Tabitha Trilogy 2: Sky Queen Read online

  SKY QUEEN

  Andrew Hall

  © Andrew Hall 2016

  Find me on Twitter at @andrew_in_space.

  Cover art by Gerry Arthur

  All rights reserved. No reproduction without permission.

  This novel is a work of fiction. All names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  EPILOGUE

  TABITHA WILL RETURN IN

  1

  In a ruined office, in the ashes of his world, a blond man stared at pigeon guts. There just weren’t enough people left to eat these days; it was a shame. He swallowed one last sliver of its slick raw flesh, and wiped his bloody chin with a coat sleeve. Chair creaking, Alex sat back from a rain-warped desk by blown-out windows. Steady breaths in the desolate silence. Birdsong, and the dry stony smell of urban ruins. He watched the feathers wind-tumble by a dead computer, as blowing brickdust peppered the gore. Looking out at the New York wasteland, from the forty-second floor.

  Someone had lived half their life at this desk, he supposed. Back in the old world. Beside the grimy toys and a weather-worn planner, pens and pencils still stood neat and cobwebbed in their pot. He glanced at unknown family photos in dusty old frames, and a coffee cup hand-painted by a kid. Alex felt his own heartbreak at the sight of it. He had to turn away in his seat.

  He hated not being hungry. It let the thoughts back in. The stinging memories of them. The grief and the guilt. Sunny snapshots of family vacations, and young laughter and pool fights, running endlessly through his head. Maddening. Everyone was gone. He sat and stared at the apocalypse, lost in thought. Grey clouds crawled over the city’s skyline skeleton.

  How many weeks now, he wondered, since it all came down?

  At first there’d been nothing but terror. Swarming silver spiders, and that crawling black ship. The city on fire. Then came the sickness, and surviving on bodies; it was all he could stomach once he’d changed. Those frightened survivors had caught him, the cannibal, and thrown him from a tower block window when he lashed out rabid. Falling forever.

  He’d come around screaming on the street. Something in him refused to die. He wasn’t even whole, where he’d hit that rubbled sidewalk; he left parts behind in his silver blood. He crawled. Wild eyes staring, growling frothed spit through cracked lips and gritted teeth, he’d dragged himself away from Death. Nothing heroic; more a mad-dog streak. The way bleeding wild animals just kept on living.

  He’d crawled eternally, for that great dead monster in the road. Its flesh and blood; its strength. Devouring it. Piecing himself together with its gripping black skin. Its life was a virus; spawning new muscles and twining his spine. His scaled new body limped him away from that place, as his fear and panic turned to fierce hunger and burning black hate. It grew in him, like someone else. Wrapped his brain and kept him alive. All he was, all he’d felt... nothing but firewood to that strange dark furnace. People were just sacrifices to a strong new something, that wasn’t entirely him. The families and wanderers, and the redhead who got away. All just vessels now, for things he needed. Just breathing, talking, meat.

  Nothing mattered any more. Life was violence. Violence kept him alive. He’d do whatever it took to grow stronger than these invaders, and make them bleed, and take back New York for his family. No matter the horror. No matter the cost. The only fight left was revenge.

  ‘...My ass is numb,’ Alex mumbled to no one, standing up from the weathered office chair to stretch. He grunted and yawned, and reached for the ceiling tiles with cold dark hands. Sometimes he still felt the warm bleeding weight of his brother, dying in his arms, on that first day. When he searched derelict homes he still saw his parents, and his little sister; the slumped grey husks that the spiders made of them. He didn’t go into homes any more. It hurt too much. It was just the haunted city now. The dead stores and ruined skyscrapers. Grey silent places, for the concrete ghosts of ambition. Something broke off his thoughts. Falling rubble, way down below.

  They’re trying again, he thought, watching their strange shapes down on the road. They’ll never stop hunting me. They were pointing; running. They’d seen him. An artillery flash. Alex leapt from the blown window as the office exploded deafening behind him. He dropped from the tower; cracked the rippling asphalt with a thud where he landed on his feet. He sprinted for the alien soldiers and tore a slender figure limb from limb, in a screaming burst of golden blood. Roared as he punched another Watcher to the sidewalk and wrenched its skull with a savage snap. He dodged screeching shots of light. Watching the tall dark soldiers gaining on him, he scrambled away for cover in the ruins. Still just a wild animal, running from the hunt. Beyond the rubble of toppled buildings, an alien army spread through the corpse of New York to find him. Kill him. The anomaly.

  Running Watchers planted living barriers in the roads, swelling and branching into tall ribbed barricades. Unearthly soldiers rushed up the growing ramparts to lock scaly cannons in place. White-eyed helmets like statue heads scoured the dead streets for any sign of him. Heaving black monsters galloped up the road ahead like oil-spill primates, ripping the rubble apart to sniff hungrily for his scent.

  Alex hid away in a ruined tower block. Gulped hot gold blood from a torn alien limb, and felt its slick surge set his veins on fire. He waited in the shadows for the cautious soldiers to stalk through the dead traffic below, wandering into his trap. Leaping from a high window, he threw his voltage into the cars beneath him. The street exploded in deafening hellfire, flaring orange in the dead grey world. Thick black smokeclouds rolled up into the sky; concrete pebbles rained down and clattered in the fresh dusty silence. Some of the Watchers had escaped; most were writhing and screaming and flailing for lost limbs between the burning wrecks. Cannons on the distant barricade screeched warping shots into the sky. Alex floated there above it all, grinning. He blew the barricade apart with a lightning bolt, sudden and blinding. Watchers were thrown down screaming and bleeding among their crackling corpses. Alex’s wild stark eyes drank in the dancing flames of New York. His New York.

  ‘How many times do we need to do this!?’ he yelled up at the creeping mothership, death-black and colossal. Crawling its vast whale-squid shadow over toppled city streets. The winter wind blew the ashes of humanity into high winding spirals over Manhattan. Flames danced a glowing zig-zag trail of destruction through entir
e city blocks; a dozen failed attempts to kill him. He’d tried over and over to bring the ship down too. But the thing ate every volt he threw at it. Just drank it through that rubbery black skin.

  Alex sighed, descending a couple of streets away. Time for a new approach. He’d need something to hit the ship’s armour with; he looked around for something heavy. Glanced down the road at something moving there.

  ‘Hey!’ he shouted to a hulking black monster, stepping out into the street. Its white eyes fixed on him; heat hazed from its heaving blowtorch breath. With a crackling growl it came thumping and crashing up the road towards him. Snarling, Alex ran for it. He leapt and threw lightning as it pounced for him; a human volt bomb. The blast threw the monster back with a crackling crash. Alex pounced on the stunned creature in a flurry of sparks and smoke. Sank his claws in deep and ripped it apart screaming in a wild rage. For a few glorious moments he didn’t know where he was, or what was going on. That same quiet voice of reason nagged in the back of his mind. The rest of him strangled it into silence. All he knew in that moment was the spilling, slopping, steaming silver gush of violence that made his heart race; that kept him alive. He buried a clawed hand in the monster’s screaming head and pulled its brain apart. Shoved a slick gory fistful in his mouth and minced it; gulped it down and felt the silver-silk rush in his veins. He tore the thick spine from the creature’s back in a succession of squelching snaps, and walked out onto the road with it dragging and dripping in his hands. Watchers came running to open fire. A sweep of his hand electrocuted them in a blinding white thunderclap. Grinning savage as they dropped dead smoking. In a burst of light he shot into the sky to meet the mothership overhead. He landed with a bang that echoed through the city and swung the severed spine, smashing dents in the ship’s armoured scales.

  ‘How many times do I have to ask!?’ he roared at it, tearing holes in its metal skin. ‘I’d like to negotiate, please!’ A door melted open above him in the ship’s hull. Watchers peered down and opened fire.

  ‘Finally!’ Alex said happily. He pounced up into the doorway and butchered the screaming Watchers where they stood. Breaking limbs. Gouging heads. Strangled screams. As the gurgling corpses thumped down bloody, the survivor just stared at the smiling hybrid in fright. Didn’t even raise its gun.

  ‘Smart,’ Alex growled, with a black-fanged grin. Gulping gold blood from a severed head. He dropped it with a thump to lick the gore off his claws. ‘Now take me to your fucking leader.’

  2

  A night-black shape, scarred and primal, cut past cold distant stars. Scales darker than the lonely void around it. The creature’s hard white eyes watched infinity slide by. Behind them, an animal mind churned in silent space. Forgotten furies. Raptures long remembered. What it was, and what it was not. The creature’s engines rumbled on; glowing pale ghostfire. Sailing on into the abyss. Beneath its thick skin, in the cockpit around its heart, its human female lay in deathly sleep. Stone-still tentacles gripped the ceiling above her, dormant in the dark. The unmoving air, cold and glass-fragile, hung in silent hymn to the frozen shrine. Her clawed black hands and feet. Her body tucked and shielded, foetal-funereal. Blood-red curls. Eyelids twitching as she slept.

  Tabitha stood on the pier with her mum. She was eight or nine, dressed warmly, with itchy scabs on both knees after falling from her bike days before. A salt-sharp sea breeze ruffled her frizzy ginger curls. The pier was deserted; it was just the two of them. Strangely mild for early winter. The stern iron stems of Victorian streetlights lined the faded boardwalk, elegant and decapitated. Looking out between rusted white railings, Tabitha saw the sea meld with the sky on the far horizon. One of those dusty pale dusks that felt like a dream, or an old painting half forgotten.

  ‘Are you alright love?’ her mum asked her softly.

  ‘Yeah,’ Tabitha replied, staring out at the still sea. ‘I miss Dad.’ She felt her mum’s hand squeeze hers; looked up and saw her sad smile. The early moon glowed high above like a pearl balloon. Lemon-yellow lights illuminated old hotels along the bay behind them. The smoky clouds past town were low and solid, like misted mountains in the far distance. The huge sky was powder-pale. Blue and purple and smoky orange like old bruises. Seagulls sang to the sea; a sad lost call. Her mum told her something important, but Tabitha couldn’t make it out. Her voice was a muffled hum. When she looked up again, her mum was a vague flickering form. A shivering ghost, vanishing into blowing dust. Lost against the sky beyond. She was alone.

  ‘Mum!’ Tabitha cried out. She sat up in Seven’s cockpit, wide-eyed, reaching out to nothing. The tears came too easily; that old shard of glass in her heart. She touched her hard black fingers to the silk ribbon on her wrist. Looking around, she realised she’d been woken by a growing light in the cockpit. The small plastic flower on the console began to dance. Pushing her thoughts back, Tabitha smiled at Fishbowl as it climbed down from the ceiling. It came to bob there beside her seat, gentle and patient as the tide.

  ‘Hi you,’ she said softly, running her black hands through its tapping tentacles. ‘Did you sleep ok? ...Feels like I’ve been sleeping for years.’ Yawning and stretching stiffly, she sighed and ran her hard palms over the bony console in front of her. She had to remind herself how the cockpit felt. There it was, that same static sensation she loved; the only sense of touch her hands had left.

  Dipping into Seven’s mind, she felt his embrace that clouded out her dreams and sad memories.

  Hi, she told him, with a warm smiling thought. Felt their minds swirl and mix in a white endless space. A safe warm place, bright as the dawn. She leant into his mind and saw with his eyes. Saw the endless black void around them, and the lonely stars forever distant. Felt her stomach twist. They were drawing near to their destination; the streaming stars whipping by began to slow. A new world grew closer in the darkness. At first it was little more than a bright dot; within minutes it’d grown to a shining orb in the black. Tabitha was transfixed. Soon she could make out the blue of alien oceans. An ozone halo crowned the new world. An alien sun burned gigantic in the void beyond. The silhouette of a second planet, millions of miles away, was nothing but a black spot on the sun’s surface. Tabitha’s throat felt dry; she gulped nervously at the sight. Closer now, and she could pick out the ragged edges of muddy black-brown continents. She felt butterflies; fear and hope in equal mix. Either way, she was eager to explore. As they drew closer though, and the vast planet filled their view, she saw the cracks. An endless web of glowing fractures spanned the primordial continents. Fiery faults spewed magma that would’ve wiped out nations, had there been any. Her heartcore sank at the sight.

  Seven’s black scales glowed sharp neon orange as he entered the atmosphere. Dropping from the dark starry blue, he shot through high white clouds that broke suddenly, revealing the world below. Seeing through his vision, Tabitha looked over the landscape from the cockpit as they headed lower. She put a hand to her mouth in silent shock. Her stark yellow eyes, wide and darting, took in the fullness of this new place. But this wasn’t their new home. This was hell.

  Tabitha stepped down from Seven’s wing onto hard black rock; not a blade of grass in sight. Volcanoes burst and spewed fire in the distant hills, filling the dark grey sky with a hades growl. Gagging on the stench of sulphur, she pulled up her catsuit hood to wrap her face and harden into a breather helmet. The air was a stale wall, an oven heat pressing in around her. She stooped to pick up a sharp black pebble; a chunky jagged remnant of some ancient lava flow. Crushing the stone was hard, even with the strength in her metal hands. Opening up her palm, she watched the stone’s grey dust peel and blow on the hot rancid wind. On the shore behind them, bright blue waves lapped on dead grey sand. Something slithered from the rushing surf and bared its teeth; some vile proto-serpent with a mouthful of fangs. Its blind head sought her as it slithered up the beach. Another crawled from the waves, and another behind it. Suddenly the beach was alive with them, slithering piranha-pythons, pale as dead limbs. Ma
ssing like worms as they followed her fleshy scent. Scaled skin whispering through the dark sand, leathery-white and dotted with cold black grit. Seven watched them coming closer. He growled and swept Tabitha gently behind him with a wing, putting himself between her and the snarling tangle. White fire grew in his throat as he rumbled his dominance.

  ‘No, Seven,’ Tabitha told him sadly, climbing back up his wing. ‘There’s no need. We’re leaving.’ Seven’s harness grew around her waist and shoulders as she took the saddle; she patted his neck to stop his growling. With a thought she nudged him up into the air, and left the slithering creatures snarling hungrily below.

  She sighed as they soared over endless miles of scorched wasteland. There was nothing here but black rock and magma supernovas; deep chasms in the planet’s crust that glowed with a red hellish light. Whatever life they saw in the grey deserts was fierce, crude and clear-skinned; murder-bright broods that snarled and stared blind far below. The scarce plant life was red and twisted like spindly arteries, or slick pulsing fungus in sickly yellow against the black ground. Writhing things like fleshy starbursts wandered endless miles of lichen-covered rocks, grazing in silent shuffling swarms. If a plague could evolve to populate a planet, this was it.

  ‘We can’t stay here,’ she told Seven, giving up the search for grass and peace. Studying the hologram globe, the whole planet looked much the same. A fiery desolation, broken only by cold blue waves and pits of rabid reptilia. Vast plains of shivering fronds that filter-fed the smokebelch air. Tabitha sank into the cockpit and sealed out the choking sulphur sky. Pulled her helmet back into a shrinking hood and brushed at the yellow residue that powdered her black catsuit. She studied the hologram with a blank hopeless stare, and pulled it open to fill the cockpit with a shining map of the stars. Running a hand through Fishbowl’s waving arms, she sighed sadly as they raced up through the atmosphere. She could feel Seven’s frustration reflect her own. Already they were looking for another planet to try. Already, after such a long journey, they’d left a new world behind.