Family from Beyond the Stars, Ch. 10 (Patreon)

CH. 10Always Forward

The cubs exploded up out of the densely packed snow.  Shaking the clingy white particles from themselves, they leaped about in a frenzy of excitement, some more so than others, but all of them overjoyed to finally be out of the confines of the ship.  It was the only world they'd ever known other than Kenny's apartment back on Earth, so this was entirely brand new to them.  Joey especially loved to dive into the thickest drifts that he could, burrowing like some kind of weird mole and vanishing completely from sight, only to reappear dozens of feet away, his head popping out of the ground.  He gave his happiest ever yowl and then the biggest, cheesiest grin at his family.

A second later, he ducked back down as Phoebe swatted at his head playfully.  This had become something of a pattern.  She would then spend the next few minutes hunting her tunneling brother, leaping like a fox into the air to plant her paws onto the most likely spot for her sibling to emerge.  More often than not, the usually graceless Joey was able to evade her flawlessly, his bulky body somehow able to move through the dense powder like a fish through water, and his white pelt helped conceal him from even his mother's perceptive gaze at times.

He popped out of the snow right next to Chandler then, letting out a growl that for all the world sounded like "Boo!"  The red-tufted male Cub flipped up into the air, having been warily pacing around in the lighter drifts.  He hissed angrily and then dove in after his brother in a fury.  The usual prankster had been more hesitant and wary about the all-new terrain and texture of their surroundings.

His reservations seemed gone now as a merry chase led through the snow.  No longer in an elegant and hidden tunnel, great drifts and puffs of powder and ice flew in every direction as the boys pursued one another around and around.

Their sister, patiently waiting, leaped on top of both of them just as they cleared the latest deep patch, bowling them over and pinning them.  There were many yowls and cries and chittering from the mass of multi-limbed, furry, scaly, bodies as the children grappled.  The fight ended with Phoebe posing proudly atop of her smaller brothers, her thick fur ruffled by the cold breeze.  Chandler was directly underneath her, looking sullen, while Joey was on the bottom.  He merrily munched on mouthfuls of snow.

All of this Kenny and Nova watched from afar, nestling down beside a massive group of steaming pools in the ground.  The sides of the banks were sloped and glasslike, covered in a thin film of lacquer-like substance that sparkled with shades of bright blue, turquoise, and pink in the haze created by the geothermal vents underneath the water.  One test of the water by a curious finger had Kenny yelping and flapping his hand in a frenzy to try and shake off every drop from his skin.  The hot springs were close to 200 degrees, or so stated his livesuit a moment later, nowhere near suitable for swimming in.  Its pragmatic, synthesized voice almost sounded smug to him, and he glared at the glowing band on his wrist sullenly.

“Gee, thanks,” he muttered.  “Couldn’t have told me that before I almost deep fried my finger?” Still, the heat they produced was comforting to him.  Everything else in immediate view on the planetoid was completely covered in snow and ice.  It all provided a rather bleak landscape, but at least the cubs had found a spot of fun for themselves.  It meant everything to him to see them enjoying themselves so much as they finally got to see something new.

Beaming at the cubs as they continued to race around, he called after them.  "Remember to stay where we can see you!"  His voice echoed strangely around the completely barren area.  Far off in the distance, over a vast, flat plain of snowy dunes, he could see the faint shapes of mountains.  Otherwise, the area was nearly featureless for miles in every direction.  It looked completely uninhabited, but that was probably for the best.

Kenny's eyes, once again, wandered up towards the sky.  Where the stars or sun should have been was instead an ominous dark, nearly featureless plane.  Dominating the entire field of his vision was a black hole, swirling occasionally and distorting everything around it.  Even from so far away, it was a terrifyingly beautiful spectacle, like nothing any photograph taken by satellite could ever begin to replicate.

Nova had only agreed to his idea because their timetable of being here was incredibly limited, as the planet they were on had not yet fallen into the gravitational well of the event horizon but that would not last forever.  This entire star system was soon to be swallowed up by that monstrous darkness, and they would be well away by the time that happened.  Even so, convincing her had not been easy.

A few days after he had gone to find her in the cockpit, they had been spending their time as they used to, playing and cuddling with the cubs.  The three children had been over delighted to see their mother again, and Nova had barely spent more than a few minutes at a time away from even one of them.  She had missed them too, he could tell.

What was more, ever since that day, she had insisted that they spent more time together as well.  He was rarely not sitting next to her or in her lap, and the cubs tried to give them some space during the day as they sat, talked, or just leaned against one another fondly.  Kenny had never expected or anticipated to be in such a loving and supportive, if platonic relationship.  Still, platonic or not, it made his heart swell every time that Nova nuzzled or touched him, or allowed him to nestle back into her thick fur, although they had not kissed again since the last time.

He would never have imagined that the same towering being who had tried to space him on their first meeting could ever have been so heart-warmingly sweet and tender towards a being so very different from herself.  They had come a long way, her attitude having changed in equally drastic ways as his physical transformation had done for him.

Even so, Nova was still constantly on edge.  She rarely relaxed except for the times she allowed Kenny to pet her, and never for very long.  That first experience of it still seemed to have shaken her for some reason and while she obviously enjoyed it, she only let him touch her hair, face, and sometimes her throat.  He didn't mind, determined to never offend her again.

Yet, for some reason, despite that she didn't want his hands to wander, she never failed to rather possessively demand her own snuggle time with him now, much like the cubs did.  He was glad to not have any sexual urges anymore, because being all but shoved into her chest was already embarrassing and pleasant enough as it was.

During one day of such snuggling, while watching the cubs batt around a piece of condensed scrap material, shaped roughly into a ball, Kenny had cleared his throat.  Nova's ear turned slowly around to face him, still looking out the window.  She always gave him her attention when she could, even if she made sure she was keeping a wary eye out at the same time.

"Nova?" he began nervously.  She rumbled.  "I hesitate to ask this but...do you think we could talk about finding someplace for the cubs to...explore?"

Her attention whipped around to him completely, eyes wide and focused, her ears straight up.  It was a very intimidating look, but he had made sure to psych himself up as much as possible prior, having expected it.  He knew that, as scary as she could appear, Nova was only ever interested in protecting her family.  That now included him, an honor he fell asleep smiling to each evening, whether in his pod or, as a welcome new development, within her own sleeping quarters with her.

He cleared his throat and deliberately extricated himself from her arms to stand directly in front of her.  "I'm only asking for the cubs' sakes," he explained.  "Look at them."  Both of them did, eyeing their children lazily pass the ball around.  Their eyes were drooping and glazed over, bodies slumped.  "They're bored."  He turned back to look up at her.  "I know we're on the run and everything, and I'd never want to put them or you in danger.  I know I'm not aware of everything about your past, but surely He can't find us if we just stopped at a random planet for...an hour or so, right?  Just to let them stretch their legs and everything!"

Nova glowered at him.  Her lip rolled up and she looked slightly away from him out of the corner of her eye.  She was scanning the galaxial horizon yet again.

He touched her paw gently, returning her focus to him.  "I know you're scared; you have every right to be with everything you’ve gone through and done to protect this family from Him," he offered, stroking the metal plates, scales, and fur of her fingers.  Her ears and eyes softened a bit and she rolled her paw over to let him pet along her wrist and palm.  "But...isn't the universe a big, wide, vast place?"

She met his eyes, peering almost through him.  Her implant flared to life, searching his emotions and thoughts.  He was well aware of the process by now and kept everything open and honest.

"Don't you want to show your kids how beautiful it all is?  All they know is the four walls of this cargo hold and the view of the stars outside.  There are so many worlds, so many endless possibilities."

Her expression darkened, obviously still doubtful at the idea even after ascertaining that his motives were pure.  She rumbled unhappily, closing her paw around his hand.  He held her gently.

"I know you'll protect us against anything that might come our way," he consoled her.  He believed that with all of his heart.  "There's no one stronger than you, Nova."

His praise actually made her smile a little bit.  A soft purr began in her chest before she glanced back outside.  It died away immediately and he saw her fur bunch up, her whole body tensing again.  He distracted her by sliding his hand out of her paw and walking forward into her lap.  His arms went around her as much as he could and he planted his face against her chest.

"And I'll protect you," he murmured, face warm without even her natural heat against his cheeks.  He didn't care how silly and impossible that sounded.  He would never let anything bad happen to her, or the cubs, as long as he had life in his body.

He felt her stiffen a bit at the touch before his words carried up to her.  Her top arms slowly folded around him and they hugged for a while.  He knew she was wary, scared, and apprehensive.  She had survived, who knows how long, by living on the run, never staying in one place.  Their close call with her pursuer had only strengthened her anxiety.  She needed to relax as well.  And the cubs needed an outlet.

They had gone to bed that night, Kenny in his tube as that was his turn.  In the morning, however, when Nova let them all out, she had shocked all of them.  She was once again wearing her massive armored suit, a first since they had left Earth.  He had forgotten how menacing she looked in it, somehow looking even bigger than usual.  Maybe he was just too used to seeing her out of it by this point.

When the cubs had eyed her curiously, she had disengaged her helmet and given them, and Kenny, a small but soft smile.  She walked over to the side of the hull and pressed the button to open the access doors, where she would usually space the occasional broken piece of machinery or supplies.  Kenny could not help but feel a flutter of fear as he heard those door hydraulics open, accompanied by the wail of a klaxon siren.  He noticed, only then, that the engines seemed strangely quiet, also a first.

The ringing, grinding sound of the doors opening revealed that the barrier, separating the outside from the inside, was turned off.  A burst of icy wind flowed into the ship.  Nova turned again to her children and, to their combined shock, leaned herself back and fell backwards out of the ship!

Immediately they had all raced to the entrance, Kenny’s heart hammering out of his chest.  To his relief, and the yowls from the cubs mirroring it, Nova gazed up at them all smugly, having fallen maybe ten feet to land on the apparent ground below, surrounded by a cloud of white powder-like particles.  The ship drifted lower and lower before finally landing with the gentlest of humming sounds, causing the barest flurries from its descent and activation of landing gear.   A metallic ramp unfurled and thudded heavily onto the snow.

They all followed her down the gentle decline, feet and paws echoing on it with muted sounds before they crunched on the icy plain.  What they saw had taken their breath away.  A vast, frozen tundra stretched out as far as the eye could see.  A series of pools nearby visibly distorted the air a short distance away.

They were actually on the ground, having landed on the surface of an entirely new, genuine alien planet.  It had taken Nova very little cajoling of the cubs to get them to overcome their nervousness enough to begin exploring.  That was their very first experience with snow.  The cold didn't seem to affect them, although it did affect Kenny, even in his livesuit.

Phoebe at first had growled and pawed at the strange, soft white stuff.  Chandler did so as well.  Joey, once he had seen it wasn't dangerous, wasted no time.  He performed a running belly flop into the nearest drift and vanished from sight.  His siblings had yowled in distress but he emerged only a second later, munching on a mouthful of snow.  And so the games had begun.  The cubs' eyes and lights had never been brighter.

Kenny had elected to stay back inside the ship, as the outside reading temperature, once translated through his livesuit, registered around the equivalent of -34 degrees, although the alien tech didn’t say if that was Farenheit or Celsius.  Regardless, it was obvious that such cold was close to deadly for someone of his biological makeup, especially after long-term exposure.

The cubs had been unhappy that he couldn't join in the fun, but Nova had not accepted that.  She'd come back inside and wandered over to a crate full of spare pieces of the same kind of material as her armor.  Using a laser that emitted from one finger and both tentacles, she assembled some sort of rigg before his very eyes.  To his surprise, the process took her less than a minute.

She then seized him in one paw, turned him around easily as if handling a doll, and planted the new device squarely between his shoulder blades.  There was a dull click and then, to his shock, the livesuit suddenly spawned into being several thicker padded areas across the shoulders, arms, hips, thighs, and wrists.  His vision went dark as something slid up over his head and enveloped it, cutting off all audio, visuals, and even airflow.  He tapped at his face, trying not to panic, feeling something clicking underneath his fingertips.

His fingers were now covered in the suit as well in some sort of ultra-sensitive tactile gloves that fed sensory data directly to his suit.  His face was also completely enveloped in some sort of hard covering.  A second later, the lights once again returned.  He could breathe again too.  He looked up at a smugly smiling Nova in confusion and she turned out of the way, revealing his appearance.  Kenny stared, open-mouthed.

He was wearing a more heavily reinforced version of the livesuit, almost like some sort of sci-fi armor but much smaller and much less heavily-plated than hers was.  Even so, he looked rather imposing.  His face had on a smooth, rounded, partially see-through mask or perhaps helmet, which his features could still be seen through.  It almost looked like the same kind of technology as the pods.  He stretched in the suit, still possessing his full range of motion.  He felt warm and comfortable, as he had before the doors had opened.

Nova nodded approvingly and gestured with her head for him to follow.  He did so with no complaints.  He could 'feel' the cold now, but it didn't affect his core temperature.  It was sort of like being near a cold object.  Focusing on it, even touching the snow, gave him a confirmation of the difference in heat levels.  He could feel the individual ice crystals underneath his fingers, but his hands remained fully limber and warm.  A gauge lit up on the right side of his HUD.  It gave him odd numbers in Nova's dialect before they translated themselves into English text and numerical values.  He registered this all in amazement before, with delight, he whooped and joined in the fun.

His only major concern that occurred after she had altered his suit was when he looked up and saw the black hole.  The entire area was very dimly lit, and so he had peered around in search of the system's star.  That was when he saw it, hovering ominously on the horizon.  He had panicked a bit until Nova appeared at his side, comforting paw touching him.

'We are safe,' she told him.  'There is still some time remaining.  We will be gone before the planet is taken by the well.'  She nodded, face also visible through her visor.

They agreed to let the children play on their own for the most part, sitting near the pools.  That was when Kenny learned that he could, by touching his wrist, alter how much of his body was covered by the suit.  He uncovered one hand to test the water, resulting in his scalding his fingertips.  He quickly put his glove back on, skin smarting.  Thankfully his livesuit numbed the area quickly like a cold compress.

And so they had sat, watching the children race around happily.  Eventually, Kenny looked up at the heavily armored Nova.  She hadn't relaxed much since arriving on the planet, but, even so, she let herself smile as she observed how much the cubs were enjoying themselves.  She was the most beautiful being in the universe when she smiled like that.  There was so much joy in her face, such light and wonder.  He looked away shyly and forced himself to his feet.

Unable to curb his curiosity and it helping to distract from his romantic mooning over Nova, Kenny focused on inspecting his suit's new capabilities, determined not to waste his chance to see what it could do other than just look cool.  Nova helped, setting him to jump, run, and even attempt some complex acrobatics, none of which he would or had ever have been able to do before.  The suit made them all possible.

The only issue came when he accidentally activated some sort of booster in his boots while seeing what all he was capable of doing and had stomped down too hard on his heel.  The resulting pulse of energy flaring from his booted feet had sent flying into the air by at least ten feet, flipping end over end, before crashing back into the snow.  If he had hit solid rock, he probably would have died as he came down primarily on his shoulders and neck, but instead, he just slammed into the snow and sank into it.

Even as he blinked in surprise and shock, a message came across his HUD.  It showed him a full-body readout, displaying that the impact stabilizers had helped absorb most of the damage.  He wondered how far he could fall in such a suit without getting seriously hurt.  He didn't have any inclination or desire to really test that out though.  Nova, chuckling in her raspy, growling way, had laughed while she pulled him out with a tentacle claw and dusted him off with a big paw.

She explained the function of the jet-boosters once he had shaken off the surprise of his impromptu and short-lived flying session.  A number of charges built into the suit’s internal, rechargeable battery system would allow him to perform almost super-human like jumps, bounds, and leaps.  She set him to learning how to master them, and he was pleased that he only crash-landed twice more before he finally started to get the hang of landing on his feet.  Nova was as harsh a teacher as she was a rewarding one, praising him as easily as chastising him, just like with the cubs who had taken that momentary break in their play to watch him.

The most amazing feature about his livesuit now, however, came when Nova faced him towards a distant mountain range.  Miming for him to extend his right arm, he followed her instructions.  Her paw folded in slowly, two fingers remaining extended, and her thumb as well, while the rest curled into a ball.  He repeated the motion and then jumped as a ball of energy formed around his wrist.  He waved his hand and the display faded immediately.

Nova had laughed then at his reaction, then mimed for him to do it again.  'Trust Nova,' she told him.

He did so, wary now, and reextended his hand into the rough shape of a gun.  Again, glowing light formed around his wrist, fingers, and forearm.  Before his eyes, the light turned into see-through panels of energy, forming some kind of weapon around his hand.  He looked up at Nova in amazement, hand pointed to the sky.  "What the heck is this?" he asked, absentmindedly flexing his thumb.  A second later, he was suddenly floored as a massive impact shot through his arm, knocking his unstable feet out from underneath him.  Nova and the cubs all jumped back in alarm at the sounding of a huge retort.

Kenny, blinking in surprise and laying flat on his back, watched a bullet of pure energy sail up towards the atmosphere before disappearing miles above the surface.  Clouds were actually distorted by its passage, like when a rocket took off through the atmosphere.

Nova helped him back up, growling softly in admonishment.  He flushed, feeling foolish, but she only lightly tapped him on the helmet with a tentacle as a way of chastising him before the lesson resumed.  Once again, she had him point at the distant mountain, noticeably wary of where she was standing now.  He made sure not to move his thumb again until she gave him the all clear, keeping the cubs slightly farther back.  He didn’t begrudge her that; the firing motion had been so easy.

He sighted down his arm at the distant mountain, taking a more solid stance, making sure to line up his target right this time.  There even appeared a targeting reticle inside of his HUD now, focusing mainly on the tips of his glowing fingers.  He glanced at Nova and she nodded, taking several steps back.

Taking a deep breath, Kenny aimed forward again and pulled the trigger with his thumb.  This time he wasn't knocked off his feet, but his muscles all tensed from the recoil as another resounding, energized gunshot echoed around them, throwing a cloud of powder into the air around him.  The bolt of energy sailed off, straight as an arrow, towards its target miles away.  It might not do anything, but it would hit on its current trajectory if it didn’t just lose velocity and dissipate.  At the very least, he was glad that he was able to hit the broadside of a...mountain.

"This thing is really cool!" he told Nova.

Nova  just grinned then flicked her head forward as if telling him to keep watching.

He turned to do so.  His eyes latched back onto the blast right as it impacted the side of the mountain.  Kenny blinked in shock at the massive explosion that plumed upon contact.  A second later, they felt the aftershock blast past them, a thunderous boom that shook the very ground beneath their feet.  Trails of snow were whipped up into the air in flurries.  Before his eyes, the mountain released an avalanche from the impact a few seconds later, forming a white cloud around itself.  The rumbling it produced took a long while to disperse.

He eyed his new weapon with wariness, quickly releasing his fingers.  "Wow...it's...uhh...got quite the kick doesn't it?" he asked.  Nova nodded firmly.  He glanced down at his wrist.  Three glowing nodules had flashed into sight.  Two had already gone out, but one was very slowly starting to refill.  There was another gauge as well, similar to the jump-boost charges.  "So I get three shots, and however many jumps?" he asked.  Nova nodded again.  He sighed.  "That's still pretty cool.  What kind of cannon did you attach to me?  I feel like I just used the Spirit Gun."  At her confused look, he laughed.  "It's from an anime...uhh...an Earth TV show."

No less confused, Nova still nodded, perhaps understanding a bit more now.  The cubs all rushed forward to inspect his new device and capabilities, eager to test his new capacities for play.  Now he really was able to keep up with them better.  They raced around the plateau, Kenny jumping, cartwheeling, and dodging their most furious pounces by using the boosts from his augmented suit.  Nova did not join in, keeping her eyes on the sky and the distant black hole.

Eventually, even his increased endurance tapped out and he sat down back beside her with a deep sigh of satisfaction, watching the gauge on his boosters refill themselves surprisingly quickly, although his cannon seemed to take much longer to recharge.  He watched the cubs continue their endless games of chase, hide and seek, and wrestling.  He couldn't remember feeling better in his life.

'Thank you,' came Nova's voice in his head suddenly.

He looked up at her curiously.

Her eyes met his and her smile seemed to widen.  'They are happy.  Nova never would have thought of this.  Kenny is a good father.'  Her eyes went a bit sad then and she hunkered down beside him.  Her paws wrapped around her knees.

He looked down as well.  Things were quiet between them for a while.  Then, he asked the dreaded question again.  "What was he like?"  She gave him a wary, questioning look.  "Their Father."

Nova's eyes widened a bit and she looked away again.

"I know he was a King," prompted Kenny hesitantly.  "That means you were...his Queen?"  Nova nodded reluctantly.  He knew this was painful for her, but he wanted to know more about her.  "How did...you two meet?"

She glanced back at him again.  She didn't respond, eyes flicking back and forth as if trying to find the words.  She hung her head after a while, seemingly unable to do so.  Maybe it was just too much.

He understood. "Forget about it," he told her quickly.  "I really shouldn't have asked.  That's really personal.  I'm sorry."

'No,' she said then.  They locked gazes once more.  Her face was sad and nostalgic, eyes so very far away.  'It is hard, painful to speak of.  Nova owes it to Kenny.  For this.'  She turned more to face him, gesturing at the snow and the cubs nearby.

Kenny's face flushed a bit and he tried to wave it off as if it were nothing.  "Hey, you gave me a body that can run, lungs that can breathe, eyes that can see, a suit that lets me visit alien worlds, and a laser cannon strapped to my arm.  We are square."  Then he blushed a bit and shyly looked down.  "Plus...I'm never going to be able to repay you for showing me what a real family is like.  It's what I've always wanted.  To have people that love me and accept me.  I adore all of you so much..."

Nova purred down at him and one of her paws brushed his back.  When he looked back up at her, smiling, she still looked conflicted.  'Nova trusts Kenny,' she said at last.  'Nova wishes to show you the truth.  There is too much to say.'  One tentacle came out from behind her, touching his chest.  'It is easier to show.'

He looked at the limb warily as it hovered over his throat sensor.  The visions had been very powerful the last time she did this.  The things he had seen still left his mind reeling, and he knew she probably hadn't at first intended to show him those last parts, forcing herself to relive them in the process.  Now she was willingly offering to talk about her past.  He couldn't conceal how honored and excited he felt to be so trusted.

"O-okay," he said softly.  "But...only as much as you're willing to show me.  I don't want to upset you."

'Nova still feels the pain,' she admitted.  'Of losing him, even now.  My Mate.  He was a good King.  The very best of us.  He would have been a good father; it was all he wanted for so long.  Kenny is also a good father.  He would have been proud, knowing our cubs are under your protection.  Just as Nova is proud.  We owe you, everything.  Perhaps Kenny will better understand the chase.  The reason for my fear.  If Nova hides it no longer.'

He nodded and turned to face her.  "I'm ready then," he said.  He felt the tentacle touch his throat and the world seemed to fall away once again.  This time, however, it was not a simple rush of memories and images, no floating in the chromatic void.  This vision was guided.  Her memories, exactly as she had lived them, from a time long ago, in a distant galaxy unknown to Earth, played out before him, his whole perception of the world changing to better understand how this whole story began.  He saw.

***

It was a world of metal.  A world of darkness.  No life grew here anymore.  Its inhabitants struggled every day to find purpose, clawing over one another in a blind rush ever onward.  They knew no peace.  They knew the call only for violence, for glory, for war.

Her people had no name.  They needed none.  To the rest of the universe, they were simply Warriors.  Huge.  Powerful.  Imposing.  They ruled through conquest, through combat found worth in society, through glory won on the battlefield decided who led and who followed.  Their technology was unsurpassed in the art of war and expansion.  Their methods for battle were ironclad and simple, as was their method of thinking: forward, always forward.  They were ruled by warring clans, by chieftains and tyrants, but most especially by emotion; raw, uncontained, and often single-minded.

Her kind did not speak.  They did not write.  They did not create music.  They built only machines and weapons of war.  They had evolved from mere predatory animals, leaving behind the constriction of mere flesh and instead enhancing themselves with technology.  Mating became solely a tactical advantage, bonds forsaken in leau of cultivating strong bloodlines.  As resources dwindled, the Rite of Mating was sealed, possible still in their cybernetic forms but now only possible under strict conditions.

Yet, even as their bodies were upgraded and they left behind the concerns and trappings of flesh, so too were their minds expanded.  They conversed through body language, through sound, smell, light.  Then came a darkness, almost like a fog, obscuring what came after their awakening as the true alpha species of their system.  What came after was what they were now, smarter and stronger than ever, but having lost nearly everything that made them sentient beings.

They knew nothing of morals, cared nothing for those outside of Clan or Kin.  Their eyes were Dark.  They saw only enemies wherever they went, even among their closest comrades.  Only in the interest of expanding their territory did the clans band together, and when they did, none could stand against them.  Their never ending hunger, their need for conquest cost them even more than their ability to love and rationalize, draining their home world's light to fuel their ambitions and armies.

Her father was a great leader, a warrior born of a line of warriors.  He had killed his father to ascend as leader of the clan, as his father had killed his, for generations back in a line of bloody succession.  It was the way of their people: never duplicitous, never underhanded.  Only ever through battle: personal, hand-to-hand combat.

Her father believed in the way, and so he had raised her.  His Mate, her Mother, had died in a war with another clan.  He held no grudges.  The enemy clan had been wiped out in simple retaliation.  That was the way.

He taught her everything he knew: a harsh, unforgiving, demanding rhetoric that spared her of the weaknesses such as empathy or mercy.  She knew weapons, warfare, combat and tactics before she had even permanently left her sleeping pod.  Above all, she knew how to fly starfighters.  She was the best and brightest pilot of her people, a fighter surpassing everyone else in prowess, speed, diligence, and ruthlessness: her Father’s daughter through and through.  Her eyes were dark as the skies she sailed through, bringing conquest in his name.

Even so, she was not a monster like some of her kind.  She did not relish her time upon the surface of their starving planet, covered in steel and blood.  There were no lights on her world.  But the stars.  Those were beauty to her.  She would spend weeks of waking cycles away from the homeworld, venturing wide across the cosmos.  She would always return, reluctant, to assist in her father's war, back to that dark world that knew no such things as kindness or wonder, or song, or love.  All they knew, all she knew, was war.  Her desire for more was perhaps singular to her, or maybe she just wasn’t mature enough yet.  She did not know the Way well enough yet.

Her people did not fight for things like land, which was meaningless as it was all dead, or for wealth which they had no concept of.  They fought for battle itself, to be the strongest, to win.  They had no need of supplies as their discovery of a bio-fuel, long ago, comprising the solar energy of harvested star systems, replaced the need for all forms of sustenance.

Originally, it had been devised as a way to save their people from starvation, disease, and genetic weaknesses, serving as the catalyst to unlocking their cybernetic bodies,  granting them the time and energy to pursue all avenues of scientific creation.  But, as ever, their minds knew only how to use this knowledge, this power-source, to build weapons.

They harnessed its potential.  It gave them all that extra time to devote their energy and attention to their primary pursuits.  It fueled their bodies, their starships, their weapons.  It was endlessly renewable so long as they had fresh stars to harvest.  There was simply always need for more, and it was easily attained, so long as they continued to plunder other solar systems.  But things were changing.

One Male found a new way.  No one knew how he had done it, but he emerged in a gathering of the clans one day, and revealed his discovery: the Light.  He lowered his helmet and they saw.  His eyes.  They had Brightened.

Gone were the dark orbs of impassivity and ferocity, of hate and xenophobia.  Gone was the blindness of single-minded warfare and conquest, dictated by petty anger, jealousy, fear, and resentment.  His eyes had changed, becoming bright and shining, and so too did the world he saw change as well.  He saw the potential for more than just destruction.

He wanted to restore their homeworld, make it habitable and alive again, learn to grow and nurture the light it produced so that their bio-fuel would be forever sustainable so long as it was cared for.  They did not need to blindly harvest and destroy stars in their quest for dominance.  There was a better way, a gentler way.  In the long run, it would benefit their people and bring them up out of the darkness.

At first, he had been opposed.  Others saw him as weak, laughed him down.  He proved his strength in duels, contests, and battles beyond counting, easily gaining followers with victory after victory.  Those he turned to his side immediately saw the truth of his words, becoming fanatically loyal.  The remaining jests became threats and whispers.

An alliance of clans was called to stomp down his revolutionary ideas and thoughts.  He defeated them.  He was not just a persuasive leader, but a warrior too, empowered by this ‘Light’ in ways that they had never known were possible.  He was also merciful, sparing his enemies where he could.  More and more slowly flocked to his side, free of the infighting of clans as they stood unified underneath his guidance.

Still, his rebellion against the way of his own people, no matter how well-meaning and in fact peaceful, was not openly accepted.  There were those minds who could not be so easily swayed.  The way had been for millennia.

Nova was one such mind, not caring for ideologies or lights other than those cast by the stars, so far above and distant to their squabbling.  She saw this Male, this Pretender, as a fool, and put him out of her mind.  She was still the best fighter, the best pilot, the best and sharpest fang and claw.  She was her father's daughter and had to remain strong if she hoped one day to succeed him.  Politics bored her.

Even so, the times she engaged him in combat, whether trading fire or crossing blades with him, she could not shake a profound respect for his methods and tactics.  Their duels, of which there were many and to her endless frustration always ending in a stalemate, were almost like dances, his shining eyes full of mirth even as they traded blows that but for a single mistake would have felled the other.

She denied that he was anything more than just another opportunistic, if gifted, commander and fighter.  But for the first time, doubt of the way she had always known but never truly embraced, began to form cracks in her stoic, darkened view of the world.

Her father was the loudest voice against this reformation.  He saw the Pretender as a mortal foe and launched campaign after campaign against him as the dynamic of power continued to shift.  Each defeat only made her Sire more frenzied, more treacherous, and more monstrous, even in the eyes of his allies and followers.

More and more of his fold began to defect until her father was alone in all but his own clan.  Even Nova refrained from fighting at his side near the end, for this creature was not the honorable father she had grown up idolizing.  He fought his last, doomed coup alone.

The newly crowned King defeated him in one last massive combat.  During the battle, her father was struck, rupturing his armor and blinding him in one eye.  As he lay, crippled and beaten, the King offered him the choice: surrender or banishment.  The no-longer Pretender could not be merciful anymore.  Her father chose the latter.  He was exiled to the far reaches of their solar system.  But, as a form of insurance, he had to give up a political prisoner to ensure his loyalty, to end the war.

He gave them Nova.  She had been enraged.  Gone overnight were her patrols, her lonely and loving expeditions of the stars.  No more expansion, no more wanderings.  For the first time in untold ages, the Rite of Mating was reallowed in the interest to produce, not new soldiers, but simply children who would grow under this new regime, this new way.  All accepted it.  They had new loyalty now, and under his leadership, their entire perception of life began to change, as if a shroud had been lifted from their hearts and minds.

Old enemies became friends.  They stripped away the metal casing over their fading planet and worked on restoring it.  Gone were the towers and spires and manufacturing plants.  The trees returned, as did the grass, the stones even.  Life flowed from their homeworld once more.

The most momentous beginning for this change came when two mortal foes, a Male and Female clan leader of separate tribes, undertook the Rite, bridging the gap between their families.  To the shock and joy of all, they announced that they had fallen in love with one another.  From their union came Children, a new age of life resting on their tiny shoulders.  Many more followed suit.

For Nova, this was a different experience and not a welcome one.  She was not imprisoned but she was no longer allowed to fly.  All starfighters were decommissioned, and she was barred from setting foot on a starship while being kept under guard.  It sickened her to be so trapped, even in a world so vastly different than the one she had actively sought to escape.

Everywhere she looked, she saw emotions pouring out from everything and everyone.  There was happiness, sadness, laughter, and above all: love.  Her people loved one another as fiercely as they had once hated.  War had blinded them.  They rediscovered the old way, before the way of war.

This was what King Brighten had brought them back to.  Nova hated it, and the King most of all.  She had not seen her father in cycles of cycles, not seen the stars in even longer.  She often spent days locked in her private quarters, alone.  Even old companions of her warrior-time were turned away.

Then King Brighten came to her himself, seeking her company, supposedly to gift her the Light as well.  She refused him at first, unable to accept his charm, his laughter, or the love that everyone directed toward him.  He did not relent.  He asked her to only walk with him, to see their new world through new eyes.  She had nothing else to occupy her time so she reluctantly agreed.

Little by little, she saw the vast, new world that he had remade.  She saw families.  She saw friends.  And she heard music.  It was not music, not the way Humans knew it, but it was that rich, emotional sound that she had only ever heard within her own head when looking out of her cockpit at the stars and planets she explored.  Her people's lights had returned.

The Light came to her too, for that was what the Light was.  It was not some magical transformation, or a chemical process, or some claim towards divinity.  It was life itself.  Emotions she had not felt ever before rushed into her, awakening her dreams and desires more and more.  The stars were no longer just in the night sky but all around her.  She heard and felt and tasted the Light.  Her eyes turned from darkness to brightness.  She knew this was the way: the true way.

She fell in love with the world, with her people, and slowly she came to look at King Brighten as something more than a Pretender who got lucky.  But this was because he asked nothing of her, made no empty promises or grand gestures.  He ruled as one of the people, no grander than any other.  In fact, he gave everything without a mind for personal gain.

It was his way, alien to even his own people but endlessly worshiped and revered.  They saw in him everything they wanted to be.  Slowly, she began to see it too.  Without realizing it, she fell in love.

She only knew for sure how she felt one day when he took her out to the pastures, where once had been the airfields.  Waiting there was a recommissioned starship.  It was not her old fighter, but he immediately climbed aboard with her and told her to fly.  She needed no second bidding.  She flew them out to the outskirts of the system, overjoyed to finally be free again.  She showed him the swirls of galaxies, the silent joy of slipspace.  His smile had never faded, and she felt it growing on her.  In a strange way, he saw their homeworld the same way she saw the stars.  He was the first friend she had ever truly had.

After that day, she began to be allowed freedoms again; she was allowed to come and go as she pleased, to fly however much as she wanted.  She even visited her father in his isolated stronghold on the most distant planet of their star system.  She shared with him how their people had changed, offering to show him through the link.  He greeted her with only silence.  She visited him only twice more after that.

The last would be the worst mistake she ever made.

As she realized her feelings only ever grew stronger for her King, she decided to confront them openly.  A warrior should love as they fought: open and always moving forward.  She approached him at court.  All knew who she was: the daughter of their King's most fierce and uncompromising enemy.  Even so, she kneeled before him and begged to be allowed to join his inner circle.  Her wish was not granted.  He instead gave her much more.

Before the entire collection of clan leaders, King Brighten asked her to become his Queen.  She accepted.  Their marriage was joyous and soon after, they underwent the Rite of Mating.  They gave birth to three beautiful children, setting them to grow and one day see the world that their father had created.

Nova was so overpowered by her joy that she visited her father one last time, believing that she could sway him to peace, for she still saw in him the honorable warrior from her past.  She begged him to come to see the new world, to leave behind the darkness and see the Light for real.  He said nothing, as he always did.  At the last, she mentioned her children before she left.  Her father, Lord Darken, saw a chance now.

He had not been idle in all those years.  His much-diminished clan had come with him, unable to accept a new way.  They had once been the strongest and so their war leader had promised they would be again.  He had become something worse somehow.

He cannibalized the essence of his least loyal followers, and as he grew more powerful, he grew more monstrous and tyrannical.  His soldiers were turned into monstrosities.  He only needed an opportunity for revenge, to unleash his wrath once more.  He had it, in those three, small beings formed of his daughter's betrayal and the promises of a foolish Pretender.

Not only had he consumed his own warriors, he had also in secret turned his prison into a factory, wherein he produced his most deadly weapon ever imaginable.  His followers, those still loyal and now terrified of their master, ventured back out into the stars to harness and gather more solar energy in secret.  This they used to empower the vessel of nightmares.  When the engines roared to life, darkness again came to the world of light and song.

There was no quarter.  Lord Darken had used the bodies of his own fallen warriors, stripping them of life, to create mechanical soldiers that showed no pity or mercy, the perfect tools to revive the only way he deemed worthy of survival.  But to blind his people once again was impossible now that they had embraced Brighten’s light.  He decided to snuff it out completely.

Thousands were slaughtered.  For every city that was evacuated, two were destroyed, their lives and lights extinguished in the face of overpowering cruelty and malice.  But this was not Lord Darken's only goal.  He detonated the planet's core, not content until he had wiped out the very memory of his polluted homeworld from existence.  At the last, with the planet cracking to pieces around them, he came for King Brighten, for Nova, and for the cubs.

The children were sent off-world in an effort to save them even as death rained down from the sky and stalked their streets. The cubs were truly Darken's goal.  With them as hostages, the surviving members of their species could be commanded to return and fight in Darken's name, for so deep was the love of their people now for the heirs of their beloved King's lineage that they would never allow the royals to come to harm.

Many had died already attempting to protect them.  Those captured chose death rather than betray their sovereign.  They all served in the end.  Once he had the children, he would corrupt them and turn them into what Nova had been.  This, she, and the King, would never allow, no matter how hopeless it was.

But King Brighten had one last trick.  In secret, he had commissioned the most advanced stealth warship ever seen, able to be piloted by a one-person crew.  He instructed Nova to take it and fly away, to find their children and keep them safe.  He would not abandon their world, even doomed, to a madman.  It was his last foolishness, his last love of their home.  She had begged him to come with her, to be a family together and they would find their people once again, to revive the way, to bring back the Light again.

He had looked at her with the happiest, saddest eyes in the world and said, 'You, my Queen, are the way.  You are my Light.  I will stay.  I will hold him long enough to get you to safety. To stand against the darkness is a victory.  My last victory.  Go, my Queen, and win this war.  Never look back.  Always forward.  Always ahead.'  And then he had raced off towards the looming shadow of her father, swords blazing, and a song of defiance in his voice.

She had fled.  She felt when King Brighten died.  Once again, she sailed through a cosmos of stars and galaxies but she felt no love for them.  Her life, her Light, her love, had died along with their homeworld.  All she had left was their children, the last legacy of their union.  She could keep them safe, forever.  The pursuit took months, constantly stalked by her Father, before she finally caught wind of the pod’s tracker.  At long last, she came to Earth, to find them: her last hope.  She found so much more: an Earthling ready to die to protect creatures that were not even of his own kind.  She had found Kenny.  He looked just like He had when he smiled.  King Brighten...

***

Kenny's eyes snapped open.  His cheeks were wet with tears, soaked completely inside the helmet.  He blinked in surprise as the flow of memories abruptly cut off.  He looked up at Nova at the jarring snap back to reality.  She wasn't looking at him, but at the sky.  The cubs were a ways away, yowling in fright.

Then he noticed something else.  It wasn't just his cheeks that were wet.  His suit was too.  So was Nova's.  So cold was the atmosphere around that the sudden rainfall had caused a vast cloud of steam to erupt everywhere.  Rain.

Kenny's eyes jerked up to the sky.  Dark clouds had billowed out of nowhere.  Lights shone through them as they parted around the prow of a massive vessel, sword-like tip piercing their dark shrouds.  Lights shone on the side of a ship bigger than the isle of Manhattan.  Nova took one look at Kenny.  He saw the terror in her eyes.

She turned, roaring at the cubs, both in an animal snarl and frantic, radio-static sound.  They obeyed without question rushing up and into the ship.  Chandler was the farthest one out, moving as fast as he possibly could.  A dark shape detached itself from the ship up above, hurtling down towards the surface of the planet.  Faster and faster it sailed towards the ground, a blur curled into a ball.

Kenny could no more tell anything else about the thing than when it had started its descent before it landed with a thunderous impact.  Dust and powder blew into the air as it smashed a hole easily twenty feet deep into the icy plain.  A second later, a horrible, grinding sound of gears and clattering metal came.  Chandler had been knocked off his feet by the explosion right behind him.  Despite the yowls, yells, and roars of his family, he turned back.  His golden coat was a near-constant flashing state of orange and yellow along his tufted spine.

A pair of arms reached up from the crater.  Another pair soon joined them.  Clawed, metal hands lifted a nightmarish figure from the ice and snow.  Kenny screamed.  Chandler hunkered down to the ground in terror as the thing towered over him.  It was almost as big as Nova, shoulders slumped, emaciated body twitching every now and then.  One arm extended itself, flipping unnaturally at the wrist before the entire limb turned into a metal pair of hooking prongs that snapped open and shut like a crab: a catch-claw.  It leaped at Chandler with frightening speed, moving too fluidly and yet too clunkily for anything living.

The worst part about it was the face.  It was like Nova, skull reminiscent of a large hunting feline mixed with the scaly armored features of a reptile.  The jaw hung perpetually open, the inky-black fur and withered skin pulled tight over its wizened, muscleless frame over a metal skeleton.  The eyes were empty, not just flat but bare holes, nothing in them at all, and yet it moved with perfect sight.  Chandler was transfixed in place, unable to move.

Kenny started to race forward but he would never get there in time.  Nova, however, was ten times faster than he was.  She crossed the fifty-yard distance in barely a few strides.  In the space of one step to the next as she drew within striking range, her left arms slotted together, empowering the double-edged energy sword that exploded from her conjoined wrists.  She roared at the top of her voice, swinging at the monstrosity as it reached for her child.

The head jerked up with lightning speed at the very last second.  The metal spine bent unnaturally at the waist, pulling a Matrix-style dodge underneath that sizzling weapon.  It flipped another arm, this one terminating in a single, combat-knife-shaped blade but many times bigger.  It lunged like a viper at her.

Her armor deflected the blade’s tip, sparks flying as it skated up and across the plating.  She followed through the first strike, using her right arms to form a heavy-muzzled cannon underneath them.  The blossoming tip planted itself against the chest plate of the undead-Alien.  It didn't even register its impending destruction other than letting out a rattling sound like a howl from its maw.

Nova's cannon blew a hole in it wider than half of its chest and out the other side.  Pieces of vaporized fur and metal skeleton went flying, most turned or turning to ash as they fell, including two of its arms.  The thing shuddered backward away from her, the entire frame sparking and shrieking in protest.

Then, horrifyingly, the entire left side of its upper torso now missing, the feline-zombie-robot thing lurched forward again, terrible speed not bothered at all by such a grisly injury.  Nova cut it down with her bladed arm.  This time, as it fell into two separate pieces, split straight down the middle of the skull, it did not rise.

Scooping up Chandler and disengaging her bladed arms, Nova turned to begin sprinting back towards the ship.  Joey, Phoebe, and Kenny all stood at the ramp leading into it, shouting for them to hurry.  Up above, more shapes began to descend.  Dozens of them.  Kenny's eyes went wide as nearly forty of those unnatural things sped towards the surface of the planet.

"Nova!" he called out in horror.  "More of them, behind you!"

She didn't stop to look.  She tucked Chandler in underneath the elbow of one arm and then hurled him like a softball.  He had curled himself into a ball to help, bouncing once or twice before he unrolled himself and kept running without missing a beat.  It would have been awesome if Kenny wasn't so damn scared.

Meanwhile, Nova turned on her heel and let out her most savage roar.  Her armor whirled to life.  All four arms stretched out wide before the right and left pairs joined together once again.  Cases unfurled along both arms; tubes, wires, and cords were reaching out and connecting themselves to various ports along her limbs.  Two huge cannons extended now from her arms.  She set her paws, squared her stance, and activated a pair of anchors on the back of her heels to stabilize herself.  Hell unleashed from her weapons.

Kenny had seen a lot of sci-fi stuff.  Star Trek, Star Wars, Mass Effect; all of them had fantastical and incredibly innovative weapon designs.  Nova's weapons were nothing like them.  The closest things he could approximate them to were rail guns in shape: a pair of dominant fins flanked the rotating inner chambers, similar to gatling guns.  The fins lit up with the same glowing energy as her swords, crackling electrical arcs jumping between the points.  Then the first round left the spinning chamber.  The resulting sound of the retort made Kenny's stomach clench from here.

The zombie-creature nearest to the ground was struck dead on, square in its eyeless skull.  Unlike the cannon shot before, which blew out a hole, this weapon's ammunition melted the enemy from the point of impact, turning everything it directly touched into slag in a meter-wide radius.  A second later, the entire thing exploded in a conflagration of heat and sound like nothing Kenny had ever seen.

The next one was struck twice by the following rounds, its chest expanding from the detonations before it went sailing off in three different directions.  Each weapon only launched one round at a time, almost like some massive revolver.  Nova didn't miss a single shot.

Her arms shuddered every time she pulled the trigger.  There were no shell casings, the entire round instead mass-accelerated by whatever force powered the guns before launching towards its target.  The booms that followed every shot made the ground crack underneath her feet.

And still, more were coming.  Even after the first wave was demolished, not even a single one having made it to the ground, more and more began to descend from the ship.  Kenny couldn't look away.  There must have been hundreds of them!

Nova's roar had not stopped, a defiant, terrified, angry sound that challenged the monsters and demanded their complete and total destruction.  Their very existence was an affront to nature, a perversion of their original shape, a desecration for the living beings they had once been.

She ran out of ammo for her cannons well before she ran out of enemies to use them on.  But Nova didn't seem distressed as she unholstered her arm cannons and her arms sprang apart.  She booked it back towards the ship, roaring at him.  'Inside!  Nova protects our Family!' he heard her roar in his ear.  The cubs had since fled inside and he turned to go too, but looked back right as she got within ten meters of the warship.

She turned back around and her armor surged to life, lights flashing brighter than ever.  Massive cables suddenly leaped from the ship itself, connecting into her armored spine just like when she was piloting the ship. Her armor crackled and visibly surged with power, stripes flashing brighter than ever.   Lifting one wrist, she tapped something, and then, with all four arms lifted, fists clenched, she pointed them straight up at the sky, as if holding a quartet of firearms.

Behind and above Kenny at the same time as she drew ‘arms’ on the descending cloud of enemies, he heard the ship's engines abruptly roar to life.  He looked back in alarm and then amazement.  The engines had activated themselves, seeming on their own accord, remotely swiveling in place and then, as one, began to change.  The mouths of their jets rotated rapidly, armored plates swiveling and clanking into new positions.  Multiple other openings flared to life and extended rounded muzzles as every one of the four main, sword-blade-like wing engines swiveled to point straight up at the oncoming storm of falling zombie-aliens.

Then they opened fire.  They weren't engines anymore.  They were cannons.  Massive, ship-mounted, Destroyer-class cannons, four per transformed thruster.  The noise was beyond deafening from this close until his helmet's natural dampeners reduced it.  He looked back up as Nova remotely directed their gunfire as if wielding them in her own four paws.  Everywhere she directed with her arms, the cannons adjusted.  Death coated the skies in blossoms of fire and shredded metal.  It was like a fireworks display, at the height of a Fourth of July celebration, in Hell.

At last, the shroud of clouds had parted completely and the waves of undead-aliens had ceased.  Not a single one other than the first had ever gotten close to the ground.  Nova slowly lowered her arms.  The ship's engines smoked from the heat of their salvo.  She turned back to look at Kenny and he expected to see victory there, approval, or satisfaction.  He saw fear.

'Kenny,' she told him.  'Run.  Get inside.  Please!'

She turned back to lift her arms again.  The cannons responded but they did not fire as she clenched her paws again.  She looked at them in alarm.  They must have run low on power.  To Kenny's horror, another wave of those zombie soldiers was descending.  They darkened the sky with how many of them there were.

Her weapons were spent.  The engines were overheated and needed time to recharge.  Nova looked back at Kenny as the first of their enemies landed in the snow.  She looked right into his eyes.  She was afraid.  She saw his fear too.  Behind him, the cubs yowled.  Her expression hardened.

'Never look back.'  He heard her voice in his head.  His eyes went wide as he realized her intention.  'Always forward.  Always ahead.'  Nova turned.  Her arms snapped together again at the elbows.  From both wrists extended a pair of identical, wrist-mounted energy swords.  Double-bladed, she charged, before he could scream at her to not go.

Her roar shook the terrain all around them as she met the first of the oncoming wave.  The blades carved into their ranks, scything them into sizzling pieces, shearing through dark metal and desiccated fur.  The carnage she wrought was unbelievable.  Truly, she was the greatest warrior of her people.

It wasn't going to be enough...  There were just too many.  No matter how many she cut down, there were always more, streaming over and around her, unnaturally swift bodies loping at full speed.  Right at the ship, funneling themselves into a cone as they charged.  He looked down at his hand, clenching it and then extending his two fingers and his thumb.  The cannon reformed.  One-shot.  The second round had still not reloaded yet.  He only had one.  It would have to be enough.

Up ahead, he saw Nova continuing her desperate stand.  Her armor sparked and surged as blades and claws hammered at her from all sides.  More she cut down and more rattled forth to take their place.  Her roars echoed across the snowy plain, no matter how injured she became. No matter the fear that gripped her, her defiance of it never wavered.  But all the courage in the world could not stop that wave as it slowly began to overtake her, the circle of death she had formed beginning to tighten around her.

Kenny’s eyes hardened and he pointed his hand, steadying himself.  The cubs took up positions beside him as the teaming pack of Zombie-Robots lurched toward them, too fast to almost believe.  They should have frozen him solid from fear at their unnatural appearances and gaits.  One strike from them would be enough to kill him.  But Kenny Sissom was not afraid.  Or rather, he was, but there were things more important than fear right then.

He raised the gun level with the horde.  "For King Brighten!" he roared at the top of his lungs and pulled the hammer.  The blast shot forth from his fingers towards the oncoming tide of black metal and empty-eyed creatures.  The forward rank was sent flying into the air.  The energy blast kept going, almost seeming to build in force the more targets it smashed out of its way.  They hadn't been his true target anyway, his will somehow guiding the shot’s shape and intent.  "Nova!  Duck!" he yelled.

Nova, whirling her arms all around herself like a windmill, barely heard him in time.  She glanced over her shoulder, bleeding from dozens of cuts in her sparking armored suit, and saw the incoming blast.  She dropped to the ground as the masses converged on her, ready to tear her to pieces as she disengaged her blades, forming a new weapon at the very last second possible.  His shot impacted right before their claws and blades reached her.  The final explosive retort of the blast sent snow, bodies, and steam high into the air.

A single shape sailed back towards them.  Nova landed in a tumble, crashing onto her side and rolling over and over.  Both double-arms had been raised.  A blazing shield of pure energy hummed across her upper body, emanating from her forearms.  Even so, her armor sizzled as snow evaporated off of it.

She shook her head as she came to rest barely ten feet from the ramp leading into the ship.  She glanced back at Kenny in amazement.  He beamed, face tearing up from relief, then he looked past her again.

"Oh crap, they're getting back up!" he wailed desperately.  The gunshot had not killed any of them, merely knocked them back or sent them sailing.  Now they had risen back up and resumed their shuffling sprints at the ship.

Nova snarled, turned, and putting her back to him and the cubs, disengaged her shields.  All four arms rattled apart and she again pressed a button on her wrist.  Again, she lifted all four arms as if wielding a firearm in each paw.  The engines hummed to life outside with that same hum of energy.  She mowed them down.  The cannons had only enough for that small of a burst, but it was enough.  Nova's arms shook and fell to her sides as the last Zombie was turned to ash and black stains on the snow.

"Hell yes!" Kenny crowed.  "You did it!  Let's get the hell out of here!"

Nova looked back at him, panting.  One side of her see-through visor was cracked.  She had dozens of minor wounds all across her massive, armored frame.  She nodded wordlessly, looking back out at the battlefield of smoking craters and steaming pools of melted snow that was already refreezing.

Kenny turned to the cubs.  "Get to your tubes!" he yelled frantically.  They snarled at him, unwilling to listen, too afraid for their mother.  "Cubs!" he howled, getting them to blink in surprise at his tone.  His voice was not thready or scared.  It was firm and strong.  "Now!"  They obeyed.

He looked once back at Nova, and she too looked impressed.  A light twinkled in one of her eyes, even through her exhaustion, before they hardened again.  He took her mental queue.  He took off after the cubs, sealing each into their individual pod in preparation to flee.

He returned to Nova who had half-dragged herself back inside, reaching up for the button to close the doors.  That was when they heard the boom.  A cloud of snow and swirling flurries gusted past them both.  They looked outside, down the ramp, and across the field.  There, a truly humongous crater had been smashed into the ground, roughly two hundred feet away.  A single light pierced the shroud of snow hanging in the air.  It towered over the hole it had created upon impact.

Nova froze.  Her entire body shuddered from head to toe.  He knew why.  It was an eye.  A single, cold, eye.

Throwing up her arms, she clicked rapidly on the wrist device.  She aimed right at that eye, at the looming shadow lurking still just out of sight.  The cannons hissed in retort, unable to fire.  She yowled in frustration before she hauled herself up to her feet.  The sound of heavy footfalls had begun to draw closer.  They could close the doors.  But he would be there before Nova could get the ship to take off.  He saw Nova make her decision.

"No, no you can't!" he shrieked at her as she turned to smile down at him tenderly.  One paw reached down, stained with black fluid and ash, to touch his cheek.  His helmet had come off at some point, perhaps when they reentered the ship, perhaps before then.  He was too scared to feel the cold right then anyway.  "Nova!" he pleaded, grasping at the paw.  "Please!  Let's just run!  We can still get away!"

Her muzzle opened.  "No...more...running..." she said.  His eyes, burning with tears, widened.  The vents at the sides of her throat flared with green light before they reclosed.  "No...tears… My Kenny...has...too...beautiful...a...smile."  She leaned down slowly at the waist, helmet opening around her face.  She licked his forehead once.  "Smile...for...me."

He shook his head.  "Nova...please don't do this!" he begged.  "You can't!  You're hurt!"

"I...have...hurt...for so...long..." she rasped down at him, words barely audible over the static and white noise.  But he heard her voice.  Her real voice.  "Today...I protect...what...I...love."  She turned away from him.  One paw lifted and she pressed a button.  Blip.

"Transfer of joint pilot control, authorized," stated his wrist.  "Please make your way to the cockpit and prepare for departure."

He stared as Nova slowly stepped down out of the ship.  She rolled her shoulders, connected her arms again.  Her swords leaped into being once more, flickering slightly.  The titanic shadow had begun to become clearer.  Kenny could not look away.  He knew he needed to run, to climb to the cockpit, honor Nova's wishes, and get the cubs away.  But he couldn't.  He was frozen by an entirely different kind of fear.

Nova was the strongest, he kept telling himself.  Nova is the biggest thing in the universe.  She can take on anything.  She strode towards her approaching father.  She would always come out on top.  It was who she was!

Nova's head climbed slowly higher and higher as she drew closer to her sire.  Kenny's eyes went even wider.  He always felt so small compared to Nova, barely coming up to her waist on her twelve-foot-tall Amazonian bulk.  Her father...made her look small.

Eighteen feet of Feline-Hybrid Alien towered over his daughter.  One, single, solitary eye stared down at her defiant form.  His four arms weren't even his own, not natural extensions of an armored suit over his real body.  They were entirely mechanical, attached at the shoulders, like his Zombie-Soldiers had been but endlessly more advanced and dangerous.  Each one was as big around as Nova's two put together and twice as long.  Something fluttered across one shoulder, flapping in the wind.  Was his fur loose across his frame too?

A second’s closer inspection revealed the horrifying truth.  No...it wasn't his fur.

A golden pelt hung across his left shoulder like a tunic.  Black bands and stripes disrupted the faded, metallic color.  An empty skull served as the armored suit's shoulder guard.  Empty eyes gazed out of a leonine, maned face forever locked in a deathly grimace.  Kenny's knees felt weak and he collapsed even as Nova shuddered to confront this nightmarish effigy.

The four arms clenched.  The paws rotated, sliding back into their wrists, and then unfolded.  From each limb leaped into being a massive, single-edged blade, glowing ice-blue and sinister purple along the crackling edges.  All across that titanic body, a series of stripes erupted into view.  Cold blue, necrotic purple, acidic green.  What remained of his visible fur across his unhelmeted face was black and without luster.

Nova roared in defiance, refusing to be cowed.  She took a warrior stance, crossing her swords in preparation for battle.  Her father looked away from her, past her.  His single eye fell upon the ship.  Absent-mindedly, as if he did not care for this insignificant creature before him, he swung, as if swaying a fly.  The blade whistled through the air, a blur of motion almost too fast to see.  Nova barely managed to block it in time.  She was sent flying.  The warrior queen sailed through the air and crashed back to earth in an explosion of powder.  Kenny's entire world dropped out from under him.

Lord Darken did not even look to see where she landed, instead just resuming his unhurried, titanically-long limbed strides towards the ship.  All four arms waved idly at his side, blades humming audibly even from so far away.  His feet crunched massive holes into the snowy plain.  A roar behind him made him pause.  Nova had gotten back up.  She lifted her cannon arm level with him, pointing it right at his back.  He turned slowly but Nova didn't wait for him to finish doing so.

The cannon roared as she fired.  Lord Darken didn't seem to even register the sound.  He didn't try to dodge or deflect or block it.  He didn't do anything.  He blurred.  One second he was there, in the line of fire.  The next, he was just gone.  The shot sailed on and out of sight.  It exploded on something far away.

Looking around, Nova roared in anger, rage, frustration, and fear.  The air swirled right behind her.  "Nova!" Kenny shouted desperately, throat feeling stuck together.  "There!  Behind you!"

She turned, lifting an arm to block.  Her father's blade sheared through the barrel of her cannon arm.  She staggered back, arm smoldering as the remains of her weapon were ejected from it automatically.  She swung with her own sword, only for her Father to block it.  Lord Darken still had not blinked even once.  His arms became a storm of flashing lights and howling edges.  Nova was hard-pressed to defend herself with just the one weapon usable now.

Darken's tail lashed out suddenly, dragging her off balance by grabbing hold of her ankle.  As she stumbled, he advanced.  One pair of arms returned to paws and he grabbed hold of her.  He lifted Nova as easily as Kenny might have picked up Emily back on Earth.  She was held aloft, snarling and crying out as he began to pull.  She hammered down at him with her blade arm but she couldn't reach with the angle.  Her tentacles extended, lashing out like serpents in her desperation.

One of his blades flashed and Nova screamed.  A severed tentacle fell to the snow, end sizzling, but the other struck home, latching onto part of her father’s armor and tearing into it.  Darken, completely unbothered, simply turned and threw her down onto the ground in a massive explosion of snow.  She tried to rise again but he stomped a paw down onto her, pinning her in place.  A blade lifted level with her chest, drawing back for the plunge.

Kenny reacted without thinking.  "GET OFF OF HER!" he howled, leaping off the ship and landing in the snow.  The wind bit into his face but he didn't care.  He raised his hand up, priming his cannon arm again.  He advanced rapidly on the pair, arm lifted, holo-gun ready to fire.  "I SAID!" he shouted over the whistling wind and freezing gusts.  "GET! OFF!  OF!  HER!"

Lord Darken turned slowly to look down at him over the shoulder that bore the pelt of King Brighten as a trophy.  His pupil narrowed to a bare slit, expanded to take in more information about him, then looked back down at his daughter, dismissing Kenny.  The blade again drew back.

"Don't you ignore me!" Kenny roared.  He aimed right at Darken's head.  God, it was so high up.  "Ignore me and I'll blow you halfway to whatever passes for this planet's moon!  You will not lay another finger on her!"

Again, Darken glanced down at this utterly tiny, insignificant being that didn't even come up past his knee.  He said nothing, did nothing.  He probably didn't even understand Kenny, or if he did, he didn’t even consider the possibility that he posed any danger.  His sword hung in the air ominously, flurries of snow hissing as they landed on the edge only to be instantly melted.

'Kenny, no, run!' Nova pleaded with him, struggling against the overpowering weight of her father's paw atop her, pinning her in place.  'Take the cubs.  Run.  Get out of here!'

"No, Nova!" he shouted back at her, never once taking his eyes off of Darken.  "I won't!  For once, you're going to listen to me!  This grade-A asshole has been tormenting you, following you, haunting our kids, for way too long!  And there are three reasons why I ain't going to just let him kill you, or lay so much as a finger on those beautiful cubs!"

Nova looked at him in shock.  Darken's one eye narrowed slightly.

Kenny lifted his other hand.  "One!"  He shouted as loudly as he could, putting up a single finger.  "Those cubs need their mother.  I'm disposable and I don't care what happens to me.  As long as their mother is safe, that's all that matters!"  He put up a second finger.  "Two!  This asswipe of a parent doesn't deserve to even see his grandchildren, not even once.  He killed his whole planet, and someone has to make him pay for that!"

Darken turned more to face Kenny.  For all that was holy in Heaven, wherever Heaven truly was, it looked like the warlord was smirking down at this tiny being.  He was amused to see how something so small could possibly back up such words, even if his emotions ran true of the intent behind them.

Kenny gritted his teeth and raised a third finger.  "Three!" he shouted as loudly as he could.  He actually smirked too.  "My gun just reloaded."  True enough, the slowly reloading bar that signified his ammo count chose just that moment to flash brightly in preparation.

Darken's one eye actually went wide in recognition of actual danger just as Kenny pulled the trigger.  That huge frame started to blur, but not fast enough.  The explosion of force and energy hammered out of Kenny's fingers and took him straight across the armored chassis.  Lord Darken went flying through the air and landed in a colossal crash dozens of feet away.

Kenny surged forward and hauled on Nova's paw.  "Come on!" he howled at her.  "You have to get up!  That won't keep him down long!"

Nova groaned and snarled as she rolled slowly onto her arms and knees then began to shakily rise.  She stumbled as she limped towards the ship.  Kenny started to go with her.  They both froze as a roar shook the surrounding area.  It was a sound of pure hatred, anger, and rage.  He looked over at where Lord Darken was already clambering back up to his feet.  His chest smoked and actually had a sizable dent in it.  That one eye fixed solely upon him.

He looked up at Nova desperately.  The fear in her eyes gave him strength.  "We don't look back!" he shouted up at her.  Her expression furrowed in confusion then went wide in terror and recognition once more.  "Always forward!  Always ahead!"  He broke away from her then, racing out across the wide tundra.

‘Kenny, no!’ screamed Nova inside of his head, accompanied by her agonized wail.

Ignoring the hot tears at what he was doing to her, Kenny ran.  As he did, he waved at her father, calling out loudly.  “Over here, Sylvester!” he shouted.  “This way, you overgrown Transformer reject!”  Nova roared desperately behind him, but it was overshadowed as Darken thundered after him, bellowing in rage.  He didn’t waste any time, turning and taking off as fast as he could, away from Nova, from the ship, and out across the tundra toward the distant mountains.

Blinded by his anger, the warlord didn't even seem to think about pursuing his injured daughter, nor even his quarry of untold months.  A gnat had defied him!  A gnat, a speck of living matter, a member of a species so primitive and weak that they wouldn't even have been worth conquering, had insulted him so grievously.  His rage blinded him, for Darken's eye may have been bright with fury, passion, and ambition, but he had never seen the Light.

Kenny felt those thundering footfalls drawing easily closer.  Of course, being so big, it would be nothing for that kind of monster to catch up.  It felt like a nightmare, one where you could never run fast enough.  But this wasn't a nightmare.  And he had his suit.  He jumped, activating a charge of his boots in between strides just as Nova had taught him to do while running.  He sailed through the air, regaining ground.  He nearly tripped as he landed but he kept going.  To fall now was certain death.

Behind him, Darken actually blinked in shock as the little creature was still staying ahead.  He increased his speed furiously, determined to squash this puny thing like the leaping little insect he was.  He was ruled by only emotion, as he always had been.  His way was wrath and revenge, cruelty and malice.  He would torture it if it could even withstand it for longer than a second.  He would find ways to make that tiny voice scream louder than his home planet had when he destroyed it.

Charge after charge of the boots, Kenny used.  He was always just barely ahead of Lord Darken.  He knew he didn't have many left though.  Their chase was over an open plain as well, where a larger, longer-limbed being like Darken could easily catch him in the end.  He saw a rise coming up.  The mountains were much closer.  He looked back only once, not at Darken, but at the sky behind them.

Nova's ship lifted slowly into the air.  It was a barely visible speck of light but he saw the engines roar to life before it whooshed off.  His heart glowed with fire and pride at what he had managed to do.  Now, he just had to keep the chase up long enough.  He had one last plan.  He only hoped this would work at all.

Even if it didn't, he wasn't afraid to die.  He had known what it meant to have a family, to love a good woman again, and to be loved in return, if only briefly.  A man could happily die knowing he had done all he could to protect his loved ones.

"Suit!" he howled at the top of his lungs, his legs beginning to give out but still he sprinted on.  "Divert all recharge power to the gun!"  The suit blipped against his throat in acknowledgment.  He activated his last jumping charge right as they came upon the top of the rise.  He landed in a roll, skidding and tumbling to a stop.

Darken’s thundering footsteps grew ever nearer, but a look around at his surroundings gave him solace even as death bore down upon him.  He had made it.  Behind him, a vast cliff stretched out over misty nothingness.  He had assumed correctly that it wasn't all just flat tundra here.  He was on the edge of a great ravine with no bottom.  The mountain overhead loomed like Lord Darken did as he came to a stop right above Kenny.

That armored, feline giant lifted one paw, intending to stomp him flat like some bug.  He grinned and raised his gun hand one more time.  Darken flinched at first.  Then he grinned back at Kenny confidently as the reload indicator had not flashed on again yet.  Those teeth were so sharp and big.

'End.  Of.  The.  Chase,' he heard a voice boom inside of his head, a cacophony of rasping metal, grinding gears, and the concentrated evil of the universe behind it all.  Who cared how scary the Devil sounded?

"Yeah?" he taunted Darken, panting for breath.  He felt so good, even as cold as he was.  He eyed his gun, then lifted it again.  The reloader dinged.  Darken's eye narrowed.  "Well.  I've got nothing but good timing.  Looks like it's a stalemate."

'You.  Die.  No matter.  The outcome.' Darken stated malevolently.  'Fire.  Hit.  Fire.  Miss.  You.  Still.  Die.'

"True!" Kenny agreed.  He aimed right at Darken's face.  "But I wasn't planning on living past this anyway.”

‘Foolish.  Insect,’ hissed Darken.

“Wonder what that makes you?” he taunted right back, braver in his certainty of his success, even at the cost of his life, than he had ever been in his life.  “You fell for my little diversion.  And now, you're never going to get her, or those kids.  Brighten stopped you." Darken looked confused and he nodded at the grisly trophy on his shoulder.  "Now I stopped you.  How pathetic are you, Lord Darken, that all your plots got thwarted again by someone as pathetic as I am?"

The paw lifted again as Darken snarled in rage.  He didn't care what Kenny was planning, he intended to finish this then return to the chase.  No matter how long it took him, he would have his plans come to fruition.

Kenny took aim and fired.  The blast sailed toward Darken.  The warlord flinched once before he smirked.  Having been ready this time, his form shimmered and flashed out of sight again.  Kenny's head sagged down onto the snow in finality.  He heard the distant explosion a second or so later.  Again, Darken returned into view, towering again over the prone Human before him, blotting out the dim light still cast by the black hole on the horizon.  'Missed,' he taunted smugly.

"Wasn't aiming for you," Kenny retorted.  The rumbling had begun, growing closer and closer.  Darken blinked once.  He turned and Kenny flipped up onto his feet, raced toward the edge of the cliff, and jumped.

He looked back and up just in time to see Darken howling in anger and rage as the avalanche hammered down the mountainside and smashed into him in a wave of roaring white, swallowing that titanic figure from view.  Kenny looked back down.  Nothing but mist and void stretched before him.

He closed his eyes and fell into the mists below as the avalanche poured over the rim as well.  He heard the rushing of air past his head, the roar of the falling snow.  It would end soon enough.  He wasn't afraid to die.  Falling in love was way scarier.  He had been blessed to do it twice in his lifetime.  Nova was safe.  The cubs were safe.  'That's all that matters' he whispered to himself.  'We don't look back.  Always forward.  Always ahead.'

***On Lord Darken's Ship***

Darken spat out a mouthful of snow as he brushed off the remains of the tractor beam gel from himself.  He was alone on the bridge.  He was always alone on the bridge.  The crew, numbering in their untold thousands, waited in drop cells to be deployed as they had been.  Expendable.  Useful at last.

Even so, his daughter was no less formidable a fighter than the day she had betrayed him.  There was a beauty in betrayal, an opportunistic adaptability, severing even the closest ties for personal gain.  Her mistake had not been to finish him off at the same time.

All the same, up until that point, he had trained her well.  Even if her killer’s resolve had weakened thanks to the Pretender, she had up till now succeeded in leading him on a wild chase across the cosmos, always just out of reach.

The chase would end in only one way, a long time coming to his inevitable victory.  Patient as the void, implacable as the gravity well of a collapsing star.  He looked down at the receding shape of the desolate, snow planet.  He considered nuking it from orbit using the ship's long-range bombardment cannons, but that would only waste energy and ammo.  Besides…

His one eye looked toward the black hole slowly devouring everything left in this doomed solar system.  This would end only one way.  He scanned the mists down below one more time.  No life signs; even one as small as the tiny creature would have shown up if it were still alive.  He was almost impressed by its ingenuity in using an avalanche to inconvenience him like that.  Knowing it was doomed, it had still taken the shot, no matter the outcome.

There was almost respect in his blackened heart for such dedication from a lesser being, if he wasn't still seething with rage that the insect's ploy had worked, allowing his daughter, his legacy, to escape once again.  Again, he contemplated destroying the planet himself, but no.  He needed to get the ship into slipspace and back to pursuing his errant child and her spawn.  No use wasting the time and effort to turn this planet to dust when it would be swallowed up soon enough anyway.  He turned and slumped his weight down into his command chair.

Like coiling serpents, the cables and wires of the cockpit latched onto the ports and plugs along his armored spine, hooking him up to the vessel.  At a will, the engines hummed to life in an instant.  The dreadnought turned slowly and flashed away out of the doomed sector.

The Chase was still on.