The Exiled Earthborn (35 page)

After another month, Sora was finally within reach. All of them gathered on the bridge as they emerged on the other side of the space-time tunnel. The green-and-blue haze slowly faded, replaced by a sea of stars in the viewscreen. Within minutes, a sizable chunk of the Soran fleet had encircled them, bringing cheers from the Guardians. The ships were there to ensure the Xalans hadn’t followed them back, and to escort them through the system to Sora, just in case. The blackness of space behind them revealed no unwanted pursuers, and after a period of tense waiting, they set a course for the homeworld.

Maston stood upright on the bridge next to Lucas, which was impressive given his injury. He’d made do with a crutch for the first month, but eventually Alpha hacked together a robotic leg for him from spare parts around the ship, and had done the same for the other injured Guardians onboard who had lost limbs in the conflict. Maston’s appendage was hardly state-of-the-art tech, with most of the pieces rusted and the wiring constantly shorting out. But it was better than the alternative, and through a large amount of effort he’d mastered walking on the thing. Lucas actually saw him break out in a sprint a few days prior. Soon he’d get an official robotic replacement for Alpha’s makeshift device, with an organic limb to be spliced onto him a few weeks later, created from his own DNA. They’d started growing it for him as soon as they were able to reestablish contact with the planet in transit, and the Guardians all logged their various injuries that would need treatment upon their return. Over the past three months, Lucas’s leg had healed well, and though Asha had had a bout with some strain of pneumonia a few weeks back, the pair were in relatively good health for a change.

Maston’s gaze was fixed out the viewscreen as the fleet of enormous ships escorted their tin can back to Sora. Since Lucas had rescued him twice back on Makari, once from the Dead City and again after the battle that took his leg, the two had formed a bond that vaguely resembled friendship. It was hard to believe this was the man who had ordered him beaten nearly to death on the voyage there. Then again, Lucas was also enamored with a woman who had tried to kill him on at least three occasions. It seemed to be how all his relationships started in the current state of the galaxy.

“Looking forward to becoming whole again?” Lucas asked, nodding toward Maston’s metal appendage.

Maston looked at it and sank down a bit so the coils tightened and a hydraulic contraction mechanism hissed.

“It would take more than just a leg,” he said sullenly.

“It’s hard to believe this could be over soon,” Lucas said.

Maston scoffed.

“The war? You can’t still be that naive.”

“Why can’t it? It’s a solid plan.”

A large ship drifted in front of them. It had twelve rear engines, which glowed white hot and caused the surrounding stars to twinkle rapidly.

“As much as I no longer doubt the sincerity of our new Xalan allies, putting this final stage of their idea into action would be more difficult than anything that’s come before. Impossible, in fact.”

He broke his gaze out the window and turned to Lucas.

“I spent three months with Alpha and Zeta, trying to come up with a workable plan to infiltrate Xalan central command on their homeworld. There is none.”

“Why not?” Lucas asked.

“The building is a fortress. The city is a fortress. The planet is a fortress. If we had the ability to infiltrate Xala, don’t you think we would have done so by this point?”

Lucas supposed that was true. It was odd it hadn’t occurred to him.

“Perhaps Zeta will be of some tactical significance to us in decoding the enemy’s transmissions, but this idea that we could broadcast Alpha’s message to all of Xala without it being intercepted or interrupted is merely a fantasy. It cannot be done outside their central broadcasting unit, and accessing it is simply not in the realm of possibility.”

“I’ve had to readjust my definition of ‘impossible’ over the last few years,” Lucas said.

“Believe what you will,” Maston said, “but the facts dictate a different course.”

Maston noticed Lucas growing annoyed.

“But in any case, I will be proud to fight along with the Earthborn in coming battles. You’ve proven yourselves … adaptable since your arrival. Whether it’s talent or luck, I’ll take either on my side.”

Forever the charmer.

Up ahead, a bright blue ball came into view among the stars. Home. Or the closest thing they had to it.

18

Lucas stood uncomfortably with his arms crossed behind his back. He was in Guardian dress blues with a winged badge on his collar that Maston had personally pinned on him, despite their past differences. The commander stood at his left with Asha on his right. Alpha loomed next to her, and there were eighteen other Guardians standing in similar poses further down the line. Camera bots orbited them like satellites. The event was in a small, ornate room in the upper floors of the palace, but it was being broadcast to billions.

He stared into the kind eyes of Talis Vale in front of him. She placed a medallion around his neck. It was silver with an engraving of the visage some long-dead warrior king.

“I present to Lucas the Earthborn the Mark of Ayon, for extraordinary valor facing overwhelming odds.”

Lucas bowed slightly and the metal clinked against one of her rings as she drew her hand away. He briefly returned her soft smile, and she moved to present a similar medal to Asha. Maston already wore his.

The event was being beamed out to all of Sora—the return of the conquering heroes from their mission to one of Xala’s colonies, the first ever attempted. Talis said it would help lift the spirits of the planet, which had been suffering from the recent loss of Kollux over the time they were away. Details of their mission were kept vague, and the people of Sora were content to know that the Guardians and the Earthborn had rescued a high-value target critical to the war effort and made contact with a new strain of Soran warriors, the Oni. The crowds watched in amazement as armor-cam footage was released onto the Stream showing their siege of the spaceport and bits of their duel with the fearsome Desecrator. Lucas unwillingly shuddered every time he saw a flash of the crimson creature onscreen.

The dead had already received their medallions, one rank higher than the distinction the living now wore. They’d been sent home to their families along with their Finals. The names and faces of the deceased floated behind them like ghosts. Lucas turned back to glance at the hologram.

Jat Corvin

Elys Sonotro

Mardok Axon

Yanna Hollus

Sol’tanni Silo

Lucas finally knew his first name. He turned back to face the cameras. His stomach felt flipped upside down, but he maintained his composure. The Earthborn losing it at his victory ceremony wouldn’t be very good press. Lucas swallowed the lump in his throat and maintained his stone-cold stare straight ahead. He had to let go of Silo now, no matter how good a friend he had been, or how horrifying the circumstances of his death. Far too often when Lucas closed his eyes, he saw that red mist in the jungle, and the half a body that lay below it.

Talis lay a medallion around the last Guardian’s neck. The crowds watching around the world erupted in cheers they could not hear.

It was surreal to be back on Sora after their latest journey to a new kind of hell. The jungles of Makari had proved even more treacherous than the wastelands of Earth, and it was yet another ordeal that would never leave Lucas. Even in the comforts of their palace quarters, Lucas still itched at his Mol’tok sting. He still saw the yellow eyes of the bloodwolf. The red ones of the Desecrator.

But there was at least one pleasant distraction from all of it. One ray of hope that burst into the room like a sunbeam.

“Lucas!” Noah squealed with proper pronunciation. “Asha!”

The child had grown immensely in the months they were gone. He was easily almost five inches taller, and the giant’s blood in him was starting to show, as he was noticeably large for his age now. Noah no longer wobbled but strode forward sure-footedly. Lucas and Asha knelt down to wrap him in their arms. Behind him, Malorious Auran and two caretakers smiled at the touching reunion. Golden locks spilled onto Lucas’s hands. Brilliant sky-blue eyes gazed into his. The child had been well cared for in their absence, that much was obvious.

They sat for a solid two hours as Noah regaled them with lengthy tales of his adventures over the past few months. Where there used to be mostly babbling, the child now spoke in full, coherent sentences, seemingly beyond the usual capabilities of a not-yet-two-year-old. Lucas realized that the Soran education methods of the young likely allowed them to develop cognitively at a quicker pace than children on Earth. He thought back to Noah’s English and Soran lessons onboard the Ark in the captain’s chair. Whatever the education process was here, it was remarkable to see in practice.

Noah gave them detailed descriptions of all his new friends from the palace day care and told them about various field trips the group had taken to cities and animal preserves. Of all the children he mentioned, there was one name, Kyra, that came up in nearly every story. Lucas remembered meeting Auran’s shy granddaughter in the nursery. It seemed like an eternity ago.

Noah now spoke Soran nearly as fluently as the pair of them, though his teachers ensured that he was still keeping up with his English. They had no intention of being the ones who would let a dying tongue of a lost civilization meet its end.

Noah still had the burns on his arm and shoulder, sustained in the Norwegian nursery fire. He was deemed too young for the sorts of extensive skin grafts that would replace the damage, but it was clear he wasn’t hindered by the injury. All three of them wore wounds from Earth. A family tradition.

Eventually Auran returned to the room, interrupting Noah’s retelling of a particularly exciting wildlife preserve he’d been to the previous week.

“Whenever you are ready,” the old man said. “They’re waiting downstairs.”

It was time to truly make their family whole.

Birth Day.

The event’s meaning was more or less the same as it had been on Earth. “More” because a child was indeed being born, “less” because it was coming out of a fetal tank rather than a biological mother. Because of the Soran method of childbirth, the event could be a friendly gathering rather than a hysterical hospital visit.

Their child was ready to meet the world.

It had been a year since conception aboard the Ark, the result of two doomed souls grasping at comfort before they met their assured end. But today Lucas and Asha’s bond was stronger than ever, held together by more than just the horrific events they’d endured as a couple.

A small group had gathered in one of the palace’s many luxurious halls, this one with portraits of young princes and princesses adorning the walls from centuries and millennia past. Talis knew that, though the Earthborn were public figures, they still needed a bit of privacy. As such, the event was invitation only. In the room were Auran, Maston, Kiati, Tannon, and Talis herself, in addition to the three of them. Noah fidgeted uncomfortably in his miniature formal attire. A few other members of the palace staff were milling about nearby, medical personnel, royal guards, and the like. It was of course an event the world would love to see, the First Son of Sora, direct offspring of the famed Earthborn, but they would have to wait until the child was publicly unveiled later. It was respected tradition that Birth Days were private affairs. At least the very first one.

Maston had a new leg, fashioned from impenetrable fibro-steel and far more functional than Alpha’s makeshift offering. Kiati still lacked an eye, but she had a fashionable metal plate where a bloody bandage used to be. Their organic replacement parts were still being grown somewhere in labs off-continent. Each wore their Guardian dress uniforms from the ceremony earlier. Lucas, Asha, and Noah had been given more traditional clothes for the occasion. The family usually wore green on the day, a universally recognized symbol of new life.

In the middle of them all sat their child, a little boy helpless and unaware of the chaos he was being born into. The palace was a nice facade that would protect him from the insanity outside, but sooner or later, he’d have to come to grips with being born into a war zone, as all Soran children had. Noah too, for that matter. Lucas didn’t want the pair of them to endure the same terrors he had. He would fight so his children wouldn’t have to.
His children.

It was the first time in a long while he was truly thinking about the magnitude of restarting a family. He’d always been Noah’s caretaker, but now, an actual father? It seemed like a part of him that was too rusted and damaged to start working again. He’d botched his first chance at being a good parent back on Earth before the war. Who was to say he could do any better this time around, in circumstances far more harrowing?

Lucas had tuned out most of what Auran was saying. Some ceremonial speech about the child being a gift to the world and a reflection of his valiant parents. As much as he admired Asha, he hoped the child wouldn’t have her seemingly unquenchable thirst for blood. Though he wasn’t exactly one to throw stones in that regard.

“And what is the name this child shall have?” Auran asked as he turned toward them. Noah had his arms pressed up against side of the tank and was looking up in wonder at his little brother.

“Erik,” Lucas said, snapping back to attention. It had been a topic of much discussion during the long days aboard the prison ship on their return voyage. They’d finally settled on Erik as an unmistakable Earth name. It was Lucas’s grandfather’s name, and his father once told him that it meant “powerful” in the former tongue of their family. He’d only seen pictures of his granddad, but the burly man standing proudly atop a smoking Panzer tank seemed to fit that description. Erik would have to have the same sort of strength to survive the world he now entered.

As Auran finished his remarks, the medical attendants approached the tank. After rifling through a few controls, the viscous liquid began to drain. The child was gently laid to rest on a gel cushion at the bottom of the tank as the last of the substance was flushed out, and the tiny tubes attached to various points on his body began to detach themselves. Mild heat lamps dried his wet skin and in under a minute, the process was complete. A tiny figure sat curled in a ball as the glass surrounding him sank down into the base of the tank.