From the Ashes Read online

  “Earth…” The word slipped through his teeth.

  Yosh had never seen such a vivid representation of a planet. The smugglers only showed him navigational data, geometric representations, Lagrange points, satellites, and orbits, but they’d never shown him a planet as seen from outer space. It was as splendid as Assai. His grandfather hadn’t exaggerated in all his ramblings. It was a jewel, a blue pearl in the depths of a black ocean. But why keep this hidden? Why hadn’t he shared all this with Yosh? He despised him for a moment, but soon his anger passed, replaced by awe. Yosh spent over half an hour poking and tapping at the poster, turning the planet over on all sides and watching the sun glinting off its blue seas and oceans. He needed to go there, he knew it now. This was his ache, his need, the emptiness he hadn’t been able to name.

  Yosh sat at the tiny terminal next. What else has grandfather been hiding from me? The terminal was half as long and wide as Yosh’s forearm, black and white like the rest of the equipment in the room. He found a tiny spherical symbol embossed on the back of the screen. It was abundantly present on everything in the room, like a stamp of approval: a shield with the image of Earth—the crest of the Order of Protectors of the Earth—he knew it from his books. And black and white were the colors of their order.

  It took a while, but he found the familiar bump on the surface of the terminal and ran his thumb over it. It came to life with the expected high-pitched electronic squeal. Please wait, read an on-screen message in English as the terminal booted.

  Yosh let it do its thing and wandered off to a six-foot-high glass box hidden behind a bookshelf brimming with old books. He pushed the bookshelf aside and studied at the box. A black and white suit lay inside on display. It looked like the assault suits the smugglers wore on missions, only better. Yosh opened the lid. The armor looked heavy, but after taking one of the suit’s gauntlets, Yosh realized it was as light as if made of plastic. The Protector crest was etched across the chest, large, crisp, and so fresh, you’d think the suit was new. Yosh wanted to try the glove on, but it seemed smaller than his own hand.

  Curiosity won, and he plunged his hand right in. It got stuck halfway through the gauntlet. The thing was too small. The gauntlet beeped twice and adjusted in size until Yosh’s hand pushed fit all the way in. He flexed his fingers and now it felt more comfortable than anything Yosh had ever worn. Like he didn’t even wear a glove.

  Yosh swallowed bitterly, and removed the glove. What was this? Some dream or cruel prank? He stepped back from the glass box, glove still in hand. Yosh was good at putting pieces together, but this was too hard to believe. He wanted to believe what his mind told him—it would be the greatest thing ever to happen to him—but was it couldn’t be real, could it?

  The computer terminal beeped. Protector database successfully loaded, read the screen.

  Yosh’s knees turned to mush. “Great Void…” He collapsed on the chair near the desk. What have I gotten myself into?

  Blip. blip. blip.

  The sound came from somewhere close. Yosh shook his head to snap out of his reverie. A sudden fear his grandfather would return early and find him here overcame Yosh. His head swam. No wonder Skrill and the others ran when grandfather came, he thought. No wonder Obelyn’s face turned milk white when grandfather threatened him.

  Blip. blip. blip.

  “Where’s that coming from?” Yosh yelled, looking around frantically. Then he saw it. It was the Protector glove. An LED on the wrist blinked red and blipped. “Blast it.”

  Chapter Six

  Few things still boggled Mikail’s mind these days. Bluffs, double bluffs, traps within traps—he understood and saw through them. But this, this was either madness or desperation, or the universe playing one of its lovely, cruel jokes again. He sat stiff in his chair, in his darkened office, watching the screen in front of him. It was impossible that that wretched wreck of a man on screen could still lie to him; impossible to build such an elaborate trap. Wasn’t it? Coincidence. It could be nothing else.

  Mikail cupped his hands in front of him and rested his chin against them. The man was delirious, misshapen, scarred, wild-eyed. Most men would have taken their own lives, but there Jack stood after ten difficult years. He talked to the ghosts in his mind, winced at imaginary pains, and laughed at non-existent jokes. Mikhail’s underlings didn’t even have to put much effort and imagination into his torture anymore. His broken psyche did a better job. Mikail had dug into Jack’s mind and body until he was certain the man could hide nothing. But perhaps his certainty was misplaced. Could he afford to take the chance? Jack was Olexander’s son. He had underestimated Olexander before and paid a hefty price for it.

  Mikail sighed and rubbed away the soreness in his eyes. Elaborate trap or not, Mikhail was a man of action. Madcap Jack, as he had gotten fond of calling him, had spurted out the location of his father and son after ten years. Did Jack reach his limit or did he think, after all this time, his son and grandfather might have moved? Had Olexander and Jack agreed to move hideouts after a certain number of years?

  Two weeks had passed since Jack broke, and Mikail’s flagship was ready for a blitz mission now. But an insistent trickle of doubt coursed through his mind. He looked to another screen, his old Protector console, unused for half a century, yet still operational. More than operational. It beeped with a Protector distress signal not heard since the days of the Great War. He checked the coordinates of the source again, and it matched what Madcap Jack told him. This was convenient, very convenient, too convenient.

  Mikail slammed a fist against the table. Blast that old scoundrel Olexander, playing with his mind like this! Trap or not, something of interest was on Mandessa. He would untangle this twisted mystery, but he needed to go in prepared. No trap would beat him, not even one of Olexander’s.

  He tapped a console on his desk. “Commander Kagos, the mission is approved,” he said. “Take an advance force to Mandessa immediately. I will follow with the flagship. Your targets are two humans, two Protectors. They are there. Find them! Treat everyone as hostiles. I do not care about the others, just bring me the Protectors. Alive.”

  ◆◆◆

  A wall of transparent steel separated Sabina from Luna’s rarefied atmosphere. She stood naked in the darkness of the lavish hotel room where her latest mission had just ended. A sticky, thin layer of blood coated her arms and part of her chest and face. She had been careful not to let it get in her hair—she always was. She could have avoided getting sprayed altogether, but she made a habit of remaining at the scene until her victim’s blood cooled and dried on her skin. A bad habit, one that might get her killed, but it only made it more exciting.

  The blue pearl stared at her from above. It beckoned to her from the deep blackness where it hung. Sabina raised a bloody hand and placed it on the see-through wall. She wanted to touch Earth, to feel it, but she felt only the dull, transparent steel and the dead man’s sticky blood. She tapped the wall thrice, and it switched to privacy mode. Seeing Earth brought up feelings Sabina would rather ignore.

  Footsteps clanged outside the room. They rang across the corridor and bounced off the walls. She had flung her small purse on the leather armchair in the middle of the room. She reached it in less than a second, and pulled out a short knife, barely four inches long, and a small blaster. She hid the knife behind her back in her right hand, and pointed the blaster toward the door with her left. The Gremlin only carried three shots, but she always brought it because security systems couldn’t detect it. From the footsteps, she judged there was only one person in the corridor—a man. She’d only been wrong about these things once, on her first mission, but she was ready. If there were more than one, Sabina could drop four of them before they even aimed at her. The rest, she’d rip their throats out, like she had done the man sprawled on the king-sized bed.

  She stepped to the side, so the hallway lights wouldn’t blind her. The door slid open and Sabina’s muscles tensed. Any man would first be struck by her
nakedness, then by the excessive amount of blood covering her. She estimated a well-trained and experienced security guard needed at least three seconds to figure out she was a deadly threat—two seconds too long. Her finger twitched, but she didn’t pull the trigger—just an old man leaning on a cane. The light from the corridor shone through his short white hair, giving it a golden glow.

  “Put that toy down, girl,” the old man said, his voice steady, “and put away whatever you’re holding behind you. I know you’re right handed.”

  Sabina smiled as she recognized the voice. “Grandfather? What are you doing here? I’m on a mission. How did you find me?”

  Her grandfather tapped his cane against the wall behind him and the lights turned on. He wore a black business suit, in the latest Luna fashion, with a white shirt underneath and a black-and-white striped bowtie around his neck. Her grandfather had winter in his hair and in his short cropped beard, and his eyes were as blue as Earth’s oceans. He smiled a crooked smile and cocked an eyebrow as if in answer to her question.

  She relaxed and lowered the blaster. Of course he found me, she thought. He’s a 132-year-old Protector. “It’s good to see you.” She flung the Gremlin on the leather armchair and strolled over to hug him, still bloody and still naked.

  He raised a hand, and she stopped halfway. “You’re still as wicked as I left you, aren’t you?”

  She knew what bothered him. She watched him carefully ever since he entered. Not once did his eyes wander below her neck, despite the splendor of her naked body, even covered in blood as it was. If his eyes strayed for even a moment, Sabina would kill him on the spot.

  “It’s me. No need for more tests,” he said. “Now clean yourself and get dressed. We must leave.” Her grandfather barely looked fifty, despite the useless walking cane he used as part of his disguise.

  She nodded and went to the other side of the room where her target’s body still drained in the huge velvet bed. Sabina entered the bathroom through a double archway. It was all white marble and was as large as the main room—jacuzzi, bathtub, shower—a family of five could live here. It was nothing like the slums where she grew up. She had nothing but disgust and contempt for her high-profile targets.

  “Must you use this barbaric method of killing?” her grandfather asked from beyond the archway. “You know how dreadful I find it.”

  She tapped the faucet and hot water soaked her red hands. “It’s not that I enjoy it, grandfather. It’s just my trademark.”

  “A foolish thing for assassins to have. A quick and silent death is an assassin’s true trademark.”

  She had heard those same words a hundred times before, but she enjoyed being known and feared. “My name and reputation keep me alive in Luna’s underground.” The sink turned pink, but her hands and chest were clean.

  “Yes… Hmm, Sabina the Slasher. Your reputation could very well be your undoing.”

  She stepped out of the bathroom. Her grandfather stood at the foot of the bed, his deep eyes reviewing the spectacle of her latest kill. Sabina didn’t give the body a second look. She strolled past her grandfather toward the pile of clothes dumped well away from the bed. He’s worried, she thought. He thinks I’m enjoying this too much. She donned her black stockings and her skimpy undergarments and smiled to herself. They were black and white. She only just realized it. Grandfather’s favorite non-colors. She pulled on a short skirt and a white shirt with a generous allotment for her cleavage. “What was so important you came to see me during a mission?”

  He turned all at once, fixing her with his eyes. “The time is near, Sabina.”

  Sabina’s heart caught in her throat. For a few seconds she didn’t understand his meaning. She had waited for years and she knew scores of people waiting for even longer. “Is he… have you told him?”

  “Not yet. He’s still a boy with thick glasses and boils on his skin.”

  Sabina smoothed the black jacket she wore over her shirt and ran a hand through her short, dark curls. “So what’s the point if he doesn’t know?”

  “I glimpsed into your brother’s heart recently. A sylosian had been bullying him for months, beating him sometimes. Then, a few days ago, there was an incident between the arkanian guards and the sylosian, ending with the latter weeping and being tortured. Your brother would have jumped at the arkanians to save the sylosian if I hadn’t been there.”

  “Half brother. We don’t have the same mother, remember?” Sabina corrected him. “And he sounds more like a fool than a Protector to me.”

  “He is his father’s son. He will lead the rebellion when I am gone, and he will free Earth. And you will keep him alive until he does. Do you understand?”

  Sabina’s nose twitched involuntarily. “Father’s son or not, you’re the leader of this rebellion, an unofficial leader to an unofficial rebellion, but it doesn’t matter. You’ve led it so far. Why pass it on to him? He doesn’t understand what’s going on.”

  “I’ve made a mess of things, my girl,” he said, his eyes cast down. “I don’t have what’s necessary.”

  “What are you talking about? You’re the best. There’s no one more skilled and better suited for—”

  “You’re not listening!” He came close and clasped a strong hand on her shoulder. “It’s not about skill, it’s about heart. I would have left that sylosian filth to suffer and die. I wanted him to die. Him and the rest of his sylosian hoard. Them and the lorrans, and the belth, and the carasins, and every other race that betrayed Earth. I would see them all burn, do you understand?” He took his hand away, but she still felt the ghosts of his fingers digging into her flesh. “I’m a spiteful old man. The rebellion must not be lead by someone like me. Hate won’t unite everyone against the arkanians, but your brother will. And you will keep him alive until he does. Now, do you understand?”

  Her grandfather’s tone left room for only one answer. His outburst had been unexpected and had shaken her more than she wanted to admit. Sabina lowered her eyes. “Yes, grandfather.”

  Blip. blip. blip.

  Sabina looked around. What was that sound? She had never heard it before. She looked toward the dead man. Some sort of delayed alarm calling his guards? It took two seconds to scan the room and confirm the sound didn’t come from any hidden niche or corner.

  Blip. blip. blip.

  Sabina looked at her grandfather. His face had turned as white as his beard. He stared wide-eyed at his cane. A small red light flashed beneath the white ivory handle.

  Blip. blip. blip.

  “What’s that?”

  His sinewy jaw clenched beneath his ruffled white beard. “Trouble.”

  ◆◆◆

  Dreams of weapon fire and shrieks of terror woke Yosh. His head sprang up. He had fallen asleep in the chamber under his grandfather’s office. Something sticky and hot oozed across his forehead. He wiped the yellowish substance off on his rough sleeve. The small computer terminal still displayed the record from the archives he was reading. “June 21st 2199,” the large headline read, “Earth government officially acknowledges the existence of the Order of the Protectors of the Earth!”

  Yosh rose from the chair and studied his arm. His forearm throbbed where his forehead had rested. Some of the boils had split open and spilled the yellow-white puss covering his forehead. For a moment, the screams from his dream returned. They couldn’t be real, right?

  What time is it? Did I sleep too long? My shift! The heard! “Blast, if I’m late they’ll throw me in the Pits”. And if a visit to the dark, dank, disgusting cells of the Pits wasn’t bad enough, it also meant no more piloting the Archibald on Captain Dupont’s mission. Yosh gulped. Skrill was in the Pits.

  He snapped the terminal shut, put the interactive poster of Earth in the same position he found it, stars and nebulae and all, and put the Protector glove in its proper place. He had turned off the blipping fast—under a minute.

  Muffled screams and low rattling and thudding resounded from outside. They were faint,
but definitely real. Something bad was happening. Yosh stumbled as he climbed the steps, hurrying to return to the surface. Once in his grandfather’s office, the smell of smoke pinched his nose. He saw daylight coming through the small rectangular window on the wall. “Great Void, I’m so late.” Why hadn’t they come for him? He overslept before, and a guard came and dragged Yosh from his bed. It took his grandfather’s entire bag of tricks and a sly tongue to get the old arkanian guard not to throw Yosh in the Pits. They cut their rations to half for an entire month, but they didn’t care. Perhaps they searched while he was in the secret room? No, the entrance had been open. Yosh’s hands shook at the prospect. If either Mazak or Lorzak found him with all that Protector technology they would execute him on the spot.

  Yosh struggled to push his grandfather’s desk into its original position, but the thing wouldn’t budge. He strained against it until his back and shoulders ached, and it left him huffing for air. He slid to the floor, back propped against the desk and sniffed at the faint trace of smoke coming from outside. Why haven’t they come? Smoke, screams, gunshots, what’s happening?

  He banged the back of his head against the desk. “Come on you useless piece of tin, close!” The desk blipped and slipped from behind Yosh. The floor rose sharply, slamming against the back of Yosh’s head. Voice commands, he thought as he lay on his back, rubbing his head, wonderful. He groaned and pushed himself to his feet. He made sure everything was precisely as he’d found it and locked the office.