The Star Mother Read online

  TOTALITY

  The Star Mother

  J. D. Huffman

  Copyright

  Original Publication 2019

  www.jdhcreates.com

  Moirae Publishing 2018

  www.MoiraePubs.com

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to all those who’ve believed in and supported me over the years. Thank you!

  Acknowledgments

  I must, of course, acknowledge the same people who made the first Totality book possible: Bradley Fletcher, Sam MacMillan, Mike Norris, Spencer Renehan, Amber Saint Clair, Wendy Lynne Timbrell, Bobbi Todd, tre, and Rakhee Watson.

  I’m also grateful to Katy Ireland and Moirae Pubs for continuing on with this series. Glad we’re not leaving readers hanging!

  As always, thank you for picking up this book! Have fun!

  Chapter 1

  The Chronicle

  There is freedom in servitude

  Freedom from risk

  Freedom from choice

  Freedom from dignity

  Freedom from consequences

  And the Demons shall free us all

  -Melchior

  Retribution was the name of the ship. Sasha chose it for the name alone. It wasn’t the most powerful bit of hardware the Order had to offer, but she found its name the most perfect representation of what she stood for. People have done wrong. And they must pay for it.

  There had been so many wrongs in her life, from the day the Totality came to her world. When she was younger, before the Totality arrived, she had questions about everything around her. “Why is the grass green? Why is the sky orange? Why do some animals squeal and others growl? Why do they have hair all over and we don’t? Why don’t they talk?” She remembered her father’s exhausted expression as she bombarded him with inquiries, desperate to absorb every detail of the universe. Some things, she’d have preferred not to know.

  In retrospect, she knew her father’s life as a farmer was difficult. At the time, however, she knew nothing of the struggle. He kept his smile when the harvest was poor. His own plate would sit empty if it meant she got her fill. She would always share with him anyway, of course. She remembered visits from a man whose face she didn’t like, a chubby gentleman with a long dark beard, streaked with gray in a way that frightened her younger self. Her father, by contrast, kept his face shaved except for a wispy mustache that tickled when he kissed her cheek. The image of him in her memory was a face of profound honesty—she couldn’t imagine that angled visage ever uttering a lie to anyone. The bearded man, though, she knew he was a liar, and a cheat. She knew by the way her father’s mood turned sour after the man’s visits. He came in a suit from the city, the tallest buildings of its skyline visible in the distance from her house, a testament to the flat plains upon which they made both their home and livelihood. Rarely did neighbors appear except to commiserate over the bearded man. She deduced he was a landlord, and she knew that she didn’t like him. It made her distrustful of men who presented themselves as authorities, who used fashionable attire as a substitute for decency.

  Her father shook her awake that morning—the morning she would never forget. “We need to go,” he said, his voice thick with worry. He threw her clothes into a knapsack along with a couple wooden toys, just what would fit and what was within easy reach. As she rubbed the sleep from her eyes, she caught him placing items into another bag, as well: a photo of her mother, whose face she couldn’t remember except from that picture, whose life and death her father never spoke of. And then there was the chronicle: bound in leather with pages jutting unevenly from within, nearly spilling out as if they contained too much history to properly contain. She watched her father carefully insert it into his own bag. Packing his clothes and a few other essentials, he took her hand and led her outside their small cabin. It was then that she realized what was wrong.

  In the distance, where once stood gleaming towers of human invention, were smoking steel skeletons. The shimmering skyline that used to pique her childish curiosity had been replaced with a smoldering nightmare, a place she now never wanted to see up close. She noticed small objects hovering and darting through the air above the ruins—were they responsible?

  Her father pulled her by the hand quickly, across the yard and toward the large wheat field to the east of their house, loaded her and their bags onto the green wagon hitched to his tractor, then climbed into the driver’s seat and started it up. First there was a sputter, then a purr. He tapped a button to switch the proper gears and they began to move forward. With a turn of the wheel, the tractor went toward the gravel road, and once upon it, they moved at a slow pace in a direction opposite the city, heading south. She wondered if they would be fast enough to get away if anyone decided to come for them. Her father said nothing, only stealing concerned glances behind him from time to time, making sure she was still there and that nothing had descended upon them from above.

  By late afternoon, Sasha’s pangs of hunger and thirst became too much to silently endure, and she spoke up. “Daddy? Is there anything to eat? Or drink?” He’d brought food—mostly bread and a handful of small potatoes—but, in his haste, hadn’t thought to pack water.

  “I’m sorry, Sasha,” he said with a frown. She wasn’t accustomed to seeing him so distressed, and even she could see he had forgotten the water, in their rush to leave. Luckily, he knew of a nearby stream, and drove the tractor down to it, with Sasha holding on as the wagon bounced around once it departed from the road.

  He helped her down and both made haste to the rocky riverbank, where the water flowed quick and clear. Both cupped their hands and scooped up the chill liquid, slurping noisily. Sasha could still remember the slightly fishy taste, no doubt proof of the innumerable minnows that called the waterway home. But the cool refreshment more than made up for it, and it certainly helped to wash down the dry bread. Her father still kept his eyes on the sky, obviously worried that they’d be found even among the trees.

  After drinking their fill, they returned to the road and drove on for several more hours, until the tractor’s fuel was exhausted. Her father had no more, having dumped his reserve into the tank before they set off. It had taken them as far as it could, and all that was left was to proceed on foot. “I’m sorry,” he said soothingly. “We’ll have to walk now.”

  She nodded obligingly and carried her bag while he slung his own over a shoulder. As the sun set, he commented, “If we make it to the next city, we might find help.” Hours more of walking took them to that city, sure enough, but as the forest cleared and they obtained an unobstructed view, it became obvious that no safety would be found here, either.

  It, too, had been devastated.

  She barely made out the sign that said “Welcome to Valrin,” pocked as it was with scorch marks from things she didn’t quite understand. The two of them hid behind bushes near the edge of town, watching. What streetlights still worked illuminated stern men in gray uniforms, marching in unison, armed with fearsome-looking weapons. She’d seen her father brandish a shotgun a time or two, watched him shoot small animals that dug networks of tunnels under the house, threatening to collapse the ground from under them. She understood why he sometimes had to kill other creatures. She did not understand any of this. The men smashed down doors, dragged people into the streets, beat and pummeled them, restrained them, and then pulled them, one by one, to a single location near the edge of town. She could see the gathering of captured people, feet and hands bound so they could not escape, detained for some purpose she had not yet gathered.

  A truck loaded with men and women in green uniforms zipped past them—there mu
st have been fifteen or twenty riding in the back—and stopped short of the welcome sign. They jumped out, one man barking orders at the others. Without hesitation, they took cover behind nearby buildings before firing their own weapons at the gray-uniformed invaders. She covered her ears, trying to dampen the piercing blasts of weapons fire, but she did not look away. Neither did her father.

  The grays stopped what they were doing and quickly reacted to the offensive. A proper firefight ensued, both groups of soldiers moving in and out of cover, taking potshots at one another, picking their enemies off one by one. But one of the grays came out by himself, strolling into the center of the impromptu battlefield, arms held slightly away from his body, hands palm upward, and the glow of the streetlamps revealed to Sasha a terrifying expression of malice. As his hands moved upward, the buildings shielding the greens began to shake and crumble, and then one collapsed, burying several soldiers in its rubble. Another followed, taking down several more. The man laughed dismissively and walked away. Others of his kin joined him, some laughing, a few others wagging their fingers in his face, yelling about something. She could hear but she couldn’t understand the language. The man who’d made the buildings shake gave a swift punch to the jaw of one of his critics, whose embarrassing stumble upon impact signaled the end of that debate. The lot of them returned to their work, busting down more doors, gathering more people.

  Sasha slipped out of her father’s grip and rushed toward some of the buried soldiers. “Sasha!” he whisper-yelled, then made pursuit.

  She knelt next to one of them, seeing up close a man whose face was caked with blood and concrete dust. His head rolled back and forth slowly, his consciousness wavering. “He’s hurt,” she announced as her father joined her. “He needs help. They’re all hurt,” her voice cracked. “Why are they doing this?”

  The wounded man coughed. “Totality,” he managed to choke out with a few drops of blood. “Demanded surrender. We wouldn’t. Didn’t know how many… we didn’t know…” He said nothing else, and then he stopped moving.

  “We can’t help him,” her father sighed. “We have to get out of here. This city is done for. We’ll take to the woods, try to reach the hills.” He snatched her hand again and they were off. She protested about the others.

  “Who’s going to help them?”

  “Nobody can help them, Sasha. Nobody can help us. We can only save ourselves.”

  “Daddy, what are the Totality?” she asked, remembering what the dying man said.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  It must have been the first time her father ever told her he didn’t know something. It was certainly the first time his lack of knowledge was accompanied by a look of such terror. Their world was falling apart and he didn’t know if he could protect her. At the time, she failed to recognize that that was what he feared the most. She believed, even then, that he had some kind of plan, that he would keep them safe, that they would find a way to escape this chaos and carnage because together, they were unstoppable.

  It took her so many years to forgive him for that failure.

  They managed to survive in the woods for days. They slept under the stars on beds of leaves, ate bread and roasted small animals they caught over brief fires. She knew he hated putting the fires out so quickly, given how long they took to start, but they couldn’t be left burning or else the Totality would find them. At night, they had to do without fire at all—too easy to see from a distance, and especially from the air. Scouting craft made their overhead passes known by sight and sound. Each time, Sasha was sure they’d been spotted and there would be men in gray coming to take them away any moment. For days, it didn’t happen. Their clothes accumulated dirt and grime, and they reeked. No stranger to occasional rolls in the mud, even Sasha came to find her lack of bathing a source of disgust. “When will we get clean? I feel gross.”

  “Soon,” he promised. They moved in fits and starts both by day and night. Sometimes they would stop for a few hours at night to sleep, when cover was best, but it was also worthwhile to make ground with the benefit of darkness, too. The canopy grew thicker as they moved south. She didn’t know why they were moving south, exactly—maybe he knew of another town where they might be safe.

  After four days, they reached the edge of the forest, where trees gave way to a clearing of gently rolling hills. Sunset approached and her father explained that they would try to cross the open terrain while it was dark. “I’m sleepy,” she complained, the unthinking reflex of a child whose body was sore and filthy from days of trekking through dirt and rock and tree roots.

  “We don’t have any choice,” he insisted.

  They rested near the edge of the forest, still beneath the trees, waiting for the orange disc to set and lend them night’s secrecy. When that arrived, they moved. He held her hand the whole way, his pace a slow jog that pushed her own capabilities to the limit. She didn’t think her feet could come up from the ground any faster than they were already. Eventually, he picked her up, slid one leg around the back of his neck, then grabbed onto both ankles, carrying her piggyback. She knew he hadn’t done that for a few years, but the added weight slowed him down less than she thought it would. She didn’t think about adrenaline at the time, but later knew that must have been what drove him forward, giving him that extra jolt of strength and stamina to cover what must have been many kilometers of exposed ground. There was nothing in the distance, at least nothing they could see. Light came from the stars that dotted the sky and a faint blue ribbon stretched across. She wondered if he could really run all night.

  She never had the chance to find out, as one of the scout craft happened to buzz overhead and there was no doubt the two of them had been spotted, if not visually then by other means. Sasha didn’t know what infrared was back then, but it was likely her father did, and simply hoped against hope that the Totality wouldn’t bother passing over an empty clearing in the dead of night. He lost the bet, and even when the ship set down ahead, he didn’t stop, he just turned to the left and tried to go faster.

  She held onto her father as tightly as she could without choking him, unable to hear the men who’d disembarked from the ship and begun their own pursuit. She did hear the scout ship take off again, looking behind her to see it give chase. It passed overhead then descended, placing itself directly in their path. Red lights lit up near the front of the metal beast before they erupted with loud cracking sounds and ruptured the ground in front of them. Her father tried to plant his feet to avoid running headlong into the blasted earth, moving too quickly to turn in time. He stumbled, falling forward, with Sasha tumbling out of his arms and getting a mouthful of soil. She coughed and spit it out, dazed. The soldiers were upon them moments later, before he’d even had time to get to his feet again.

  One of the men “helped” him stand, roughly yanking him upright. Even then, her father did what he could to protect her. “Whatever you want, just take me. She’s a child, she hasn’t done anything. She doesn’t know what’s going on. Just let her go. You can have me.”

  Another one came toward Sasha, towering over her small frame. He raised a hand with an exposed palm and a bright light came from it, making her squeeze her eyes shut but also letting him get a good look at her face. He said something she did not understand, then smiled, reaching for her.

  But her father, never knowing when to give up, resisted. He struggled, got an arm free from one of the Totality trying to restrain him, punched one in the face, ducked and rolled out of reach, grabbed a sidearm from an enemy’s holster, tried in vain to fire it, and got the butt of a rifle across his face. He raised the muzzle of his rifle toward her father’s back as the latter tried to crawl away. One shot. Two shots. No screams. The energy bolts worked too quickly for that, shorting out the entire central nervous system in a fraction of a second. One moment everything’s fine, you’re conscious, you’re mobile—then the bolt hits, every electrical re
ceptor in your body is struck almost at once, signals in the heart and brain overwhelmed, every muscle contracted, and that’s it. Sasha resented ever having learned in detail how those Totality rifles worked. They were designed to be quick and efficient, to end the struggle immediately so there’d be nothing to do but dispose of the body. In her father’s case, he didn’t even get that dignity. They left him there.

  She scrambled to his corpse, bawling over him with a child’s grief, screaming to whatever gods may have been listening, that they should strike down the otherworldly monsters. No hands came from above except those of the Totality bent on subduing her. One of them laughed.

  The other—the apparent leader—sighed, then spoke commandingly in a foreign tongue.

  Sasha recalled nothing immediately after that, as the rifles evidently possessed a lower, non-fatal setting. Something momentarily made her skin feel as though it was on fire, and then nothing happened until she awoke inside a rumbling ship, surrounded by dozens—thousands?—of others. These were not Totality but people from her planet, fellow captives bound for some unknown destination. But also, they were strangers. The straps of both bags were clutched in her hands, which she didn’t remember doing, but it was possible the Totality had wrapped her hands around them. She quickly dug into them, finding that they’d clearly been ransacked, everything tossed about inside with no regard to organization. Buried at the bottom of her father’s bag, beneath loaves of bread and a couple changes of clothes, she found the chronicle. Unwilling to expose it in the presence of strangers, she left it where it was and fastened the bag shut again, clinging to both.

  Dirty bodies slept all around her, a dim red glow the only thing that let her see. Some were coughing, others sniffling, and several pairs of ill eyes set upon her. She was afraid they would come for her, take what little she had, and then what? Would they throw her down some dark hole? Would the Totality shoot her for nothing? She did not know where they were going, or why, only that she was alone. Amid so many people, she found herself completely alone.