Protector of the Stars

Low clouds swelled over splashes of gold-flecked vermilion sky on the sunset eve of my sister’s death anniversary. The air tasted of winter-chilled pine, piercing tiny needles into my lungs as I inhaled. The pain was electric, filling my head with a low buzzing. It was better than feeling nothing at all, and for that I was grateful.

I trudged towards my apartment, nano-rifle swinging awkwardly against my hip, taking in the sights of my city awash in crepuscular glow. The sharp, clean lines of pewter architecture cutting austere shadows over ivory walkpaths. The cheery green astroturf lining the curb, a far cry from the willowy long grass the developers razed decades ago. A wistful memory peeked from the depths of my childhood, a memory of real grass. That grass had sighed with the wind, a rustle of silken whispers as they brushed against each other, tickling my cheeks as my sister and I chased each other, laughing. That grass had been home.

I ignored the stares of passerby clad in drab greys and blacks of urban propriety, their curious gaze piercing the snowy gossamer layers of my nanolux uniform, threads of evosilver fiber glimmering through the fabric like gold, but more expensive and far more scarce. I knew it was innocuous; they were startled to see a Guardian in the flesh when we were usually nocturnal and invisible. It was a duty I relished for this reason, except for tonight, because tonight was impossible to forget that it was supposed to be a shared duty with my sister.  

Xine and I, one year apart in age but in lockstep our whole lives, had entered the trials together, enrolled in training together, and passed the Rituals together to secure our respective places in the annals of history at the helm of humanity’s defense against the dark side of the stars. But she was gone, and I was left to shoulder the burden alone.

So here I was, in plain sight in plain daylight for any old civilian to see, and a little drunk to boot. Any other time I could compartmentalize the grief, but I dreaded this day of no escape, only a reckoning with grief and the lonely misery I had allowed myself to sink into. Thankfully, the neighborhood bar had lived up to it reputation for a stiff drink, so misery could be muted for the time being.

-

I had just finished dinner and was puttering around at my sink, absentmindedly watching inky streaks of soy sauce rinse from porcelain to drain, when the familiar singsong murmur whispered to me.

Help us, they said. A terrible great has returned, and he has eaten one of our young.

I froze, my hands suspended over the faucet. Slowly, I switched it off, mind racing. It had been nearly two months since the last warning. The stars had been silent since, lulling me to believe we had finally earned a period of peace.

I glanced out my kitchen window, as if I could make eye contact with them. That was foolish; they couldn’t see me, not least because they were billions of miles away. But they always found me.

Where? I asked. I was already shifting to go mode, shedding apron and gloves, grabbing holohelmet and neurotransmitter, silently activating my starcraft parked underground. Before I left, I glanced back my little apartment, sweeping my gaze over the cozy clutter of books, nanograms, faux flowers, and blankets scattered on my table, the deep amethyst velvet of my sofa, eclectic collection of art prints nailed to white walls. It wasn’t much, but it was mine, and I silently offered a prayer of gratitude, in case I don’t return. Then I shut off the lights and raced to the subterranean post strategically carved beneath my building.

To the north, beyond the Orion cluster, they lamented as I passed by the lift – too unreliable – and scurried down winding stairs. Urgency quickened my footsteps and echoed off concrete stairwell walls. We will guide you. But you must hurry.

I raised a hand to my left ear. “Command center, reporting in,” I said into the comm bud. “Anonymous tip received, aggressive, protostar victim alleged. Permission to pursue.” In the brief silence of transmission, I wondered how long they would believe the anonymous part. It wouldn’t do for the benefactors of my only source of income to think I was losing my mind. Or perhaps it had always been lost; I could converse with stars for as long as I could remember.

The tinny static morphed into the deep, clear baritone of my commander, always present, always hovering. I had stopped being surprised or intimidated by his diligence. After all, an AI doesn’t need to sleep, or rest, or have a life.

“Request received and granted,” he said, his tone oddly gentle. I realized that he too, must know the calendar of significant days in the lives of his reports. “Good luck, Huntress.”

He cut out just as I reached the underground post, where my starcraft was waiting. Not wasting a second, I strapped in and slammed my palm over the ignition almost immediately. Even in the chaos of activating the new mission, I relished the excitement of my rising heartbeat, my sharpening vision, my purified thoughts, as the neurotransmitter activated the pathways in my mind. Anticipation enveloped me as the force of the ignition pushed me against the seat, and as soon as the gate opened, I was already flying into the night.

The world outside was deep and still. Stars, invisible during the day, winked into view, a filigree of diamond dust splashed across black velvet sky, some sparse and solitary in their vigil, others swept into the miasma of cosmic eddies and constellations. As the gleaming lights whirled above me, my chest swelled with the familiar mix of emotions invoked by a voyage through the astrosphere. Awe, fear, and a fierce sense of protection. The dark fog of my planetary worries subsided against the fervor of adrenaline-fueled purpose, and I finally exhaled, for what felt like the first time all day.

You are getting closer, they said. East of Bellatrix, by the giant moon. A dark planet, in the shadow of the giants.

I logged the coordinates into the nav and mentally prepared for what doom awaited me.

-

The stark, black expanse of DX162 came into focus as my shuttle broke through the planet’s alluvial cloudsmog, revealing a dark, shimmering landscape akin to iridescent coal. I peered out of the windscreen at the tarred desolation, eyebrows furrowing as I recall the geological abstract I had extracted from the navigational library. DX 162 was a shell protectorate on the outskirts of Empire’s outermost orbit, composed of high-density lucrite, a worthless and unforgiving material that had once been mined for asphalt before a more suitable substance was discovered. It was the perfect hiding spot for a demon.

My aircraft landed with a lurch and soft, grinding crunch against cosmogenous silt like powdered onyx. I unclipped and released the windscreen, stepping out of the craft into my new surroundings. I surveyed the opalescent darkness, stretching for what seemed like leagues in all directions. The air, frigid and dense, tasted like iced smog unfettered by the smells of vegetation or life. This planet was all flat, like an oceanic desert.

I traced a few steps north, then east, surveying the smooth and flat terrain. This felt wrong. Where would a demon even hide?

My doubts must have emanated, for the stars answered.

Careful, they whispered. It’s below you.

Oh shit. The new warning sent me reeling, and as alarm bells rang in my head, I looked down. For the first time, I noticed that I stood on not packed gravel, as I’d thought, but instead a thin layer of loose, black shards over a solid surface. Spider cracks marbled the ground.

Almost as soon as I noticed my precarious footing, a faint smoke arose, like white tendrils of frozen nitrogen, fading almost as soon as they wrapped into the air. I frowned. It looked like…ice.

Before I could speculate any further, a rumble shook the ground. There was a great crack, like old-fashioned firepowder, then another, and then the black ice splintered around me into a dozen cracks. In the next second, the ground gave away beneath me. Faintly, I thought I could hear the stars crying my name as I fell.

-

I plummeted through a void of pitch-black nothingness for what seemed like ages. I thought I was screaming, but all I heard was a firm whooshing noise as I was sucked downward like I was falling through a wormhole. I thrashed wildly out of reflex to slow the freefall, but I only flipped around in dizzying, nonsensical directions, so I stopped.

After a few seconds, I slowed, and a gust of air billowed around me, buffering my descent. I expected the final impact to break my bones into pieces, but instead, my feet touched down firmly on what felt like a thick layer of find sand. I landed, unharmed.

It was too dark to see, and the air was heavy and cold. I stretched my arms into the gloom, as if to feel for something, anything, to give a clue where I was. My heart thundered in my ears as it pumped pure adrenaline through my system. Then the familiar sense of alertness took control, and steady determination surged over the fear. I didn’t know what I would find, but I had survived something and landed here. This was precisely what I had trained for.

As my eyes adjusted to the shadow, the vague dimness around me sharpened into view to reveal where I was: inside a deep cave, on the banks of a crystalline lake, larger than I’d expected to find so far underground. I was enclosed on all sides by hard, glassy walls, frozen solid and pale as moonlight, emanating a damp, glacial chill that numbed me to my core.

I eyed the pool, distrustful of its glassy, pearlescent veneer, save for a few stalactites dripping overhead with a plink, plink sound as droplets met the otherwise serene surface. Foreboding tightened around my gut.

Tentatively, I reached into the depths of my consciousness, probing for any signs of another being.

There is nobody who can speak with you here, the stars whispered. But something can hear you. Be careful, sister.

The pure, singsong lilt had diminished to a muffled hum. Danger tingled down my spine.

The plink, plink, plink had accelerated into a crescendo of droplets and chunks of ice from the ceiling. The pool rippled with the rhythm until it hummed with foreboding tension. I took a deep, steadying breath as I faced the water head-on, sliding silently into warrior stance. Something was in there.

A massive wave swelled over the pool, then another, erupting one after the other. The lake roiled and churned, sending sprays of water over the brink. Then the third wave rose, larger than any I had ever seen before, a tsunamic tide that surged higher and higher overhead, then paused, suspended in mid-air, an abomination of staggering height. I had been stoic through the first two, but faltered at the sheer size of the third.

The world around me stilled.

Then the wave crashed down, sending me scrambling backward. I stumbled and fell, hitting the ground just in time to look up as  – I shut my eyes in disbelief, tight, then opened them again –a gigantic, serpentine creature rose from the depths of the lake, rearing its head through the surface of the pool, uncoiling a dark, scaly neck as thick as a tree trunk. It opened its mouth to reveal rows of sharp, gleaming teeth. It roared, a thunderous, earth-shaking bellow that echoed off the cavern walls and rattled every bone in my body.

It was a kraken. Only this one seemed wrong, with silvery black scales overgrown with strange hanging masses in place of the usual shimmery green scales, and its cry ended in a low, savage bark, as if it were mad.

The kraken turned its great, crocodilian head towards me, opening a set of piercing, lavender eyes. I cried out in surprise and recognition. I knew those eyes. These were not the dark umber of the kraken, or even the milky white of a blinded mutant. These were my sister’s eyes.

No way, my brain insisted, as I wrestled between shock, realization, and alertness. The creature was sniffing at the air blindly. It hadn’t seen me yet. It’s not possible. I struggled to concentrate through the barrage of thoughts and theories.

My sister had been a Guardian, but she hadn’t been a warrior like me. She had been a Scientist, a brilliant mind tasked with creating weapons to protect and retaliate against enemies of our state. Two years ago, she had been accused of treason. They told me she had resisted arrest. So I, the dutiful younger sister, had mourned and grieved her loss, and made my peace with the news that she was dead.

But what if she wasn’t?

The creature before me was reality. It bore the marks of her research, the signature of her work. She had always liked to brand her creations with a mark of herself. Like the same eye color. I was certain this was a monster of her creation, and a new one at that – no living creature, no matter how deformed or altered, could sustain itself on a barren planet like this for long.

The creature, realizing that I was here but unable to see, snarled in frustration, startling me out of my epiphanies. This time, sparks of electricity crackled and danced across the water. I leaped back, startled, one hand smoothly unholstering my rifle on reflex.

The kraken hadn’t seen me yet, but it was already my target.

My training took over, slowing my rabbit heartbeats, slowing down my breath. In a fluid, practiced movement, I settled my stance, raised the rifle to my shoulder, took aim, and fired. Bursts of bright blue thermabullets found their mark, hitting the creature in its neck over and over.

But it was useless.

The kraken paused, nonplussed, and blinked. My bullets spattered against its chest, barely making a dent. Then, when I had almost spent my rounds, it turned silently to me. It tensed.

There was no time to think. I threw myself to the side as the creature opened its mouth again, sending a jet of green light from its throat and lancing towards me. I thought I’d mostly made it, but as I dropped and rolled, a hot flash of pain pierced my shin. I cried out.

The creature roared again, energized by its victory, and began to dive toward the sound of my voice. Panic seized me and I scrambled on all fours as far back as I could, ignoring the burn where my knees and palms scraped the ground.

 A few feet away stood a boulder-like alcove, and I crawled into it, shaking and shivering. Now what?

I closed my eyes and willed myself to think. If I believed this abomination was a relic of my sister’s work, a secret weapon abandoned on a lonely planet, there must be a key to destroying or disarming it. As my mind shuffled through strategies and discarded them like fallen leaves, I reached gingerly down to feel the damage to my shin. I winced as I touched singed skin. The creature’s weapon was clearly radiation. What could defeat radiated heat?

More heat.

I almost sighed in relief as I remembered the emergency kit sewn into my uniform. An idea took form.

Ignoring the pain slicing through my leg, I lurched upright and slapped my right hand across my chest to tear at my sleeveflap. In an instant, three lightweight packets tumbled to the ground, and I snatched the right one. EMERGENCY FLARE. Good. I took a deep breath, gripping the flare in one hand and my rifle in the other, and limped out into the open.

“Hey!” I shouted. My voice cracked, and it was higher-pitched than I wanted. But it worked.

The creature snapped its head around in my direction. This time, I almost smiled as it opened its mouth for the third – and last, if I succeeded – time. I launched my arm back and threw, letting the flare fly towards the creature in a desperate arc. Quickly, before I could tell if I aimed true, I shouldered the rifle, took aim, and fired. My last bullet found its target, hitting the flare right as it entered the creature’s gaping mouth. Those bright lavender eyes bulged as it swallowed both.

The explosion came a nanosecond later. The force of the heatwave launched me backwards, sending me flying through the air. Spatters of kraken blood and viscera sprayed the cave, covering me in thick, hot carnage and chunks of reptile.

I slammed against the mouth of the cave and slithered to the floor, ears ringing, teeth chattering, bones jarring. But even with my vision darkening around the edges, I reveled in the realization that I was alive. And so was Xine.

 -

The parahealers found me crumpled in a heap by the cave where I’d fallen. After they loaded me into the stretcher, I finally relaxed and let the shimmering twinkle of the stars above me fade into nothing. As I fainted, I could still hear myself murmuring my sister’s name.