aliens. I’m not going to let them get dissected.”

  “You don’t trust me?” Mr. Chan asked.

  “I trust you, but there are people who can order you around. I don’t trust them.”

  He sighed dramatically. “Apparently, we can’t force you to cooperate. Alright, for now, I’ll settle for whatever you can tell me, but I want to see how things are inside.”

  “Sure. Come in. You can see there are no hostages. I have to fill Tommy in too. Might as well do it all at once. Say, do you think you could have some Maxie Burgers sent over? My new superpowers are making me hungry, and Mom’s not back yet.”

  Mr. Chan grinned and raised a hand. He beckoned. One of the soldiers under his command ran forward. They held a hurried consultation and the soldier left. As Max waited, Mr. Chan summoned the SWAT commander as well.

  “Well?” he asked, crossing his arms across his Kevlar vest. “They surrendering or what?”

  “Or what,” Mr. Chan said. “You and I are going in there to have what I suspect will be a lengthy discussion. Tell your men to hold their position. You can call them by radio to keep them advised, and help keep a lid on things.”

  “That’s crazy. You want to give them more hostages?”

  “I don’t believe the situation here requires armed force, commander, but if it will put your mind at ease…” he turned to Max. “Will you give us a sign of your friend’s good will?” he asked her.

  Max shrugged. She closed her eyes and reached for Commander Hardrune’s channel. There was a sense of solidity, of planetary bedrock, a smell of sun-scorched winds, and images of frosty stars strewn across an endless void: contact! She visualized the barrier collapsing. Drop it. She sensed grudging resistance.