Asylum: A Star Kingdom Science Fiction Adventure Novel Read online

  Asylum

  A Star Kingdom Novel

  Lindsay Buroker

  Copyright © 2021 by Lindsay Buroker

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  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

  Chapter 21

  Epilogue

  1

  Mari Moonrazor adjusted her ocular implants to simulate normal human eyesight as she gazed over the forest of evergreens toward the rising sun. Pinks and oranges burnished the blue sky, the sight gorgeous and still novel to someone who’d spent most of her life on spaceships and habitats. She couldn’t, however, help but wonder if she was truly seeing the sky as unaltered humans would. Her mother had surgically installed numerous chips and cybernetic implants in her before she’d been a year old, and Mari couldn’t remember what it was like to be fully human.

  As she watched the sky slowly change colors, an increasingly familiar sense of hiraeth crept over her. Why did she keep coming up to this clifftop to look at the sunrises when they kept stirring up emotions that could only get her in trouble? Emotions that prompted her to take action. To leave.

  With her mother’s plans to assemble an ancient wormhole gate and lead their people to another system recently thwarted, Mari’s life’s work seemed insignificant. What need did the astroshamans have for a terraforming scientist, or the technology she made, now that they were hunkered in an underground base on a planet that already had the rich atmosphere, soils, and climates of Old Earth?

  Behind her, heavy feet crunched through the foliage on the clifftop. Her augmented hearing had no trouble picking up the noise over the hum of the generator that kept a camouflaging shield over their base to hide it from the network of satellites that orbited Odin. It was her mother’s crusher, a huge tarry-black combat robot that could liquefy and re-form into any shape. Its approach had to mean that her mother was also coming.

  Concern stirred in Mari’s gut, though she wasn’t doing anything wrong. Not yet. Surely, even beings who longed to integrate themselves with machines, if not eventually give up their biological bodies entirely, could appreciate the aesthetical appeal of a sunrise.

  “It is not the worst view one could have for a secret base,” her mother said, stepping around the crusher and up to the edge of the cliff to join her. Her short white hair stuck up in all directions, as if she’d just roused from bed, though it always looked like that, and implants made her eyes appear the same whitish-blue as Mari’s. Her skin was bronze, a few shades darker than Mari’s, who had the coloring and slim build of the father she couldn’t remember, a father long gone. “I should know. I’ve spent much of the last twenty years hiding in one place or another.”

  “It’s an improvement over the ice base on Xolas Moon,” Mari said, “but can we truly consider it secret? The land was a gift, right? At least one person in the Star Kingdom government knows we’re here.”

  “It was not a gift but a prize acquired through negotiations. And it is only temporary, until we can build a gate from scratch with the data we gathered—” her mother waved to the ground, indicating the complex engineering project their people had started in the freshly excavated base built under the cliff, “—and resume our quest to travel beyond the Twelve Systems and find a new home, one not impinged upon by humanity’s spread. A place where we will not be judged for seeking the next logical evolution.”

  Mari didn’t point out that astroshamans were as apt to judge normal humans as vice versa. “When? Shall I continue my research?”

  “Of course. Our allies in System Geryon are manufacturing an automated ship that will take our finished gate to the new system we’ve chosen, install it, and link it to the existing network, so we can quickly travel there ourselves. If you’ve completed work on your prototype terraformer, we can build more of them and send them along on the ship to create a world suitable for biological matter. Since our people have not yet been able to agree collectively to give up our original forms—” Mother waved at her mostly human body, “—for entirely machine-based bodies, that will be necessary.”

  Mari grimaced. She hadn’t yet told her mother that she’d lost the terraforming device. It had been in her lab on the Celestial Dart, one of the spaceships that had battled the Kingdom Fleet in their Arctic Islands and crashed. She’d had instructions to grab everything valuable before transferring to a transport vessel that wouldn’t go into combat, but there had been too much to take and not much time. She’d forgotten her prototype.

  “Do you think it’s necessary for us to leave now that the Kingdom is under more progressive rule?” Mari asked to change the subject. “Perhaps we could stay here and be…”

  “What? Welcomed with open arms?” Mother snorted.

  Mari knew that was unlikely, but she couldn’t help but think of the list she’d made on her eighteenth birthday. The Human List.

  It was full of things she had never experienced and only read about in books, things that were frowned upon in the astroshaman community because they appealed to “base human emotions.” Drinking caffeinated and alcoholic substances, air-bike racing, hang-gliding, kissing, having sex, eating chocolate, even walking barefoot on a beach with sand squishing between her toes. They were all things she was curious about but had never been permitted to do.

  “Even if we hadn’t gone along with high shamans Chatelain and Cometrunner,” Mother continued, “and attacked this world, the Kingdom never would have accepted us. They never did before. Even those in progressive systems call us freaks and weirdos, always making it clear that we do not belong. If you doubt that, all you have to do is go out among them and walk in their streets with your implants visible.”

  “Can I?” Mari smiled to make it a joke, but that sense of longing returned. Her mother had never given her or her siblings the opportunity to go out among normal humans. But it would be easy now that they were living on this world. Even though she couldn’t see the distant capital of Zamek City, not even with the binocular setting on her implants, she knew it was there, a mere two hundred miles to the east. Mari envisioned Glasnax-windowed skyscrapers glinting pink in the rising sun.

  “No.” Her mother turned a horrified expression on her. “Especially not now. They’re still repairing their cities from the bombings. They would kill you on sight.”

  That would be unfair. Mari hadn’t had anything to do with the bombings, nor would she threaten any humans if she went among them. All she wanted was to experience the items on her Human List.

  “Give up such notions,” her mother said, as if reading her mind, “and focus on perfecting the terraformer so we can make more of them.”

  It struck Mari that if she confessed to having lost it, she might have the excuse to leave. If their lost ships hadn’t been salvaged, someone could fly up and retrieve the device. She could volunteer. Oh, the frigid Arctic Islands weren’t anything she longed to see, but while she was out,
maybe she could also visit one of the cities on the mainland. Since her people had few working transport devices, maybe she would even need to go to a city first to acquire a small craft to fly up there.

  “I should have told you earlier,” Mari said, “the prototype was on the Celestial Dart.”

  Her mother grimaced. “You didn’t take it with you when we left?”

  “There wasn’t much time, and I didn’t even think of it. I left it in a cabinet in my lab.”

  Her mother radiated displeasure.

  “I hadn’t truly believed our ships would be defeated.”

  “They shouldn’t have been,” her mother growled. “If I had been in charge, I wouldn’t have underestimated Casmir Dabrowski and his pesky clone.”

  “Perhaps I could go up to the crash site and see if the terraformer survived. I had it tucked away in an insulated box.”

  Her mother squinted at her. A suspicious squint?

  Mari raised her eyebrows, turning her expression into what she hoped looked like a desire to be helpful, not a scheme to escape.

  “It would be easy to find it,” Mari added. “I know you prompted the other ships to self-destruct when you and the survivors fled, so that the Kingdom wouldn’t get our technology, but I found the Celestial Dart on their satellite imagery.”

  “It was also supposed to self-destruct, but the program failed, or the equipment was too damaged by the crash. The rest of us were too injured and concerned about surviving and escaping to go back to finish the job. By then, their troops were crawling all over those mountains.”

  “The terraformer was locked in a cabinet. Scavengers might not have found it. I can—”

  “No. It is too dangerous. They have a military outpost near the crash site, and unscrupulous salvagers are likely still fighting over the pieces.” Her mother’s mouth twisted in distaste. “I assume you have the schematics. You can build it again.”

  “The raw materials—”

  “Make a list. I’ll find a way to acquire whatever you need.”

  “But Mother. Shouldn’t we at least check?”

  “It’s too dangerous,” her mother repeated, her voice hard. “You may not go.”

  Mari clenched her jaw. She was twenty-four. Had she been a normal human born into a human household on almost any planet or habitat in the Twelve Systems, she would have been considered an adult, free to make her own decisions. Free to go where she wished.

  “It is for your own good, Mari,” her mother said, her voice softer. “They would see you as a spy if not a saboteur, and they would kill you. If I thought you merely wanted to sneak in and out of the crash site without being seen, perhaps I would say yes, but I believe you want more than that. As you’ve admitted before, you want to walk among them, a scientist experiencing the culture and curiosities of the indigenous people.”

  Mari’s cheeks warmed, and she looked out upon the forest instead of meeting her mother’s gaze. She shouldn’t have been so frank about her desires in the past.

  “Perhaps they would not kill us,” Mari said. “Perhaps one could prove that one had no ill intent and might be permitted to explore their world.”

  Just proving she didn’t have ill intent might not be enough. What if she was willing to share her knowledge about terraforming with the Kingdom? Her prototype was far more advanced and faster working than the equipment they used. If she could find it and show it to them, maybe they would want to hire her. Or even grant her asylum.

  “Just because Minister Dabrowski is willing to turn enemies into allies doesn’t mean the rest of them will see us as anything but threats to be destroyed. He is not in charge of their people. The very fact that we must remain hidden—” Mother pointed upward toward the camouflaging shield over the base, though it was only visible when Mari shifted the setting of her implants to detect energy instead of light waves, “—is a testament to that. Their military would destroy us if they knew we were here. You will stay here in hiding, as we all will, until it’s time to leave the Twelve Systems forever.”

  Mother glanced toward the rising sun, then turned her back on it and headed to the tunnel that led into their base. A temporary base on a temporary planet.

  Forever. The word haunted Mari. If she didn’t go out soon and experience humanity and what it was like to be one of them… she would never get a chance.

  For her entire life, she’d obeyed her mother and the elders. But as she looked toward the rising sun, she decided she’d had enough. She would take her chances and trust she could keep herself alive among potential enemies. It was time to leave her people.

  “I never thought I would rob a greenhouse.”

  “These buildings are experimental seed and plant germination centers,” K-45 said in his robotic voice.

  “I never thought I would rob a germination center.”

  “Are you having misgivings about this mission?”

  “You might say that.” Kenji Chisaka—who went by Kenji Backer, in the vain hope that neither the Kingdom Guard nor Zamek City Police would find out he was the son of a terrorist—pushed his hands through his hair hard enough to dislodge strands. “When we were robbing from the corrupt nobility, who are hell-bent on keeping commoners enslaved in a backward system, it seemed right and just. But these are Queen Oku’s greenhouses, and she’s in charge now. By all accounts, she’s a progressive academic who remembers the names of the little people, and she’s dating a commoner.”

  Kenji didn’t want to rob anyone at all. For the last eight years, he’d been doing honest work, whatever jobs he could find without being chipped and in the system. Just when he’d eked together enough physical currency to bribe a spaceship captain to take him out of the Kingdom so he could start a new life, not one but two invading forces had come to Odin. They’d dropped bombs all over the planet, including onto the apartment building where he’d been squatting in the basement. He’d lost all of his meager belongings; he’d almost lost his life.

  “Minister of External Affairs Casmir Dabrowski was cloned from the legendary war hero Admiral Mikita,” Kay said, “and, in the aftermath of King Jager’s death, was awarded a position in the nobility.”

  “Yeah, but he was born a commoner and raised in an apartment in the Brodskiburg District. That’s as common as it gets.”

  “I was born in Refuse Collection Bin Thirty-Seven,” Kay said, “but I am uncommon.”

  “That is true. I used to take classes from Minister Dabrowski. He was Professor Dabrowski back then.”

  “You were accepted into an institute of higher learning?” Why did his robot companion sound surprised?

  Kenji wished he could legitimately say yes, but… “I squatted on campus for a while and sneaked into classes in the huge lecture halls where nobody took attendance.”

  It was unlikely Dabrowski had known he existed.

  “Backer!” one of the thieves standing guard outside the greenhouse whispered harshly. “Quit yapping with your junkyard of a robot. This isn’t the coffee house. You’re supposed to be standing guard. Alertly.”

  Kenji sighed and focused on the parking lot across the field from the greenhouses. He was stationed next to an irrigation shed halfway to the lot, and his duty was to delay the authorities if any shuttles or ground vehicles flew or drove in.

  His stomach growled, a reminder that he had few crowns in his pocket, and it had been more than a day since his last meal. He didn’t want to rob anyone, but he needed to eat.

  “I am also having misgivings about this mission,” Kay said in a lower tone of voice. “My materials may have been acquired in a junkyard, but like human beings, I am worth more than the sum of my parts.”

  “Yes, you are.” Since Kenji had assembled Kay, he wouldn’t disagree, though even he admitted his multi-metaled bipedal companion wasn’t the most state-of-the-art robot in existence. None of his parts were dented or rusted, but the service panel on his back that allowed access to his internal wiring did not look like anything other than the toaster do
or that it was. “I’m sorry I let myself get talked into this. If I had money to rent a shuttle, we’d be up in the Arctic Islands, scavenging the wrecks from the big battle there. It’s rumored that some of them were astroshaman ships. Even if they’ve mostly been picked over by now, can you imagine how much we could get for even a few smidgens of their technology?”

  Kenji picked up his borrowed DEW-Tek rifle, prepared to do his duty if police or the Kingdom Guard showed up. He tried to hand a pistol to Kay, but the robot closed his mechanical fist, refusing to accept it.

  “You’re not willing to help out?” Kenji asked.

  “You know what my foundational programming is.”

  Yes, when Kenji had been building the robot, there hadn’t been many free options for embedded operating systems. He’d wanted Kay to be able to help him with the mechanic job he’d been holding down at the time, but the only foundational programs that had been available were Kitchen Assistant and Academic Tutor. Figuring the kitchen-assistant operating system would have left Kay prone to chopping and roasting everything in sight, Kenji had opted for Academic Tutor. For the most part, it worked fine, and he’d been able to add numerous engineering and repair programs afterward, but Kay did have a tendency toward lecturing. Even worse, he often opined on philosophical and moral matters. Such as robbing greenhouses.

  “I am incapable of acting in a violent manner toward human beings,” Kay added.

  “You could shoot out their tires.”

  “I am incapable of acting in a violent manner toward tires.”

  “I had no idea tutor robots weren’t allowed to do that.”

  “We are programmed to be serene role models for impressionable young humans.”