The Exiled Earthborn (13 page)

“Who’s Kiati?” she asked.

“You missed a lot while you were busy being kidnapped,” Lucas taunted. She ignored him and sipped a goblet of sparkling water she scooped off the table. Lucas did the same and found it wasn’t water after all. He forced himself to set it down and gazed out into the magnificent metropolis that surrounded them.

Elyria was even more remarkable up close than it was from afar. The hovercraft drifted lazily in and out of buildings that shot up thousands of feet in the air from the floor of the city. Each was probably twice as tall and wide as even Earth’s largest structures. Silo, doubling as their tour guide in addition to running security, pointed out which were residential, commercial, or owned by the government. Other hovercraft darted by them, most without anyone at the wheel. Pre-programmed routes through the sky took the citizens of the city to and from their various destinations, though after the Machine War, they were told, that was about as advanced as AI-controlled tech was allowed to be.

“Check this out.”

Lucas motioned for Asha to come to his window and pointed toward a particularly busy corridor that seemed to be clogged in an aerial traffic jam. Her eyes scanned the vista until she saw what he was referring to. It was hard to miss.

To their left was a thirty-story-high digital billboard that showed a picture of Asha in the woven white dress she’d worn to the announcement ceremony days ago. Next to her was Lucas in his dark, high-collared suit. The photo appeared to have been taken as they made their way to the podium on the promenade’s stage. The glyphic Soran symbols spelled out a tagline:

Earthborn—by Jolo Houzan. Worth a trip across the galaxy.

Asha sighed.

“Back to modeling again,” she said, exasperated.

Lucas called up to Silo.

“Shouldn’t we be getting some royalties for that?”

Silo glanced at the billboard.

“Not my department,” he said, digging around in his suit. “But that reminds me. Courtesy of the High Chancellor.”

He tossed a pair of chips toward them, which Lucas caught in his lap.

“Spending marks.”

Lucas tapped the chip and a tiny indicator was projected from it.

A
VAILABLE
B
ALANCE
—50,000M.

Asha found hers read the same.

“Is this a lot?” she asked.

“How much are on them?” Silo replied.

“Fifty thousand each.”

Silo let out a low whistle.

“Damn, I wish I was an alien.”

Too often in recent years, Lucas’s most vibrant memories had been forged out of horrific events back on Earth or in space. Too many still haunted him daily, from the Xalan invasion, to the American wastelands, to the horrors of Kvaløya, to Omicron’s onslaught. Today, however, was a unique experience. It was a time he would never forget, for all the right reasons.

Lunch was a served in an eatery nestled inside a massive aquarium. The menu consisted of the fish that swam all around them, each completely unique from any they’d seen on Earth. All of them wore holographic tags that, when pointed to, would produce information about the species along with preparation options. Lucas took the chef’s recommendation of “seared Rostin,” which was a shark-like behemoth with eight fins and four rows of teeth. After the meal arrived, Asha kept stealing bites from his plate when he wasn’t looking. Apparently her “grilled Vorkal” didn’t suit her quite as much.

They were then whisked away to a private show of the town’s hottest stage performance,
Sora D’lorata Mus’tovi,
which loosely translated to “The Lost Lovers of Sora.” The stage was a circular ring of ornate wood and metal that wrapped around the audience, and holographic backgrounds made it almost seem like they were living out a three-dimensional film. The story followed a soldier sent off to war who left his young love behind. When he returned, she had been forced to marry a cruel provincial tyrant who framed the soldier for murder after he attempted to win her back. The costumes indicated it was from a time period that pre-dated space travel, and Lucas could have sworn he saw a glimmer of a tear in the forever stoic Asha’s eye as the soldier lay dying in his lover’s arms in the production’s final moments. Afterward, despite the show being performed by reportedly the most popular actors on the continent, it was the cast who wanted their pictures taken with the famed Earthborn, rather than the other way around.

Dinner at the Golden Leaf was a breathtaking event, mainly because the restaurant was on top of the tallest superscraper in the city, Stoller Tower. They could see for hundreds of miles in every direction, and a brilliant span of stars greeted them overhead while an invisible energy field kept the winds at bay. A staff of dozens waited on them hand and foot, and Lucas lost track of how many courses populated their meal as surrounding patrons looked over at them in wonder and envy. Lucas insisted that the ever-present palace security staff be given a meal as well, and though they refused initially, by the end of the night they were wolfing down thousand-mark plates of rare meat at an adjoining table. Silo couldn’t stop grinning from ear to ear after he finished his enormous rack of Yutta ribs. Marveling at their size, Lucas wondered what sort of creature they were once attached to.

The final destination of the exhausting, enjoyable day was a return to the Grand Palace itself. Silo informed them that the mammoth structure had been destroyed and rebuilt a half dozen times over the lifespan of civilized Sora. Now, it stood as an amalgam of ancient architecture and state-of-the-art defensive tech. The tower was an impregnable fortress, daring anyone to try and knock it down again. Well, nearly impregnable, it seemed, given recent events.

As twilight descended, Silo left them at the hovercraft hangar, bidding them a good evening, not noticing the mark chip Lucas slipped into one of the pockets that hung off his armor as they departed. Despite the extravagance of the locales they had visited, everyone they encountered bent over backward to offer them everything on the house. With barely a mark spent, Lucas thought Silo could make better use of the funds.

Malorious Auran greeted them as they entered and escorted them to the highest levels of the palace. He explained this had been where they were meant to reside before the “unfortunate business with the Order,” as he put it.

When the lift opened, a pair of enormous frosted glass doors stood before them. As they approached, elaborate carvings began to reveal themselves in the material. Lined faces of men wearing crowns, women with long flowing hair and sly smiles. Portraits of empires, risen and fallen long ago. Auran confirmed what the door suggested.

“The Eternity Room has been occupied by some of the most distinguished figures in Soran history when they came to visit the royal families or, more recently, the High Chancellors. Lords, kings, emperors, generals, heroes, and sometimes villains have all rested in comfort here, or in one of its many iterations throughout the ages.”

He struggled with the heavy doors, and with an assist from Lucas, flung them open.

“And though you surely deserve a place among such legends, I beseech you not to break anything,” he said with pleading eyes.

The room before them was more astonishing than anything they’d witnessed in Elyria. The ceilings were easily three stories high and completely covered in an elaborate mural. Figures that could have been kings or gods were locked in an epic struggle with celestial armies at their command, soaring through swirls of painted stars and planets.

On the ground, the floor was covered with a shimmering stone that almost looked wet, but was completely dry to the touch. Furniture was carved out of assuredly antique wood and inlaid with precious metals and fabrics. A kitchen area presented yet another cornucopia of food, though Lucas was far too stuffed to even think about sampling from it. Every few feet a new painting hung on the wall. None of them were the modern holographic art Lucas had seen around the palace. He ran his hand over a jewel-encrusted longsword that sat on a nearby table. An identifier said the weapon was nearly forty thousand years old, but the blade shone as if it had been crafted yesterday. Everything in the room was simultaneously old and brand new, artifacts somehow preserved precisely in their original state through science he couldn’t fathom. As they drifted inside, enraptured by their surroundings, Auran stayed at the entrance.

“I won’t bore you with further history,” he said. “Though I could compose a novel about nearly every object in this room. I wish you two a good night, and do not hesitate to call if you need anything.”

He tapped the communicator badge attached to his robes, and gracefully backed out of the room, closing the towering doors as he went.

Alone in silence, despite all the invaluable treasures that adorned the room, Lucas was only looking at one thing.

Her.

Asha stood facing him, wearing a bronze one-shouldered dress one of her many stylists had deemed appropriate for their night on the town. The lights had dimmed since Auran’s departure, sensing it was far past the usual bedtime hour, and the room was soaked in moonlight from the wall of windows across from them. Asha was radiant. Ethereal.

The silence spoke more than words could. After six months of imprisonment and being torn apart, it was the first time they were truly alone and unencumbered since those sleepless nights aboard the Ark.

His buttonless jacket was flung across a twenty-sixth-century armchair, with his shirt not far behind. Her unclasped dress dropped to the floor and pooled out around her like water. As she kissed him, an old vein of passion ran through him with such ferocity it stole the breath from his lungs. She ran her hands across his chest, tracing the long, curved scar that ran all the way down to his hip. Her own skin was a familiar map of old battle wounds, long healed, one he’d memorized by touch. But here, now, it was like he was rediscovering her all over again, the way he had that first unreal night in the water chamber. It had been so long.

An hour passed before they even bothered finding the bed, tucked into another ornately decorated section of the suite. It was another two before sleep found them, and afterward they lay intertwined in the liquid sheets, the last king and queen of a dead planet.

Despite complete and utter exhaustion from the events of the day, and the activities of the night, Lucas awoke when a draft shook him. He felt around the bed and, as his eyes adjusted, saw an all-too-familiar sight. Asha was gone, still not comfortable enough to share a full night’s sleep. With all she’d been through, it was hard to blame her, but still, it disappointed Lucas the way it always had on the Ark.

Here however, her disappearance was a bit more worrisome. The Ark was a shoebox compared to the palace, and a search of the entire room revealed she hadn’t relocated to another section. Lucas felt panic rising in his chest and considered contacting palace security.

Stopping to collect himself, he decided against such a reaction. She hadn’t been taken again. Not here, not in silence. He had an idea of where she might be.

The elevator ride was a long one, going from one of the highest floors of the palace to one of the lowest, several thousand feet underground. When he reached his desired level, the attendant stationed there recognized him immediately and waved him through. When Lucas asked if he’d seen a half-dressed Earth-girl come by, he replied with a sheepish smile and a nod toward the direction of the floating text over the adjacent entryway:

E
ARTH
A
RCHIVE

The doors parted and Lucas found himself once more among the rows of glass cases full of his old possessions from the Ark. Hearing footsteps on the other side of the room, he moved toward the section where he knew he’d find her.

But she wasn’t there. The armory rows sat empty, displaying all their appropriated guns along with their current loadouts. Natalie sat mounted next to Asha’s Magnum and sword. She hadn’t come for them after all.
What’s she doing here?

The room was so deathly silent he could actually hear her breathing the next row over. When he turned the corner and saw her, he understood.

It was the book section, filled with collected Earth tomes from Milton to Rowling. But she wasn’t reading. Rather, the enclosure she was looking into held only two pieces of paper. Photos.

The first was charred around the edges, but clearly displayed its subjects. In it, Asha smiled peacefully with a glittering ring on her finger, wrapped in the arms of a handsome young man with blue eyes. Below that was another picture, one far more mangled. Only faint traces of a woman and her child could be seen. Lucas’s wife. His son.

Upon seeing the photo, one he had thought lost a long while ago, the same feelings stirred in him that were surely storming inside her. Pain, sorrow, love, things buried away for years now. It was a life lived so long ago, it felt like fiction most days. But not now, not in a moment when he could look into their eyes again.

“I don’t know if it will ever stop,” she said solemnly, not looking at him as he stood next to her.

“It won’t,” Lucas said as he brushed his fingers against the glass separating him from his family.

“It’s not just Christian, it’s all of them. Everyone I lost. Out there, you couldn’t think about it. Each day was all about your next drink, your next meal, your next near-death experience. There was no room for them in your head. But here?”

“It’s quieter,” Lucas finished her thought. “You can hear them all the time.”

She finally looked at him, an old fury burning in her eyes, rekindled once more by the image before her. But the wrath was mixed with sorrow, brought on by a loss she could likely never truly recover from.

“The anger is always there. Just under the surface. Like it’s going to burn me alive if it doesn’t have a place to vent,” she said, and he could almost feel the heat radiating off her.

“I know,” said Lucas, recalling the constant rage that propelled him through the past few years. Rage that still simmered within him at all hours of the day. But like her, grief was carved deep into his heart. A permanent mark that would forever stain his soul.