Tabitha Trilogy 2: Sky Queen Read online

  Black teeth grinned in the moonlit dark. A gliding blade, pushed in, soft as love. Tabitha’s heart burst and sparked like a dead star. She woke up screaming and looked around at the cockpit, gasping for sanctuary and the feel of her monsters. Alex’s face was still so clear; the blade so real. Scarier still were the feelings she could’ve had for him, once.

  ‘Fuck you,’ she sobbed quietly, hugging her knees to her chest in the pilot seat. Beyond the white flexing walls around her, Seven sailed on for distant stars in the lonely void.

  3

  On a distant world named Serenity, four figures sipped drinks in a sunlit garden. They were dressed finely in sentient fabric; seated around a gleaming stone table and enjoying the views from a striking stately home. Deciding, in secret, how to carve up the natural resources of a newly discovered planet. First though, they had to decide how to carve up the Arch Minister of their interworld government who opposed them.

  ‘Bomb,’ the large reptilian said simply, in his deep belching voice. Eyed them warily and scratched his red scaled jaw. He’d always struggled to wrap his vocal chords around the dull, stilted Trade Language of the Ministry worlds. Liked to keep its use to a minimum.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said a blue willowy creature in a sharp suit, amused at the primitive suggestion. She shook her head; sipped her cocktail. ‘There’s only one race who still bombs their enemies,’ she scoffed. ‘The Guardians would arrest you the same day. And, by extension, us. We’ve any number of droners who could do a much cleaner job.’

  ‘I still say smear and bankruptcy carry the least risk,’ said the third figure, quick-spoken; a diminutive six-limbed creature in a breathing helmet. His voice sounded thin and fuzzy through the mouthpiece. ‘Or, we can leave it to the specialists,’ he suggested, taking a hissing breath. ‘Rival parties. Drug lords. Very effective at disappearing people, even VIPs. I could arrange it now. No one would have the slightest suspicion we were ever involved.’

  ‘No! I will not disgrace my ancestors with these cowards’ plots!’ the large reptilian growled angrily, banging his huge hand on the stone table. ‘I will take a knife to the Arch Minister’s throat myself!’

  ‘Would you keep your voice down?’ the blue willowy figure cut in, glancing around cautiously at the empty sunkissed gardens. ‘You’ve already made yourself perfectly clear on that point.’

  ‘Repeatedly,’ the small creature sighed impatiently, tapping away hurriedly at the compact screen on his wrist.

  ‘You’re all missing the point,’ the fourth figure purred, leaning forward from the shadows. Stark and androgynous; winter made flesh. It held up its empty glass to a scurrying waiter in the distance. The other three listened intently; it was wise to. ‘There’s no need to dispose of the Arch Minister before we take his new territory,’ the winter figure said calmly, cold eyes flicking to everyone in turn. Its voice cut like a knife. ‘Let him keep this pristine, virgin world off-limits for as long as he likes. Use that to our advantage.’

  ‘Go on,’ the willowy figure replied, glancing at the others; sipping her drink.

  ‘The Arch Minister’s decreed that no contact be made with the planet, in case of unevolved intelligent life,’ the winter figure explained. ‘He’s decreed that the Guardian ships on course for the new world are merely to keep watch from orbit, with plenty of military hardware to scare away the prospectors. Meanwhile, we hire freelancers to stake our claim on the planet. There are far fewer eyes watching the frontier than in homespace.’

  ‘Freelancers?’ said the six-limbed creature. ‘Impossible. We’d never get mercenaries past those Guardian ships.’

  ‘I’m not talking about getting anyone past them,’ the winter figure replied, smiling graciously as the waiter strode over with a fresh glass of spirit. ‘Everyone has their price,’ it said softly. ‘Even the Guardians.’

  ‘You’ve lost your mind,’ the reptilian belched, chuckling into his glass as he gulped his drink.

  ‘Careful,’ the winter figure purred, fixing him with that icy stare. The reptile’s honour demanded that he keep eye contact... but his fear persuaded him to abandon the venture. He’d already heard just how ambitious the winter figure could be.

  ‘Buy out the government’s own peacekeepers to mine this new planet? Do you really think that would work?’ said the willowy creature.

  ‘For several times their current salaries? I’d like to think so,’ the winter figure replied with a smile. ‘I’ve found our fine upstanding Guardian troops policing the Outer Rim to be ambitious, enterprising and thoroughly corruptible. I have complete faith in them.’

  The three figures around it at the table glanced at one another. Looking gradually more satisfied with the proposal, they relaxed in their seats one by one. The large reptilian was the last to agree, breathing out through his narrow flaring nostrils as he nodded his approval.

  ‘Well then. To mercs on the payroll,’ said the willowy creature happily, raising her glass with the rest.

  ‘To ambitious covert enterprise,’ the winter figure corrected her, with a subtle warning glance to the waiter listening in the distance. It clinked their glasses and smiled.

  Blue-white batbirds fluttered up from the trees beside them in the gardens, and flocked out over the gleaming Ministry capital beyond. The super city that the winter figure had always wanted in its hand, ever since it’d raised itself from the slums and gutters. If the overworked, underpaid Guardian troops on the new frontier took its bribe, soon it’d have a small private army. And with all the raw natural resources of a new world under its control, it’d make sure that army didn’t stay small for long. If the four of them were going to carve up the incorruptible Arch Minister and take his throne, they’d do it on the winter figure’s terms. Quietly, carefully, one little knife cut at a time. And with the Arch Minister’s own galactic military, his almighty pride and joy, bought out beneath him with the spoils of his new forbidden world. Waiting in the shadows if he disagreed. A hundred million knives in the dark.

  4

  Tabitha woke from frozen sleep, felt her stomach lurch, and threw up water in the cockpit.

  ‘Oh god, I’m sorry,’ she mumbled, looking around stiffly for something to mop it up. Dipping into Seven’s mind though, his thoughts just glowed with some weird equivalent of laughter.

  ‘Well I’m glad you think it’s so funny,’ Tabitha said grumpily, wiping her mouth. Wincing and rubbing at her astro-migraine as she sat up in the seat. ‘Is it the next planet? Are we there?’ Seven nudged at her mind to enter his vision. Watching the patch of starry black space growing to fill the wall in front of her, Tabitha saw a new world crawling closer. Bigger. Brighter. It filled their view. Tabitha took control; felt gravity pull them towards the planet. Greeny-bronze continents and deep blue seas, streamed with twining clouds. She flared Seven’s jet scales to pick up speed. Stabbed his hard black body through the ozone halo, and dived into a blue sky beneath the stars. She felt Seven’s hard white stare and stony scales beyond the cockpit walls, glowing like fire as he dropped for the distant sea. Prepared herself for fresh disappointment, the closer they got. But her sad-statue face softened as they soared down.

  ‘That’s more like it,’ she mumbled, awestruck at the vivid world all around her. Her pulse quickened; the great unknown fizzled in her stomach. She watched the sunlight dance on a clear rippling ocean; strange bright coral submerged in frozen colourbursts. Shoals of things, black and canary-yellow, darting away beneath the rushing surface as Seven tore overhead. Suddenly he dropped and spun, diving in. Tabitha smiled at the twisting feeling in her stomach. Seven crashed through the water and burst from a cloud of bubbles, down into the bright blue deep.

  Vast plants waved in a vague tropical seascape. Sunken forests loomed down here in the aquahaze, brimming with bright life, bigger than Tabitha could get her head around. They passed twisting crystal jellyfish the size of tower blocks. Shoals of eelsharks in colours there weren’t even names for. She could only smile and
stare at the crowded sea life all around her; a dayglo tapestry under the waves. Something huge grabbed at Seven’s tail with a sudden jolt. The giant tug flung Tabitha back in her seat, scrambling for the console in a panic. Seven wrestled free and bolted. Colossal jaws snapped shut behind them, cheated, as Seven dashed for the surface and shot into the sky.

  ‘What the hell was that!?’ said Tabitha, looking back at a vast monstrous silhouette sinking away beneath the waves. Seven wasn’t thinking about it though. Maybe trying to hide his dented pride.

  Seven’s engines rumbled on through the summer sky; a sharp black dot jetstreaming in endless blue. Before long they were descending over white sandy beaches; a sprawling continent. Out ahead lay miles of savannah, bright and weird and vital, rolling past below them and stretching out to the horizon. A furry lizard like a big cat watched them lazily from the limb of a twisting tree. Herds of red slender things galloped ahead of Seven’s shadow, leaping through endless scrubland and darting for safety. Tabitha breathed deep and relaxed in her seat, watching the new world unfold in all its gorgeous living colour.

  Masked and suited, she stepped down from Seven’s wing in a silver desert. Smiled at the warming feel of the hot sun on her dark suit. Watched the platinum-coloured sand pouring and whispering between her black metal toes as she wiggled them. She heard the back of her suit hissing as it refilled its air supply; it had to be safe to breathe then. She pulled her scaled helmet back down into a fleshy collar. It just smelled like air; like Earth. And pure heat. Turning around, her breath caught at the sight. The desert was an endless silver moonscape under a dusty pink sky; vast outcrops of white-gold rock towered above an ocean of dunes.

  Squinting at the bright sky as she walked on shifting sand, and flicking her greasy hair out from her collar, Tabitha found herself smiling at the warm summer feeling. An old song snuck into her head. A hot breeze danced white sand against her face as she watched the sea of sunhazy dunes, humming the long-lost tune to herself. Over there in the distance, clear craggy outcrops of glassy rock bathed the sand in focussed sunlight; spots of scorching light like giant magnifiers. The sand beneath them had fused to shining rivers of glass in the heat; vast sweeping curves of it that traced the sun’s movement. Big bright whale-things roamed the clear sky in the distance, coated in blonde moleskin that shimmered in the sun.

  As Seven rested in the hot sand far behind her, Tabitha wandered out into the desert and squinted at tall cactus growths in the bright daylight. Sharp white birdlizards sipped beads of sticky nectar from the orange fronds, which slowly curled away from the high sun. Feeling the sweat on her brow already, Tabitha sat down in the plants’ shade. She lay back and sighed, slow and satisfied. Letting the warm sand ease the lonely cold of space from her bones. She watched Fishbowl floating up the dunes over there, like some weird octopial explorer; endless platinum cliffs hazed away beyond on an arid horizon. And death-black Seven there on the sand flats, neck bared and wings spread wide, devouring the daylight like he’d never get another chance. Closing her eyes, Tabitha could almost imagine that she was lying on that tropical beach back on Earth. This new world didn’t really feel all that otherworldly, when she thought about it. A lot of it felt... unremarkable, she supposed. Not really all that alien, with the wind and silence and the smell of hot fresh air. It was all just kind of... familiar.

  ‘Faaah!?’ she yelled in sudden shock, jumping up from her spot in the sand. Some scaly snake-rat burst up in an angry hiss and bared vampire fangs. Dodged her angry kicks and stamps and twisted away for the cactus trees. With one last snarl it scurried back under the sand in a frantic flurry, and tunnelled off through the dune.

  ‘Jesus!’ Tabitha snapped angrily, heartcore hammering as she watched it go. ‘Fine, I’m really impressed with your weird world!’ she told the desert around her, checking over her shoulder nervously and as she edged off back to Seven. ‘Not cool.’

  Taking to the sky before she burned in the bright sunlight, Tabitha closed her eyes and smiled in the saddle as the harness grew around her. The warm rushing wind blew all the thoughts of space from her mind; she’d never known such a cold lonely place. Pulling on her breather helmet, she took Seven up through the clouds. His monstrous black shape lurked and peeked and scudded out from the mist, leaving a ragged stream in his wake. Tabitha watched the cloud whipping by on either side, and drew eye-to-eye with some strange four-winged pelican thing as it flapped and soared beside them. Another beside it, and another. The flock burped prehistoric calls and climbed higher in the pale blue sky; Tabitha just watched and smiled. Felt her suit warm her against the growing frost so high up. Looking down Seven’s side she saw the new world far below, spread out like a technicolour toybox. There was so much life here. Rich, weird, gorgeous life. She fell in love with it.

  The silver desert gave way to arid scrub and rolling grassland; steep snowtipped mountains and dry rocky stacks. She watched a skinny waterfall in ancient peaks grow to a vast churning river, crashing and folding endlessly through creeks and gorges in a pearly-turquoise rush. The lonely birdflocking summits gradually fell away into rich windblown plains; a dancing sea of hardy bright flowers and shining marshy pools. Grazing beasts called out deep and hoarse in clouds of vapour, shielding their noisy calves from Seven’s shadow.

  Flying high over vast green jungle, Seven slowed his jetscales and glided silently. Tabitha gave him free reign, and took her mask off. She sat back in the saddle to enjoy the cheep of alien insectbirds, darting like swifts in the blue sky around her. Gliding lower, Seven angled his wings in a giant whoosh that popped her ears. He caught at the air to slow himself down, hovered for a moment, and landed on a high rocky range to admire the endless forest below.

  ‘What is it with you and hills?’ Tabitha said with a smile, stroking his scarred neck as she unfastened the harness and leapt down. Seven shook his body like a giant dog and sat down on the peak with a crash, shaking the ground. Fishbowl floated out from his hatch and busied itself inspecting the overgrown plant life up here. Tabitha closed her eyes and breathed deep in the peace. Blinked them open, bright summer-yellow, and watched the endless tangled jungle stretching out to the horizon. Sighed in the warm damp air, and sniffed at tart heady plant-smells on the breeze that she’d never known before. Away behind her, Fishbowl’s searching tentacles rustled and squeaked against giant white blooms, like lotuses on steroids. Weird avisupials called and leapt between the wind-rustled treetops to inspect the aliens; giant feathered monkeybugs in faded-rainbow coats, staring from the leafy heights. Their stunted wings were more like clawed arms, with stubby useless feathers. Evolution at work. Tabitha looked around and couldn’t help but smile to see Seven and Fishbowl so at peace. They’d come so far together, just the three of them. It looked like they’d finally found a place to call home.

  The new world must’ve been tiny; in a couple of hours they’d left the stark deserts and thick knotted jungles far behind. Gliding low over crystal hills and thick red grasslands, Tabitha felt a growing chill in the air as she watched their shadow ripple by from the saddle. Before long they were soaring over bleak misty heaths and steep hidden fjords, bright and rugged and wonderful. Norway on acid. Towering white clouds dwarfed jagged mountains in a chilly sky. Then she saw it, hidden beyond a high mountain range. A clear turquoise lake, vast as legend, reflecting the sky. A pale gold forest of strange bamboo surrounded it, stretching out across the foothills beneath the high sharp mountains. A perfect stretch of pebble shore, right there ahead of them, curved like a thin crescent moon. She didn’t need to ask Seven to land; he was already dropping to skim the lake.

  ‘It’s gorgeous, Seven,’ Tabitha mumbled on the shore, looking around at dark snowcapped mountains that stood impossibly tall beyond the forest. A small wooded island out in the lake. They’d landed in a country of silver and gold, walled on all sides by steep fells and fjords. Far off on her right, a colossal waterfall spewed white mist between craggy peaks, high in the mountains. Reptilian deer watch
ed her cautiously from the forest in the distance, ears raised as they chewed golden grass. The slender trees here by the lakeshore were lead-grey; the leaves and grass striking madness yellow. Bright mothbirds sang and chirped overhead, shedding faint blue dust as they flew between the trees. She stood and stared for a moment; lost in all the chill colour of an autumn she could never dream of. This world was ancient, like something from myth. A cold raw beauty that wasn’t just in the alpine view, or the wind that scored the lake and rustled the trees. It was a feeling, right there in her chest. Wild wonder. Pure life, vicious and free. She wished Emma and Jen could see it all with her; that they could’ve met Liv and the Ghosts here. Talking in campchairs over steaming mulled wine, by a big cosy tent. Natalie too, watching the young twins running wild through the trees. Will, Paul and Jim fishing for dinner from the lakeshore, and Laika chewing a stick by the crackling fire. Her tribe, making a new life for themselves. Tabitha sniffled; smiling through her tears at the thought of them. Her red curls tossed and whipped in the wind where she stood alone on the rocky shore. Electric-blue minnowthings hovered and swam just there, in the sunlit shallows; the bright sun cast their tiny wiggling shadows on the coarse sand beneath. A new world; everything an alien species. Drying her eyes, smiling like a child, Tabitha couldn’t resist it. She had to get out and explore.

  Batting a big persistent fly that buzzed at her ear, Tabitha left her monsters to rest and took a walk in the bamboo woods. Breathed in the freshest air she’d ever known, peaty and chilling in her nostrils, as she headed deeper into the forest. The fine papery leaves in here shook and rustled all around her in the crisp breeze; the soft sound filled her head and sent a tingle through her scalp. Even just reaching out a hard black hand to the woody bamboo, tracing a claw across the smooth grain with a whispering scratch, she was starting to feel connected with this world. Breathing its air, eating its light. That strange new side to her could sense it; how the new world and its new air was seeping into her lungs and her blood cells. How it was starting to make her up, one breath at a time, from its own elements.