THE REFORGED TRILOGY: BOOK 3 — HAMMER OF TIME
Chapter 14: A Crown of Blades
“What is beauty in the dark?”
– Anneth Zhyress (218 PA)
The great black fleet glided silently through space, eclipsing stars but casting no shadows in the endless darkness. Devourer nanites covered the fleet’s hulls, collecting data and transmitting it to the ships’ computers and their alien operators. But the seething black was as hungry as its creators, slowly devouring the ships they had themselves restructured and built.
The Starwind convoy never saw them coming. Seventeen networked ships dropped out of superluminal flight on the edge of the Giadeen system, seven hundred thousand miles from the outermost asteroid projections. Faintly luminous orange bubbles faded from around the cylindrical haulers as null-fields powered down and the Starwind computers gathered new route information.
Dhozo looked at Xartasia and she nodded.
“Now,” he ordered. “Tear them apart.”
The Devourer’s swirling black cloud of armor transmitted his command across the fleet in nanoseconds. Five thousand Arcadian voices rose in broadcast songs of praise as a wing of sharp-looking black fighters soared through the middle of the convoy. Red lasers and long black hooks tore open four of the Starwind haulers before any of the ships could react.
The lead cargo ship turned ponderously against the backdrop of starlight, bringing the tiny, bulbous control deck around to face the threat. It fired a few laser pulses, but the Devourer fighters were too fast. They spiraled tightly around the remaining haulers, each cutting their violent way into one of Starwind’s ships.
A pair of blade-winged fighters engaged the better-armed lead vessel. Angry scarlet laserfire seared along one of the black fighter’s armored underside. The other Devourer slammed into the hauler’s flank, making the whole huge ship shudder and buckle. The sharp, backswept wings curled like clawed fingers into the fibersteel hull. Air hemorrhaged from deep tears in the hauler’s side and froze into white plumes in the absolute cold of empty space.
“Return all mineral salvage to the Sozsarus for reconstruction,” Dhozo commanded. “Consume the crew and then report back to the VSS Illisem.”
Xartasia wasn’t sure if the Devourer pilot’s com channels were closed or if the fairies’ song simply drowned out the screams.
“All of the metal?” Orix objected from nearby. “Commander, we need it to replenish our swarms!”
“My people require starships more than you need your robots,” Xartasia told the young Devourer coldly. “Every scrap will go to new vessels.”
The seething black cloud that surrounded Orix swirled like a brewing storm. But it had lost some of its iridescent glitter, Xartasia noticed. Were the nanites actually ailing somehow, breaking down? They were machines and machines required power, fuel. Food, like their masters.
A steely dark shape jutted suddenly from Commander Dhozo’s armor, a shield between Xartasia and Orix.
“There will be plenty to eat on Anzhotek,” Dhozo reminded his subordinate. “We’re going there soon. Until then, let your appetite keep you sharp, not angry.”
Xartasia shrugged to herself and turned to the knights flanking the door. A dozen fairies in shining glass armor stood at attention, wings and spears held upright.
“Commander, you said someone wanted to talk to me?” Xartasia prompted.
A knight wearing red and violet scarves wound under his glass armor nodded.
“Yes, my queen,” he answered. “Sharlon Artain. He is new. Sir Varris and Tarno brought him from Arrideen. He has been asking to see you ever since he arrived, a’shae.”
“Bring him.”
The knight bowed and left, then returned a few minutes later with another Arcadian man limping behind. Xartasia stood at the head of the gleaming silver table and its polished surface cast her reflection all down its length, ending in the diamond points of her glass crown like a circle of daggers leveled at Sharlon.
“What is it?” Xartasia asked.
Sharlon stared at Dhozo and the other Devourers. The huge aliens stood behind Xartasia, but their black armor was never still, swirling and transmitting and gathering data and translating.
And eating. The energy demands of their bodies and implanted nanite systems meant that the Devourers, the Glorious, were always eating. Mostly metal, though not always… The dark carbon fiber floor beneath Orix was turning a brittle-looking gray. Sharlon tore his gaze from the monsters and back to his queen.
“I… thank you for seeing me, Your Majesty,” he stammered. His voice was smoke-roughened, but still less abrasive than the Devourers’ buzzing rasp.
Xartasia raised a slim, perfectly manicured hand in acknowledgment of her subject’s thanks.
“What is it?” she asked again.
“Before I left Arrideen, they… they said that there was another queen. Is it true?”
Xartasia fixed violet eyes on the cowering fairy. “I have had no word of this. Tell me more.”
Sharlon swallowed hard. “Her name is Maeve Cavainna, they say. She is on Stray. There have been no emissaries, my queen, as you send. But word has spread. They say she is even raising towers of glass in the Stray desert.”
Xartasia’s eyes flickered over the glass armor of the knights at the door. Every atom of carbon for those suits had been collected from ships and shipments, sifted and selected with meticulous care. It was the finest glass the galaxy had ever seen. Xartasia remembered the dull red sands of Stray.
“If this is true,” she said. “If my cousin sings glass from Stray’s dry sand, what she builds will be as brittle as any coreworlder glass. And the throne she claims for herself is just as fragile.”
“They call her the Gray Queen, a’shae,” Sharlon told Xartasia. “And… and they say that she is accompanied by a great beast, like… like one of your Devourers. But not the same… brown and green where the Devourers are all darkness.”
“Ah, yes,” Xartasia said. “The Arboran. He is a coward. There is nothing we need fear from him.”
“Arboran,” Orix sneered.
Sharlon jumped and very nearly fell. One of the knights stood forward and steadied the terrified Arcadian. Dhozo growled something at the younger Devourer in their own language.
Xartasia held her hand out, palm up. “Thank you for this information, Sharlon. It will be dealt with.”
“Yes, my queen.” Sharlon bowed deeply, still trembling. “Thank you for seeing me.”
He turned back toward the door to leave and Dhozo stepped close beside Xartasia.
“This isn’t news that should spread through the fleet,” he said. “It could split loyalties. You need to control the information.”
“Sharlon has probably already spoken of it,” Xartasia answered with a shrug.
Sharlon heard her and turned back.
“Only to a few friends, Your Majesty,” he assured her. “I thought I should tell you…”
“Which friends?” Xartasia asked.
“Errulin Aesus, Lannui and Shae de Wen,” Sharlon answered. “And… and Ollen Certanan, I think.”
Xartasia sighed and looked up at Dhozo. “Very well. If it must be. You may have Sharlon and his friends. Deal with them swiftly and privately.”
“What?” Sharlon asked. He jumped back, but two of the glass-armored knights grabbed his arms and dragged the fairy forward. “But I–!”
Xartasia glided to the panicked Arcadian and touched her cool red lips to his cheek. “Go in peace and dignity, Sharlon Artain. I shall remember your name, my brother. This pain will not last and matters not. The White Kingdom will return and you with it.”
“I do not understand–” Sharlon began, but Orix was already on him. Claws and hooks and teeth flashed in the dark and blood pooled on the deckplates.
Xartasia stepped back from the spreading red, but even this was swiftly devoured by the boiling nanite swarm. Orix slowly turned his dark, nearly invisible eyes on Xartasia. His wide, fanged maw gaped open.
“Enough, lieutenant,” Dhozo snapped. “Zhyress, V’lox, go with the aerad knights and collect Sharlon’s friends. Savor the meal.”
Two of the tall, shadowy Devourers saluted and left with four of the glass-armored fairies. Dhozo returned his attention to Xartasia.
“How does this information change our schedule?” he asked the white-clothed Arcadian queen.
“It does not.”
“You’re just going to ignore this other queen?” Dhozo asked. It was difficult to tell whether his tone was of incredulity or grudging admiration.
But Xartasia didn’t care what Dhozo thought. “No. I do not think that Maeve understands at all what I do, else she would not raise arms against me. But I cannot risk the trouble she may bring.”
“What will you do, then?”
Xartasia pointed to the armored knight in red and purple again. He approached and dipped his wings.“Yes, my queen?”
“Bring Syle to me,” she told him. “I find myself in need of his skills.”
The knight saluted and then left. Dhozo’s swarm of dark nanites parted just long enough for Xartasia to glimpse his fang-filled grin. She didn’t think that was coincidental.
“You’re sending an assassin after your own cousin?” he asked. There was no mistaking the approval in his voice this time.
“Syle is not an assassin,” Xartasia said. “His skills are far more… creative than that. There will be death, I am certain, but I would not send an assassin after my own blood. I am not like you, Dhozo.”
Titania alighted delicately on the soft green grass. The dryad gardeners did their jobs well and in utter silence… She didn’t even see any of the green-skinned fairies in the royal garden.
The knight landed beside her, the wind of his passage shaking free a handful of pale pink petals from the nearby rose tree. They tangled in the princess’ black hair and hung there like beads. The handsome knight fell into step beside her. Together, they walked through the royal gardens.
“Your father summoned me last night,” he said.
“I thought that he might.” Titania smiled triumphantly. “And what did the king want with you, Sir Anthem?”
“You already know.”
“But I want to hear you say it.”
She stopped beside a curling green and blue topiary that looked like cresting waves and took Anthem’s hands. He smiled indulgently.
“He has asked me to remain at court,” Anthem told Titania. “If I am to be consort to his eldest daughter, to the future queen of Arcadia, King Illain believes that I must learn more of politics.”
Titania balanced herself with outstretched wings and leaned close to the knight. “Little does he know that you have already been learning.”
“You are a good teacher, my enarri,” Anthem told her between kisses. “It has been most pleasant to be your student.”
“Still, I hope you intend to do as the king asks.”
“Of course. I will learn all I can,” Anthem said. He cupped her cheek in one hand and brushed back her black hair. “You will rule the White Kingdom one day, Titania. You will be a great queen. I wish only to be a good prince to you.”
Titania pulled Anthem close and wrapped her arms around him. The royal palace rose up above them, over the gardens, towers casting glowing shadows across the lawns and blooming vines. That castle of gleaming glass, the crown of the worlds, would one day be hers. It was a frightening prospect, but not today. Titania could do anything at all, so long as her enarri was by her side.
