The Reforged Trilogy: Book 1 — Crucible of Stars
Chapter 2
Axis
“One hundred years ago today, our predecessors brought together hungry, desperate worlds into a new constellation. This constellation wasn’t a symbol or a picture, but a promise. The promise of a better future.”
– Nanshi Crestone, 32nd Lyceum Presider (202 PA)
For most of their history, each species of the galaxy believed themselves alone. Planetary governments had work enough for generations just managing their own ever-dwindling supplies of food and fuel, air and other natural resources. No matter how carefully tended, these assets vanished alarmingly quickly until every world had no choice but to turn their attention out to the stars.
All races were equally astonished to discover intelligent life beyond their own stellar systems. Humanity particularly so as they discovered more or less their own species exploring with the same desperate need. The native humans had named their own worlds Hadra, Hyzaar, Mir, Prianus and Vanora.
Bitter decades of war ensued before the humans found the commonalities that bound them together. Vanora’s military and then diplomatic victories secured its place as the center of the growing galactic alliance, and a new name: Axis.
Though the human subspecies appeared quite different, they were pronounced by the Ixthians to be nearly identical at the genetic level — a verdict borne out by years of breeding between the five races of humanity. But each planet had left its mark. Hadrians were large and muscular from generations of high gravity living, with dark skin and eggshell white membranes to protect their eyes from their blinding binary suns. The people of watery Hyzaar were long-limbed and bronze-skinned, with powerful lungs and strong stomachs. On Mir, striped skin and hair colors ranging from brown to bright green camouflaged humans from their fast grassland predators. The humans of Axis and Prianus bore few obvious adaptations to their homeworlds, but no one would ever mistake the urbane Axials for backwater Prians.
Along with the Lyrans, Ixthians and Dailons, the human races founded an interstellar government to regulate their shared needs for scarce and precious resources. They named their coalition the Central World Alliance and the newly-minted CWA struck out into the unexplored sectors of the galaxy with renewed hope.
It took an hour for Maeve to track down and pay the harried-looking Dailon dockmaster. She thought it might have been a male, but discerning Dailon genders was notoriously difficult for outsiders. They told one another apart easily by scent, but of the other species in the galaxy, only the canine Lyrans could smell the difference. Like the rest of their race, the Dailon’s skin was dark blue over a muscular, long-limbed body.
The dockmaster regarded Maeve with large black eyes for a moment, then unceremoniously thrust a datadex out at her. Maeve thumb-printed the screen and then paid the landing fee with a few colored plastic chips. The dockmaster hurried off, rubbing blue hands off on their pants after even momentary contact with an Arcadian.
The Blue Phoenix was berthed on the second of Axis’ ten levels, in one of fifty thousand or so docking circles. Landing pads and fueling stations dominated this part of the megatropolis and the streets were filled with sky cars suspended on cloudy null-fields, as well as older wheeled and bearing-mounted vehicles. Crowds pushed along the sidewalks, genders of all species absently shouldering past each other as they went about their business on this level or making their way to one of the many lifts that would take them up or down into the rest of Axis.
The air was alive with voices. In the early days of the Alliance, the founders had agreed upon a common language that they named Aver. Because humans were by far the most numerous and widespread race in the galaxy, Aver was primarily made up of human dialects. But hoping to forge a lasting understanding between the members of the Central World Alliance, each of the four core species took a hand in perfecting Aver. The black-haired Dailons contributed their rolling, sibilant hisses and from the Ixthians came clicking names for all manner of medicines and chemicals. The canine Lyra voiced their deep love of machines, as well as the cha-gri — an open-backed chair that let them freely swing their furry tails.
As Maeve made her way past the docking circles and fueling stations, ship airlocks were replaced by tastefully holographed storefronts with windows displaying fashionable flight suits and polished starship parts. Sidewalks and roads were kept painstakingly clean and in excellent repair despite the traffic of millions of feet and vehicles. Most visitors to Axis came by way of Level Two and so, in the interest of ongoing trade and good public relations, the city-world went to great lengths to keep the upper levels pleasant, relaxing and beautiful.
The streets had glassteel skylights arcing overhead, vast windows that opened out on the starry Level One sky. Maeve stopped to look up. The sky of Axis never ceased to amaze her. It was alive with stars, as close and numerous as the people of the great city. The stars blazed even at midday, too bright and too many for the sun to eclipse. By night, their light was glorious.
The White Kingdom of Arcadia had been far, far away from here — out on the edge of the galaxy. Maeve never saw a sky like this when she was a girl. Axis was the breath-taking, glittering heart of all the stars. Maeve felt as though she could reach up and touch one of those countless brilliant points of silver light. But not even an Arcadian could fly that high.
Somewhere out there, among all those stars, was the shattered remains of her home. Maeve turned away, but the view on the street was no better, just as full of life and untouchable joys. A smiling human couple brushed past, ignoring the dirty Arcadian and laughing together at some private joke.
Maeve very nearly fell off the sidewalk when a tall Hadrian man ran into her. She stumbled and only barely managed to catch herself on the man’s sleeve. A stylish silver com was hooked around his ear, flashing in the starlight. He stopped speaking into it to look down at Maeve and tugged his arm out of her grasp.
“What are you doing up here, bird-back?” the man hissed under his breath. He pointed down the street with a finger almost as thick as Maeve’s wrist. “The lifts are that way. You better get off this level before someone else sees you!”
He glanced about with white membrane-covered eyes and then hurried away, grumbling into his com. Maeve turned and pushed a path through the crowd in the direction the Hadrian had indicated. Nothing she wanted would be found this high up on Axis anyway, only more undesired attention.
Maeve stalked down the walkway — marked out with a red map-line — until she reached a mirror-polished elevator. Several other passengers got out when she entered, muttering about crowds and that they would just catch the next one. Maeve went inside and the doors slid shut.
A controlled ten-minute drop finally deposited the lift down on Level Seven and a computerized chime roused Maeve from a half-doze. She shook out her wings and stepped out of the lift canister. By now, this low in the city, the canister was nearly empty.
And it was easy to see why. The Level Seven streets were dark with grime and deep, secretive gray shadows. Close-leaning apartment blocks and dim-lit shops were foreboding with broken, taped windows caked in layers of lumapaint graffiti. The paint’s glow had long since faded, whatever opinion or territorial claim it had once advertised now gone. Overflowing trash bins and even less ordered filth choked narrow alleys between the buildings. Perfect.
Maeve thrust her hands into her pockets and pulled her wings close. She hurried furtively along the road, scanning the shadows. A few cracked streets away, Maeve found a run-down med clinic, surrounded by trash that was only half-heartedly cleared back from the doors. The place was still open despite the hour, which must have been well past midnight local time.
Through a small window crisscrossed in steel mesh, Maeve could see a pair of tired-looking Ixthian doctors working diligently over a human man stretched out on the metal table between them. Their short antennae waved in shallow, weary arcs as they labored. The preservation and purification of life was very nearly a sacred Ixthian obligation and they sold their services at a fair cost even on the lower levels of Axis.
Maeve circled around behind the clinic, where there were no windows. Back here, she knew, would be operating rooms and a streamlined cloning facility. Cybernetics so galled the Ixthians that they charged bare minimum prices to run their cloning tanks — only the truly destitute or unlucky resorted to primitive machine replacements.
But Maeve didn’t need cloned organs or even cybernetic ones. Axis was the center of the galaxy and capital of the Central World Alliance, but beneath the gleaming skin of the city above, darkness thrived. On Level Seven, everyone needed drugs — patients and doctors alike.
Maeve found a chem dealer slouched beside the clinic. It was a Lyran woman with matted fur, no taller than Maeve. Lyrans were built much like bipedal dogs or wolves and were among the shortest of the CWA citizens. This one had a pelt dyed in brilliant purple and her black nose ran wetly, but her predatory golden eyes were alert and watchful. The Lyran sniffed the air as Maeve approached.
“You’re a long way from home, fairy,” she growled.
“The White Kingdom fell before you were even born. I have no home,” Maeve snapped back. “And I have no time or inclination to argue with an ill-tempered wolf. You know what I want and I will pay you better than I should for it.”
Closer now, Maeve could see the Lyran was quite young. Just out of puppyhood, really. An oversized plastihide jacket poorly hid her starvation-thin frame. She bared her yellowing fangs.
“You’re wanting for a rip with a mouth like that, bird-back,” the Lyran snarled.
“What are you selling?” Maeve asked.
“Vanora White.”
“Give it to me!”
The Lyran reached into her pocket and pulled out a plastic-wrapped bundle about the size and shape of a human’s finger. Maeve grabbed for the package, but the other woman snatched it away. She extended her empty paw, leathery pads turned up.
“Color first, bird-back,” she said. “Two hundred cen.”
Cen was short for cenmarks, nicknamed color for the brightly hued chip denominations. Maeve’s jaw clenched. A hundred cenmarks would have been outlandish, but she needed the White and had admitted as much. Maeve dug two squares of red plastic from her pocket and thrust them into the Lyran’s paw. The dealer examined them for a moment, then nodded and gave up her goods. Maeve took the bundle with shaking hands.
“Hardly a pleasure, but you have my thanks,” she said by way of farewell.
The wolfin girl spat onto the sancrete as Maeve left and turned one of the plastic coins over in her paws. Did she wonder how a fairy had come by that much money? Maeve doubted the dealer really cared. She was probably already thinking about catching a pounceball game up on Level Five or perhaps scoring some chems of her own.
Maeve hurried away and managed to restrain herself — barely — long enough to find a darkened alcove a few dirty blocks from the Ixthian clinic. She turned down the narrow alley and crouched behind a rusted trash bin. Dusty windows stared blankly at her; flat glass eyes blind to her indiscretion.
Biting her lip, Maeve unwound the needle and tossed the wrapping away, off into the rest of the trash, then held up her purchase for inspection. The substance inside — barely visible through the plastic cylinder — was the color of tar. This drug was named Vanora White for the blank, pure white stupor that it induced, not its actual appearance.
There were better delivery devices than this, high-tech coreworlder medical equipment that could pump the Vanora White right into Maeve’s bloodstream without even breaking the skin. But this was just a cheap hypodermic needle. No Ixthian would ever have touched the thing and Maeve knew that sticking it into her arm was a terrible idea.
Maeve pulled a fraying piece of twilight purple silk from her pocket and knotted it awkwardly around her upper arm with one hand. The scarf had come with her all the way from the White Kingdom, one of the colorful windings she used to wear under her glass armor. Long ago, when Maeve was still a knight…
She gripped the cloth tight in her teeth and flexed her fingers rhythmically, watching for the telltale dark bulge of a vein beneath her pale skin. There. Maeve’s hands trembled with anticipation and she fumbled the syringe.
“You’ve got it tied too far up.”
His voice came from above, punctuated by the sharp click of a gun safety being turned off. It was a sound Maeve had come to know very well. She looked up, heart racing.
Logan Coldhand was already too close, just outside the reach of Maeve’s wings, his gun drawn and leveled at her. She recognized the weapon: his Talon-9 laser pistol, with its long refraction barrel, deadly in both power and accuracy even at great distance. And at this range, Maeve would never survive a hit if Coldhand pulled the trigger.
The gun and its owner were both Prian, forged on the same world as Tiberius. Coldhand had the same blue eyes and strong accent as Maeve’s captain, but the similarities ended there. Tiberius Myles was built as thick and wide as an auroch, but Coldhand was smaller, more like a mountain cat. The bounty hunter couldn’t have been long into his twenties — less than half Tiberius’ age — but his eyes had an icy hardness that even the old man’s stern gaze somehow lacked.
Coldhand’s dark blond hair was damp against the back of his neck. He smelled of sweat and his chest was heaving. The bounty hunter was fit and well-muscled; he must have run hard to catch Maeve here. He was dressed in plain, utilitarian clothes that would neither stand out in a crowd nor impede him on a chase. But Maeve had known Logan Coldhand even from their first meeting by his namesake.
The right hand gripping his Talon-9 was unremarkable enough, if steadier than most. But Coldhand’s left gleamed unnaturally in the dim light of Level Seven. From the elbow down, his arm and hand had been replaced by metal — silvery nanostructured titanium and scarred gray illonium plating. The cybernetics looked as much like a hand as a mask did like a face. Coldhand could have worn longer sleeves or a pair gloves to conceal it, Maeve supposed, but he never did.
“You should not be here,” Maeve hissed. “Gripper said that you were light-years behind us.”
Coldhand’s finger tightened on the trigger of his gun. Maeve wasn’t frightened. She was ready for whatever verse came next in her song… but she had no intention of making it easy for the hunter. Maeve flipped the needle in her hand and closed her fingers in a tight fist around it. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but Maeve had nothing else. Not here, at least.
“You flew away from an old pod programmed with my Raptor’s transponder signal,” Coldhand said. “I’ve been on Axis for three days, Cavainna. Your ship always comes back here, sooner or later.”
“Why chase me across the Alliance when you can simply wait here?” Maeve asked. “Well planned.”
“Yes,” Logan agreed.
His accented voice remained flat. Coldhand never gloated.
Maeve let herself go deceptively limp, sagging into the side of the alleyway in apparent defeat. Let Coldhand think that he had won, that she had finally given up the chase. Maeve curled her wings against the nearest building and waited.
Coldhand took the bait. Or maybe he saw the trap and just didn’t care. He stepped in closer and Maeve lunged at the bounty hunter, using her long wings to push off the wall. Maeve slammed her small body into Coldhand as hard as she could. When he staggered, she raised the needle and stabbed it at his eyes. Coldhand brought up his cybernetic arm to protect his face and Maeve’s needle struck harmlessly against the metal. The impact jarred her fingers and she gasped in pain.
But by protecting his face, Coldhand had exposed his stomach. Maeve jabbed her elbow into his abdomen and then punched him in the jaw. Coldhand fell back again, red blood blooming at the corner of his mouth. The Arcadian leapt, trying to catch enough air under her wings to fly up and away. But Coldhand recovered his balance and bounded toward Maeve, lashing out with a hard kick. It landed against one of her wings and Maeve crumpled to the alley floor once more. Her remaining wing barely turned aside a punch from the hunter’s cybernetic hand, but Maeve was too slow to avoid the second. She took the blow on her ribs and sucked in a wounded hiss of breath.
“Use that Aes-be-stilled gun and end this,” Maeve groaned.
“You’re worth twice as much alive,” said Coldhand.
The Talon-9 was on his hip, reholstered at some unnoticed moment and never fired. Maeve launched herself at the bounty hunter once more. Coldhand’s glacial blue eyes were impassive as he kicked low, sweeping Maeve’s legs out from under her. She rolled away and jumped to her feet again just before he could bring a crushing boot down on her wing. Coldhand drove her back with a pair of high kicks, landing another metal-plated punch as she stumbled into the graffitied wall.
Maeve caught herself against the trash bin and pulled her wings protectively around her body. When Coldhand battered aside the meager shield, Maeve was ready. While he was half-blinded by feathers, she ripped the syringe along his stomach and pushed down the plunger. The needle tore through Coldhand’s shirt and left a narrow gash in the flesh beneath. Red blood and black Vanora White oozed across his skin. Had any of the White found its way into his blood? Probably not much, but the drug was a strong one. Coldhand would still be asleep in this alley long after Maeve had returned to the Blue Phoenix.
She leapt up, beating her wings hard, and managed to push herself into the air. But Maeve’s injured wings buckled under the strain and she fell, landing awkwardly on top of the trash bin. Coldhand pressed one palm against his bleeding stomach and looked down at the streaks of black and red with clinical detachment. Without changing expression, he bounded toward Maeve, caught the toe of his boot on a corroded groove and vaulted up onto the trash bin.
Maeve staggered back until she felt only air under her probing feet. Cornered, she dove off the bin into a wing-tucked roll that carried her out of the alley and onto the sidewalk. Coldhand gave chase, following Maeve into the street. Sweat streamed down his face and blood ran across his stomach, but he showed no signs of stopping.
“That White should have put you to sleep,” Maeve gasped. “Its effects rival a night after delberry wine!”
“Vanora White slows the heart,” Coldhand said, touching his metal fingers against his chest. “It doesn’t work on me.”
What did that mean? Maeve didn’t understand. But then something smashed into her from the side, bowling her over. Maeve realized almost too late that it wasn’t Coldhand. The bounty hunter had stopped in the mouth of the alleyway, blue eyes narrowed in suspicion as Maeve hit the ground.
Someone else had collided with Maeve, pulling her down into a tangle of clumsy arms and legs. The fairy threw her wings around the stranger and they tumbled together along the road. Her wings took the worst of the fall, but they were fragile and already injured. Maeve winced and drew a breath to scream at whoever was stupid enough to run right into the middle of an earnest battle.
“By Anslin!” Maeve swore instead.
It was a girl. She kicked in instinctive fear at Maeve’s wings, forcing the fairy to release her thrashing burden as gently as she could. The girl was a Dailon, with bruised blue skin smeared in dirt, and wide black eyes. But unlike the dockmaster, there was no question as to this Dailon’s sex. Despite her thin limbs, her body was curved and full-breasted. Only the hormones of childbearing could change a Dailon like that. She clasped her hands protectively over her round belly.
The Dailon stared up at Maeve and Coldhand with stark terror, but didn’t recoil. The girl was afraid of them, yes, but she was more afraid of something else. She pushed herself to her knees and held her hands out to Maeve.
“Help me!” she cried. “Please, they’ll take my baby!”
Coldhand had moved no closer, still standing some distance away and slowly drawing his laser pistol. He watched the girl and Maeve could read nothing of the hunter’s thoughts on his hard face. She stood gingerly — her bruised ribs protesting loudly — and pulled the Dailon to her feet.
“What?” Maeve asked. “Who would take your child?”
“My Sisters,” the girl answered, still clutching at Maeve’s hand. “Please, they’re coming! Don’t let them find me!”
Maeve glanced at Coldhand. The bounty hunter stared at her for a moment and then nodded curtly toward the alleyway they had just tumbled out of.
“Back here,” he said.
Cradling her unborn baby, the girl followed Coldhand’s instruction. He beckoned her behind the trash bin where he found Maeve only minutes ago.
“Now stay low and stay quiet,” Coldhand told her. “Don’t move until I tell you to. You’ll be safe.”
Coldhand’s tone was unexpectedly soft and soothing. The girl nodded and huddled behind the trash, obedient as a gentled colt. She bit her lip and her huge black eyes shone with frightened tears.
Maeve heard voices and looked up. There were people shouting in the street and they were approaching quickly.
“Kessa, come here! Come on home, girl!”
The owners of the voices came into view — a dozen women, all dressed in rough, bright outfits. Each of them wore a red band of cloth around their right arm, painted with an upward-pointing black triangle, and brandished nanoknives in their hands or on their belts. The surface of the blades swam with colors like oil on water as programmed nanites busily maintained the weapons’ molecule-fine edge. The women swaggered down the sidewalk, calling and laughing to one another. Sky and ground cars raced past the armed gang, not slowing down until they vanished safely into the distance.
Maeve almost fell again as Coldhand leaned against the graffiti-caked wall and pulled her on top of him. The bounty hunter thrust his Talon pistol into her hand.
“Rape me,” he whispered, urgent but not panicked.
“What?” Maeve gasped. “Are you mad?”
“Do it. Quickly.”
The women were strutting down the road and would be close enough to see down the alleyway in seconds. Maeve took the Talon-9 and jammed the barrel up under Coldhand’s chin. With a sharp jerk, she finished the work of her first needle slash and tore off the Prian’s already ripped shirt.
Maeve stared. A stark white scar ran down the center of Coldhand’s chest, as wide as two of Maeve’s fingers and as long as her hand. There was no way he could have survived such an injury. Whatever had struck Coldhand there must have gone right through his heart.
Cold hand, cold heart… That was what he meant about the Vanora White, when he said that the drug didn’t work on him. That arm wasn’t the only part of Logan Coldhand that had been replaced. His heart was cybernetic, too, a machine. The hunter caught Maeve staring and narrowed his ice-colored eyes.
“Cavainna,” he said.
Maeve shook herself and stood up on her toes to grab Coldhand by the throat. The alleyway was suddenly full of raucous laughter and jeering cheers as the women saw them and stopped in the road. The gang held their nanoknives aloft and howled at Maeve in vicious approval. A tall Ixthian missing three fingers on her knife hand whistled.
“Don’t bleed him just yet,” she said, smirking at Coldhand. The Prian turned his face away and made an impressive show of looking ashamed. “Lose too much and he won’t do you any good, eh?”
“Damn, you like ’em ugly, don’t you?” a human woman asked. She thrust her hips suggestively. “How much of that boy is metal?”
Maeve forced herself to smile. “Nothing will remain when I am done, metal or not.”
“Just be sure to clean up when you’re finished,” the Ixthian said. Her eyes glittered red. “Don’t make me come find you later, little bird-back.”
Maeve nodded. She ran the barrel of Coldhand’s gun down along his chest and prayed that no one actually wanted to see a show today. But the women laughed and hooted, making obscene gestures at Maeve. Coldhand watched her from the corners of eyes slit nearly shut as she reached for the waist of his pants.
“Let’s go,” the Ixthian said at last. She raised her voice. “Kessa! Where are you, girl?”
Taking up their leader’s call, the gang of women continued off down the road. Maeve held her breath until their voices faded into the rush and growl of traffic. Finally, she stepped back from Coldhand. But Maeve kept the gun pressed against his stomach.
“Ja’hiraa ilvae,” she said. It would be so simple.
The Sisters would say nothing if Maeve left a dead body here. There would be no witnesses. For a year, Coldhand had hunted her. Thousands of cenmarks poured into nanite surgery, days guarded in a hospital bed for the injuries that this man had lavished on her… But he had never captured Maeve, never killed her.
There was another scar on Coldhand’s chest, smaller than the one over his heart — a slender white line across his ribs. That was hers, a bloody slash Maeve had cut into the hunter’s side early in their chase. Coldhand had nearly as many scars from their battles as Maeve did.
It could all be over right now. Maeve tightened her trembling finger on the laser’s trigger. All she had to do was adjust her aim a little and then…
Maeve flipped the gun in her hand and offered the grip out to Coldhand. He took the Talon and quickly thrust it back into the holster on his belt, then turned to the alleyway.
“They’re gone,” he said.
The girl, Kessa, tumbled from her hiding place. She lurched forward and threw her arms around them both, sobbing in barely coherent thanks.
“Those women are still canvassing the area,” Coldhand said.
Maeve nodded in curt agreement. “We cannot leave the girl here. She is still in danger.”
“I’m not letting you out of my sight, Cavainna.”
Hunter and prey stared at each other, eyes narrowed — his ice blue and hers steel gray, both hard and unforgiving. Their fight might have been interrupted, but it was not forgotten.
