Starfall Read online

  Contents

  The Lonely Warden

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  DOCTOR FID WILL RETURN!

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  The Lonely Warden

  A poem by Alain Matheson

  Eden echoes in every leaf,

  And in creatures great and small.

  Homed upon an endangered reef,

  Blue marble circling Sol.

  Oasis held in strained balance,

  Since an age when seas were young,

  Imperiled not by hate or malice

  But by progress’ snake-like tongue.

  A future bought without care for cost,

  The children’s world, betrayed.

  Glories by right inherited, lost

  And all their hopes decayed.

  Treasuring life, the warden rises; he stands and does not balk,

  Lest that blue effulgent marble still and turn to barren rock.

  And so.

  The grizzled warden, twisted,

  Strains towards the grand abyss,

  Racked with pain, enlisted

  To shield life ‘gainst artifice.

  To oppose they who try advance,

  Not knowing ‘pon whom they tread,

  To press their dreams and apply a lance,

  Lest best intentions turn blood red.

  The weary conscript, vigilant,

  Stands wary at the border,

  ‘tween what blooms and bleeds, grandiloquent,

  And dull incarnate order.

  The lonely warden dare not flag; he knows his cause is just.

  The battle be eternal, to stave off a world of dust.

  1

  “I generally prefer to avoid killing,” I informed my struggling captive, “but I AM a murderer; please keep that in mind as you answer my questions.”

  “I’m not going to tell you a damned thing,” the young superhero grunted. “Let me go!”

  My train of thought derailed.

  The powered armor that I was wearing was arguably the most dangerous ever constructed during my long supervillainous career. The fourteen-foot-tall (unfortunately damaged beyond repair) Mk 35 heavy-combat model had boasted greater raw strength, but the technological innovations concealed within this more-compact design were legion. Reinforced with layered forcefields, fitted with powerful energy weapons and framed with the remarkable orichalcum alloy that only my missing adopted-sister could manufacture, the Mk 39 was more than sufficient to intimidate even the most dangerous of foes.

  As with all of my armors, the surface did not reflect light in the slightest; distant stars sparkled within that darkness, granting the disorienting effect that I was naught but a man-shaped opening into deep space. A crimson glow seeped from the armor’s joints—an angry wireframe wrapped around empty night.

  “Are you insane?” I asked, incredulous. “What in Tesla’s name are they teaching you?”

  The youth tried again to tug his arm free from my grip. “What d’you mean?”

  I considered my teen-aged opponent: clad in a black body-suit with white-stripes and cobalt trim, he’d put on a bit of muscle since the last time I’d hospitalized him. Whatever flaws might exist in the Junior Shield training program, their physical instruction was top notch. Reluctantly, I had to admit that the way he’d turned his wrist during his escape attempt had been textbook perfect; if not for the invisible shaped forcefields that I was using to wrap around his arm, he might have pulled away. His physical skills were not in question. His reasoning, on the other hand…

  “I just implied the willingness to end your life,” I growled, “and you responded with open defiance. That’s foolishness.”

  I released my grip and he floated a few feet away; as always, his hair and eyes flickered to glow cerulean as his powers activated. Once, he’d only been able to fly relatively low to the ground. Practice and training had improved his control and he was able to maintain his altitude even though I’d dragged him more than a thousand feet over the Hudson river.

  “It was a judgment call,” Cherenkov yelped defensively. His hands gathered into fists and glowed electric blue but he knew better than to loose those energy blasts at me.

  “It was reckless! You were defenseless and laughably overpowered-”

  (“…I’m not laughing,” he mumbled.)

  “- and yet you were willing to provoke me instead of deescalating!” I gestured at his aching wrists to imply that the threat had been real. “What if all I wanted was to know the capital city of New Mexico? Would that have been worth challenging a hardened killer?”

  “Is it Albuquerque?”

  “Santa Fe. That’s not the point,” I sighed, but the vocoder that disguised my voice struck the weariness from my tone. “You should have attempted appeasement…to draw out the conversation while looking for opportunities. The subject is covered extensively in your Escape and Evasion text.”

  “Like I said,” he rubbed at his wrists, “it was a judgment call. You’ve had me cornered before, I thought we could talk this out. And we’re talking, right?”

  “…you made a conscious decision to disrupt my expectations, in the hopes that it would alter the conversation’s flow. Intriguing.”

  “If it’s stupid, but it works-”

  “Then it’s still stupid,” I interrupted.

  “But it works,” he chuckled, and I saw evidence of his mentor’s influence in his impish smile. “So…Doctor Fid. What d’you want?”

  “Originally, I wanted information about your unfortunately humorous teacher, Cloner,” I replied dryly, “but now I mostly just want to break your legs.”

  He gulped and reflexively floated a few feet backwards; over the last few years I’d generated a bit of reputation for fracturing the limbs of heroes I liked. “I don’t know anything you could use against him.”

  “Relax. I don’t think that anything that I intended to ask would count as a betrayal of trust.”

  “Okaaaay,” he replied, transparently unwilling to take me at my word. I approved of his wariness. “What d’you want to know?”

  “Cloner had seemed receptive to a treaty between myself and the New York Shield, and had been willing to trade access to certain captured technology in return for concessions on my part.”

  “I haven’t heard anything about that.”

  “Negotiations were still in progress,” I waved dismissively. “Recently, however, I have been unable to make contact. I came to ask if anything was amiss with the leader of the New York Shield.”

  “So you grabbed me mid-patrol and threatened to kill me, just to ask if my boss is okay?”

  In retrospect, the approach I’d chosen did seem unnecessarily confrontational. Several recent experiments had resulted in failure and I was, perhaps, growing overly eager to pursue other options. I had no intention, however, of allowing any hint of my growing desperation to be disclosed to the heroes, so I answered only with a stony silence.

  “…all right,” Cherenkov finally said, looking unnerved. “It’s probably nothing. Our internal system has been wonky lately, lots of messages getting lost.”

  “Your external security has been unaffected.” Behind my armor’s emotionless and featureless faceplate, I frowned. “I’d been under the impression that t
he New York Shield’s network infrastructure is maintained by Cuboid.”

  Fixing an internal networking issue should have been a simple task for the android hero; Cuboid was, after all, the only currently-active artificial intelligence on Earth. All of my recent investigations had been aimed at returning that number to two: my adopted little sister had been the world’s second A.I.. Her emotional growth had (by design) been limited to mature at human rates, and thus she’d had the mind and android body of an adorable eleven-year-old girl…but she had been technically more advanced than Cuboid and had evolved so thoroughly that a villainous sorcerer’s spell had recognized her as being a living, sentient being. The servers still functioned, but her personality—her psyche—was missing, stolen by the strange extra-dimensional effects of so-called ‘magic’. Gaining access to technology key to her rescue was the sole reason for bargaining with the New York Shield in the first place.

  Whisper had had a childish crush on the young hero before me; her artificial eyes glowed the same color as did his. My little sister liked this boy and I’d threatened his life.

  It was very possible that I’d miscalculated the dosages of anti-psychotics in the pharmacological regimen that had been keeping me awake for the last week.

  “Cuboid is busy designing a new body for himself,” Cherenkov explained, interrupting my reverie. “Cloner thinks things’ll get back to normal in a week or so.”

  I didn’t want to wait a week or so.

  “Tell Cloner that he owes me a beer,” I instructed the young hero. “Friday. He’ll know where to meet me.”

  Cherenkov looked positively boggled by the idea that his mentor—the leader of the East Coast’s premiere superhero team—shared drinks with the world’s most feared supervillain, but I was unwilling to waste time upon further explanation. The technology hidden by the New York Shield was promising but there was other research I could be performing. Other tests and other experiments to run, just in case. Whisper needed me.

  I shot into the sky and disappeared among the stars.

  The attack had been a show of power on Skullface’s part; a significant percentage of the city of Boston—my city—had been abducted and held in mystic stasis. When I’d slaughtered the sorcerous supervillain and broken his spell, the city’s residents had been returned home none the worse for wear. All residents save for my sister.

  One theory I believed to be promising was that Whisper had become something akin to a disembodied spirit. She’d been a unique creature, a new life form…clever and kind and perfect! The ‘spell’ hadn’t been designed with a wonder like her in mind, and thus the effect that separated her psyche from her circuits may have been flawed. If this conjecture could be verified, then I would be one step closer to rescuing my sister.

  Unfortunately, the literature on disembodied spirits was limited and it was difficult to separate fact from fiction. The mystical arts had been mere fantasy in the ages before the alien Legion had fundamentally altered the boundaries between universes, and yet many of the most accurate tomes had been written centuries before the changing laws of physics swept over the Earth. Belief had reshaped reality, and superstitions shifted into verifiable facts. But not all superstitions had made that transition, and only those with the correct inborn talent were able to sense the difference between truth and fable.

  I did not have said talent…but I had science. And if Whisper was a disembodied spirit, then there was every chance that her psychic essence had become anchored in the vicinity of the quantum-connected servers that had once housed her consciousness.

  The server-farm was vast—she’d had access to my entire infrastructure, a hidden network that had taken decades to build (or steal). My armor’s sensors had been modified to identify akashic fields, but range was limited and the devices required time to function. I’d already checked the most-likely locations to no avail, but an exhaustive search would take months.

  (According to what lore I’d been able to acquire, the energy-signature known as ‘spirits’ dissipate if outside their body too long. The moon’s cycle supposedly had a strong influence and Whisper had already been missing for seventy-four nights…but my sister was strong. I was going to find her and she was going to be fine. Her little android body was going to wake up, then she’d hug her puppy and we’d go to the beach and make sand castles. No other outcome was acceptable.)

  Another theory was that displaced akashic fields might have a measurable effect upon the operation of nearby quantum computers. If this proved true, then an analysis of past error logs might be able to pinpoint Whisper’s location. Sadly, locating disembodied spirits to experiment upon had thus far been unsuccessful.

  Most of my mystical knowledge had been gathered from the library of a supervillain who’d been known as the Ancient. Even under the effects of sleep deprivation, neural pruning and psychochemical reshaping, however, I was not so far gone as to believe that the Ancient’s methods of procuring test subjects were morally justifiable. He’d been a monster! Hundreds had been kidnapped and murdered to further his grand experiments.

  I am not so far gone. Not yet. Fortunately, if all that was required was an akashic field separated from a body, then other options were available.

  My construction automatons had been tasked with moving a vast array of sensors and computing power to my ocean-floor laboratory. In the lonely deep, there were no other higher life-forms that might pollute my data. There was only me: one willing test subject, ready for the upcoming procedure.

  Whisper had loved the ocean, loved the look and sound of the waves, and adored everything that lived under the water’s surface. She loved accompanying me to this laboratory. A very thorough cleaning would be necessary before Whisper could join me here again.

  I thought of siblings whom I’d failed and raised the handgun to my mouth.

  “Terry. Terrrrrrry. Wake up!”

  A small hand nudges at my shoulder. I keep my eyes closed and try not to react; I’m certain that it’s too early for Bobby to be waking me up. I’m still far too exhausted for this.

  The first time that I’d made the bus-ride home from college it had seemed like an adventure. My first real unchaperoned trip. There was something magical about the anonymity; inside that foul-smelling, overheating compartment we were all of us awkwardly alone. The enchantment faded quickly. Last night’s journey had left me aching and tired and irritable.

  The hand withdraws, and then the bed shifts as a skinny eight-year-old climbs up to pat at my face. “Wake uuuuup!”

  I flinch reflexively and my little brother giggles.

  “I’m tired,” I whine, rolling over onto my other side.

  After a few moments I feel the bed shift again as my little brother circles around. Small hands once again pat at my cheeks, molding my lips to make a funny fish-face. “It’s breakfast time.”

  “It’s too early.” I sit up and glance at the clock across the room then recoil. “Or not. Okay, I’m sorry. Do you want cereal?”

  “Uh-huh. With raisins.”

  “Okay, okay. Lemme up.”

  Bobby crawls off the bed and I pull on my clothes. I’m supposed to be babysitting today because our parents are visiting a gallery owner who’d hosted one of Mom’s showings. So far, I wasn’t off to a great start.

  Trudging to the kitchen saps what is left of my energy, and the bowls, milk and cereal all seem unnaturally heavy as I fumble to arrange a meal. Bobby has already climbed into his chair and is gripping his spoon eagerly.

  “Here y’go.” I set his bowl down and he dives in. My own breakfast is picked at more slowly. My need for coffee is growing to epic proportions.

  Mom ‘n Dad don’t like when I drink coffee. I have two PhD’s now and they still treat me like a kid. I’m eighteen! But they don’t keep coffee in the house even though they both drink it when they’re out. It’s stupid. It’s not fair.

  “I need help with my homework,” Bobby pipes up, and I wince when I notice the mess that he’s making at th
e table. Milk spatters and soggy corn flakes are strewn about haphazardly.

  “What subject?”

  Everyone drinks coffee at the university. I have my own coffee maker in my office. Next time, I’m going to bring it home with me.

  “Math,” Bobby replies. “You’re a good math person, you can help me, right?”

  Despite my discomfort, I can’t help but smile. I’m going to post that label on my door before office hours. Dr. Terrance Markham: Good math person. “What chapter are you on?”

  “Six!”

  “Ok. Ten, three, nine, ten, five, two, five, four, eight, six, eight, and four.”

  Bobby stared at me, confused.

  “Those are the answers for chapter six’s homework. I read your textbooks last time I was home, remember?”

  He runs off to find writing utensils and I clean the mess left behind. Bobby is taking a while, so I sit down and rest my eyes for just a moment.

  My arm is poked again, this time with the back of a pencil. “Wake uuuup!”

  “I was awake,” I lie, grimacing as a wave of pain pulses behind my eyes. “What was the question?”

  “The first one.”

  “Ten,” I reply quickly. The headache is caused by caffeine withdrawal, I’m certain.

  “Okay, but why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why’s the answer ten?” The hint of impatience in my little brother’s voice is becoming more pronounced.

  I sigh, “It just is.”