The Dragons of Andromeda Read online

  These rebels were laying especially low. No electronic signals from communications or other equipment. Nothing to give their position away. They didn’t want to be found, certainly not by the human occupiers.

  Unfortunately, KB-8E was not a human. He was a killbot designed to track and destroy.

  Covered in emitters that mimicked the surroundings, giving him near-perfect camouflage, KB-8E lurked just outside the camp, watching the Draconians through spectra far outside human or Draconian perception.

  The robot knelt behind the bush-like flora. His body, the surfaces reflecting an image of the bush, was armored and capable of withstanding both projectiles and energy weapons. On a spindly neck, KB-8E’s head didn’t have a face except for a bundle of sensors, all different sized, used to analyze a range of inputs including visual, sound, and even smells. It was precisely the latter that helped KB-8E find the separatist camp due to the Draconians’ particularly poor hygiene. Lastly, beside the bundle of sensors was a large red lens, the business end of a particle beam accelerator.

  Taking aim, the killbot fired an invisible ray of subatomic particles at a separatist standing guard. The beam passed neatly through the Draconian’s chest, turning his heart and other internal organs into freshly warmed soup. Not aware he was dying until he was already dead, he dropped where he stood without making a sound.

  KB-8E leapt from his hiding place and landed several yards away in the center of the camp where most of the other rebels were sleeping. Starting with the closest, the killbot began punching a Drac in the upper chest. With each punch, a long bayonet blade extended from the robot’s wrist, piercing the victim before retracting again as the arm pulled away. In this fashion, the killbot repeatedly skewered the Draconian until moving on to the next one.

  By the time KB-8E reached the fourth rebel, the remaining three were sufficiently aware the night had gone terribly wrong that they reached for their weapons. The robot jumped over their heads, landing behind them. KB-8E drove his blades into their spines, killing them one by one. Although the emitters on the robot’s frame attempted to keep mimicking the surroundings, they were covered by a thick and sticky layer of blood, making camouflage difficult.

  When the last of the rebels was dead, the killbot stopped and surveyed the scene.

  Although everyone was satisfactorily eliminated, the robot’s scan noted his intended target was not present. This disappointment was magnified when a projectile, fired from long range, pierced KB-8E’s neck, the only part of his body that was not armored with ballistic mesh. The killbot’s head popped into the air before landing, upside down, at the feet of one of the dead Draconians.

  Magnus Black left the high-powered sniper rifle with the rest of his gear and walked into the rebels’ camp. He leveled his flashlight on each of the Draconian bodies, or what was left of them, until he was satisfied General Ekavir wasn’t present.

  The beam of light landed on the killbot’s head, the severed neck pointing up. Cut off from the body’s main power supply, the particle gun was no longer operational, but Magnus kept out of his line of fire just in case.

  “Even for a killbot,” he said, “that’s some impressive carnage.”

  A light on the robot’s head blinked. “Thank you.”

  “My contact told me General Ekavir was at this camp,” Magnus added.

  “I, too, was hunting the general.”

  “Did Colonel Grausman send you?”

  “Indeed.”

  “Me too.”

  “Then why did you shoot me?” the killbot asked.

  “I don’t like robots,” Magnus replied. After a pause, “What do they call you?”

  “Unit KB-8E.”

  “Not a proper name like Robert or Cuddles?”

  “No.”

  With a shrug, Magnus turned and started to walk away.

  “Are you leaving me like this?” the killbot called after him.

  Magnus looked over his shoulder. The light on the robot’s head was still blinking in the darkness.

  “I was thinking about it,” he said.

  “How do you intend to find General Ekavir now?” KB-8E asked.

  “Well, you’ve killed all the Dracs that might’ve told me where he was, so I guess I’m not really sure.”

  “I tracked this group of separatists with my sensor suite. Using it again, I am confident I could find the general’s new camp.”

  “I think your mission’s over, bottle cap.”

  “If you repair me,” the robot went on, “I can assist you.”

  Magnus shook his head. “Sorry, I work alone.”

  “As do I,” the robot replied, “but a temporary partnership would be mutually beneficial.”

  Magnus faced the robot, cocking his head to the side so he could see the killbot roughly right-side up.

  “Fine,” he said.

  Chapter Three

  Beyond the borders of the Imperium, the Talion Republic was a nation of star systems collectively settled by a race called the Tals. In one of these systems, farther out than the rest, the planet Isyium was the home of a single colony surrounded by outlying farms that took advantage of the rich soil and mild climate. On one of these farms, a young Tal left a shed where he had retrieved a sonic spanner for his father who was repairing a tractor out in the neighboring field.

  Like many farmers, his family was poor and he himself was dressed in worn pants and a shirt caked with dirt. His body was covered in fine scales of a bright orange. He had deep-set eyes above high cheekbones and his pointed ears extended straight outward from the side of his hairless head. Typical of the Tals, the boy also had a long ridge running along the top of his skull.

  Emerging from the darkened shed into the sunlight, the boy stopped at the sound of a sonic boom that shook the walls of the building. Several small ships, each painted in red and black, flew overhead, followed by another craft, this one painted orange. The boy recognized the latter as a Talion fighter, but the other ones were completely foreign to him.

  His father was running at full tilt toward him, the dust from the field rising around his feet. He was waving his arms and shouting, even before the boy could hear what he was saying. When he got close enough, the sound resonated in the boy’s ears.

  “K’thonians!” his father yelled.

  His father ran past him to the main house. When he returned, he held a gauss rifle they kept behind the stove. The boy’s mother stood in the doorway, watching the father run back.

  “Get inside with your mother,” the boy’s father said.

  “What’s happening?” the boy replied, but his father kept going until reaching a stone wall that bordered the field.

  The boy’s mother was calling, but he couldn’t move, mesmerized by his father holding up the rifle and firing at some unseen target.

  Some of the crops, golden and nearly ready for harvest, began burning and the smoke drifted back toward the shed and the house. The boy struggled to see what his father was firing at, but soot in the air stung his eyes.

  From the field came a sound like lightning and the boy felt a static charge crawling over his scales. He took a step toward his father as he heard the noise again. This time, he saw a bolt of electricity, blue-white fingers branching in all directions, strike his father in the chest. His father writhed in pain and fell, dropping the rifle.

  On the other side of the wall, a figure came from the field. It was tall, with dull purple skin and a long, squid-like head from which two large eyes, solid red, peered underneath heavy, angry brows. Where its nose should have been, squirming tendrils coiled and twitched. It wore priestly robes of deep purple and a sash covered with archaic lettering. Standing there, the K’thonian stared at the boy with hatred in its eyes as a pair of vestigial wings, crude and leathery, unfurled on its back.

  The boy froze, his arms and legs like stone.

  Staring into the K’thonian’s eyes, the boy felt the creature reaching into his mind and, at the same time, he could see into the creat
ure’s own thoughts.

  He saw a field of stars, each point of light dimming and then going out. When all was black, the sky became an ocean of dark water, the waves crashing over him. He sank deeper, the cold seeping into his flesh and bones, and in the murky depths, an ancient city of coral-encrusted stones appeared at the bottom. From this city, something was emerging, a shape beyond understanding except abject horror. The form grew closer and larger, but before it reached the boy, the young Tal’s eyes opened into blinding light.

  It was the sky.

  “Are you alright?” his mother asked.

  Lying on the ground, the boy sat up. Beside him, next to where his mother stood with the gauss rifle, the K’thonian’s corpse lay still, purple ooze bubbling from a hole in the side of its head.

  Lord Rupert Tagus II was the patriarch of the Tagus family, one of the Five Families. Living in semi-retirement in the West End district of Regalis, he was a man in his late sixties with thinning gray hair and a white beard with a few strands of black from an earlier time. Sitting in the parlor of his mansion built in the Victorian style, Lord Tagus offered a tray of cookies to the woman in the leather chair across from him. The rest of the room was dimly lit except for a fireplace burning nearby.

  “No, thank you,” she said politely.

  “Shall I call you Captain or Lady Nasri?” the old man asked, returning the tray to the coffee table beside them.

  “I think Lady is more appropriate these days,” Nasri replied.

  “You know, in the navy they would call you by both. My son, Rupert the Third, was addressed as Lord Captain Tagus.”

  “I’m probably too old for a commission,” she said.

  Lord Tagus laughed dryly.

  “I suppose you are,” he said. “Have they calculated your age, actually?”

  “It’s impolite to ask a woman’s age,” she replied, “especially when she’s over fifteen hundred years old.”

  “To be fair, you were asleep most of that time.”

  “So I’m told.”

  A butlerbot entered and removed the tray of cookies, leaving the two humans alone again in the orange glow of the firelight.

  “Have you heard much about my son?” the senior Tagus asked.

  “Somewhat,” Nasri said cautiously. “There was some trouble apparently...”

  Tagus nodded knowingly.

  “You might say that,” he said, his eyes blazing for a moment. “He never accepted the fact that I wasn’t selected as the emperor. You see, when a new emperor is required, the Five Families propose candidates and then vote on them. There’s a lot of intrigue involved, as you might imagine, with families forming alliances and such. My house and the Groen family are often paired, while the Augustus and Montros families are as well. House Veber often casts the deciding vote.”

  “So, the vote didn’t go your way?”

  “No, indeed. Hector Augustus became the new emperor and he’s ruled ever since.”

  “But your son didn’t respect the vote, I take it,” Nasri said.

  Tagus sighed as if tired.

  “He’s strong-willed, much like myself when I was younger,” he said, “and his tactics were... unsubtle, let’s say.”

  “I’m told he’s in exile.”

  “Perhaps for the rest of his life,” Tagus said.

  “I’m sorry,” Nasri replied, looking away from the old man and at the portraits along the wall behind him. Each showed a member of the Tagus family, some from several centuries ago.

  Lord Tagus leaned closer.

  “Do you know why I’ve asked you here, Lady Nasri?” he asked.

  “Not entirely, no,” she admitted.

  The old man pointed his finger, bony and wrinkled, at her.

  “When I first saw you,” he said, “I recognized someone with an understanding that most people lack. Unlike the majority who see opportunity, you have the courage to grab it with both hands! You know your place in history and want to make sure you have the power that comes with it!”

  Nasri crossed one leg over the other, a slight grin in the corner of her mouth.

  “I think I’d like that cookie now,” she said.

  At the insistence of the government, Captain Andre Santos found himself shopping for an estate in West End, something he never dreamed he would be doing.

  Of mixed heritage, Santos was born in the slums of Rio de Janeiro. As a boy, the Church became his refuge and he joined the seminary as a way out of poverty. However, he left by the time he was eighteen, disillusioned with the failings, as he saw it, of God and religion. He joined the Brazilian military, ultimately becoming a captain in the air force. This, too, became tiresome as the hierarchies of command and the tyranny of one corrupt government after another pushed him out of the country entirely. When the opportunity to fly a colony ship appeared, Santos jumped at the chance to leave not only Earth, but his entire past behind.

  Waking from cryogenic sleep, Santos could not believe that all the promise of their journey was gone in an instant. He recognized oppression when he saw it and couldn’t believe his eyes, now that his dreams of a new reality looked too much like the one he had left on Earth.

  “Of course, all of the appliances are stainless steel,” the realtorbot chirped proudly. Like a flying hat box, it hovered in a kitchen larger than the shack in which Santos was born.

  “Why?” Santos replied. “It’ll show every fingerprint...”

  The robot swept closer, balanced on its anti-gravity repulsor.

  “In my experience,” it said in a woman’s voice, “humans are indeed a greasy people.” The realtorbot continued into the dining room, adding “but you’ll have cleaningbots, so it shouldn’t be an issue I’m sure!”

  Santos followed behind, still wearing a simple shirt and pants, similar to the clothing he had worn for the televised interview. The government told him he’d need a crest and a set of colors to represent his new royal house, but he had no interest in any of that.

  “Did someone live here before?” he asked.

  The robot, traveling the length of an expansive dining table, stopped abruptly.

  “Yes, a nobleman from one of the minor families,” she said. “He bought a larger estate.”

  “What for?” he asked.

  “Apparently he was seeing too much of his wife and wanted something bigger.”

  After a pause, Santos said, “Was he descended from one of the colony ship crews?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you know which one?”

  “I’m afraid not,” the realtorbot admitted. “Would you like me to look it up for you?’

  “Forget it,” Santos replied with a wave of his hand. “A hundred people could live in this house...”

  The robot wobbled in midair.

  “I hardly think so, sir,” she said. “There’s only twenty-one bedrooms and ten and a half baths after all!”

  “Merda,” he sighed. “My mistake.”

  In the living room, on a video wall, a headline crawled across the screen:

  IN NEWS FROM THE CAPITAL,

  SEVEN MEMBERS OF A SUSPECTED NULL CULT

  WERE REPORTED MISSING FROM A LOCAL PARK.

  TUNE IN FOR MORE ON VOX NEWS!

  Addressing the robot, Santos asked, “What’s a Null Cult?”

  He appeared, but no one knew precisely how. Above the planet Lokeren, no new ships had arrived and no gravcars or ocean cruisers had landed on the Veber’s island estate. Standing in the entrance hall, he was not dressed like a local. He wore brown vestments and carried a tall, wooden staff of spiraled wood, topped with a skull. He was also not human. His skin was gray and chalky like bleached bones and his eyes blazed like fires from otherwise empty sockets. An amulet with an eight-pointed star hung around his neck.

  “I am Ghazul,” he said.

  With her handmaiden behind her, Lady Veber took stock of the guest, not quite sure what to think.

  “I’m not sure... this was a good idea,” she replied, stumbling
over the words.

  “He can help,” the handmaiden insisted.

  “Perhaps,” Lady Veber said, “but I’m not sure how.”

  Ghazul moved forward, his staff tapping on the tiled floor. Lady Veber retreated a step.

  “There’s no need to fear me,” he said. “I mean you no harm.”

  “Sorry,” she said. “I’ve never seen your race before.”

  “My people are called the Necronea. We are a very old species.”

  “Can you help my son Philip?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s very ill and none of the doctors seem to know what’s wrong with him.”

  “He’s been poisoned,” Ghazul said flatly.

  “What?” Lady Veber replied in shock. “What makes you say that?”

  Ghazul raised his head as if smelling the air, although Lady Veber noted that he only had a hole where his nose should be.

  “I can sense these things,” he said.

  “You can tell if someone’s been poisoned?” she asked skeptically.

  “I know why someone is dying, regardless of the cause,” he added.

  “Do you know who poisoned him?”

  “No.”

  Lady Veber sighed.

  “Is there a cure?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Then how in the world can you help my son?”

  Ghazul, his empty sockets fixed on Lady Veber, spoke softly.

  “I will perform a ritual,” he said, “that will reverse death once it comes.”

  “That’s impossible!” Lady Veber replied angrily. “Do you think I’m a fool?”

  The handmaiden tugged at her mistress’s sleeve.

  “The Necronea are people like us,” she whispered, “but they don’t die, at least not anymore.”

  Lady Veber pulled her sleeve away.

  “My son is dying!” she shouted. “Every second I spend away from his side is time lost that I’ll never get back!” Turning on her handmaiden, she said, “And now you’ve made me waste more time talking to this... creature!”