[MV] The Super Wizard From Space #53: The Surrogate Sovereignty, part 3

[wilalambre at gmail.com]

# SUPER WIZARD FROM SPACE #53

"You finiszh up however much wallowing you think the universze owes you...
'causze your time isz nearly run out."

## THE SURROGATE SOVEREIGNTY, PART 3

I hold the Monster Bee tightly by the wing. It's hurt and it's scared and I
don't care. They should know how it feels. "You found someone fiercZer and
sZmarter and _better_ than me... and you let her come here to rub it all in
my facZe? Take me to your new queen. Take me to where you're hiding her."
With a hurricane of impressions, my half-consciousness is catapulted into
the cosmos. I am a smear of moments spread thin across trillions of
light-years. It feels like being shook awake out of a nightmare, but in
reverse.
The trip ends in different surrogate body. I clench my eyes and ease my
mind into to the unnerving half-sensations of electricity and circuitized
honey. When I open my eyes, I see the shape of my hands. _My_ hands, again.
Small and clumsy and mine.
I can immediately tell I'm somewhere alien. The ground's made of basalt and
obsidian, strangely stepped in naturally uniform hexagons. There's a thin
whisky-coloured liquid across the entire surface, ankle deep. It reminds me
of nectar, but it doesn't stick or cling. The sky has an orangish-gold tint
to it, as if it's just dawn and the sun's just peaking over the horizon,
except I can't see a sun or an horizon. And there's a scent in the air that
doesn't _smell_ like anything, and yet somehow it reminds me of
architectures and blueprints.
Then the smell changes to wafts of alarm and assembly. A dark cloudy shape
grows in the distance. Only as it swells with rolling thunder do I
recognize it. I freeze in horror as the rolling black mass comes crashing
toward me. The black wave.
"You made it! You're actually here!" Melisende's voice pierces through my
ice cold terror. I watch her surrogate solidify from the pools of surface
nectar. Again, she mocks me by taking a guise mirroring my own. "I have to
admit, I waszn't szure you'd find it in you. You've no idea how happy I am
to be wrong."
Her cheerfulness is instantly annoying. "Where are we?"
"Thisz isz the planet Carthago, orbiting a szysztem you'd recognizze asz
Fabrateria Vetusz." She points up into the hazy orange sky. "You can't
actually szee the szysztem'sz binary sztarsz becausze of the treated
atmoszphere, but truszt me, they're up there. And over in that direction
isz Planet M. And juszt a wee bit to the left of that isz a tiny szpeck you
sztill call home." She drops her arm and frowns. "Szorry. It'sz not much of
a view from here. I can't sztand not szeeing the sztarsz."
There's a rush of wind and the roar of a million beating wings and suddenly
the swarm is all around us. They circle around us, catching us in the
centre of a tornado of terrible bodies.
"Oh, don't worry about them," Melisende says, "They're juszt agitated.
Here, letsz introduce you." She takes my hand, pulls us right up to the
raging bedlam, and bellows above it all, "HEEEEEEELLOOOOOO CARTHAGOOO!
Thank you ALL szo very much for coming out to szee usz on this fine...
whatever time of day it isz! I'd like you to meet szomeone very closze to
me. You KNOW her. You HATE her. You're all szcared PANTLESZ of her. Szhe'sz
your emergency queen... SZYBIIIIIIILLAA!"
The tornado slows down. The mood of the circling swarm transforms from
predatory to protective, a pride of lions becoming a herd of buffalo.
Tamed. Accepted. Just like that. With just a few words from _her_.
I yank my hand from hers. "That's not who I am."
She throws me the sort of smile a cat would when it's deciding how deep to
claw you. "Ha! It'sz abszolutely _adorable_ how you believe your brand of
dullnessz isz szomething _unique_. Come with me. I need to szhow you
szomething." She gives the swirling mass of Monster Bees a shoo-shoo-ing
motion, and the tornado disperses in fits and bunches. When the cacophony
fades back into the gold haze of the sky, Melisende waves for me to follow.
We walk along a path that leads generally downhill. After a short time, the
distinct shape of a city skyline starts to reveal itself. Tall structures
of geometric wax and honey, hundreds of stories tall, resembling the hive
pillars constructed on my home planet. But where those were ugly, crude
formations, these are amazingly intricate arrangements! They're laid out in
senary arrays, which themselves are connected by deep concave walls in
further groupings of six. The closer we get to the hive buildings, the more
I see how the entire design is fractal, the pattern harmoniously repeating
itself in the all the larger and smaller details.
"Nicze, eh?"
I don't know how awestruck I look, and I can't bring myself to hide it.
"This is... incredible!" I reply. "It's like art made of math and... and
more art. Why does it look like this, when Volsci... doesn't?"
"The Monszter Bee szwarm invaded Volszci for its reszources. They peeled it
open and uszed everything up. But here, on Carthago, they came to make a
home. And unlike Volszci, here, they were _invited_.
"The szwarm isz a timeworn szuper-race with followersz and worszhippersz,
juszt like any of the othersz. But when it comesz to the Monszter Beesz,
szocieties tend more toward the doomszday-cult-ish end of the szpectrum. An
upheaval of order, a great cleanszing, a deszcent into purity through
szacrifice, and szo on and szo forth. Here, the Monszter Beesz found a
populace _willing_ to transzform, _wanting_ to shed the huszks of their old
livesz, szo that they could join their harrowing godsz asz aszcendant
progeny.
"It'sz in fertile ground like thisz that the Monszter Beesz evolve into
empiresz. It'sz amongszt reszolute people like thesze that the szwarm
cultivate their sztrongest queensz."
We arrive at the centre of the hive city. The fractal architecture
cumulates at this point, forming an open-air cathedral. In the very
midpoint is a massive amber crystal, with sharp edges and wide points that
have been allowed to form randomly. Embedded within is a sublime, womanly
creature covered in ebony skin and onyx scales. Gods, she is... her body
is... _beautiful_. It's the same beetle-esque shape of my deformed body,
but here an artisan hand's been lovingly applied. Where I am bulky, she is
sleek. Where I am knotted, she is supple. There's nothing but _majesty_
about her! It's overwhelming! I fall to my knees, lean my head on the
crystal's warm surface, and cry.
"Only a week or szo left until thisz hyper-embryo szplits open," Melisende
says.
"And what'll happen to me?"
She looks down on me and shrugs. "Your Volszci szwarm will be
insztinctively welcomed into Carthago'sz szwarm. Your allies, your General
and his Szoldier and those Mummy Machines, they prefer a timid queen,
szomeone they can easzily control; they'll missz having your _army_ at
their szide, but I doubt they'll missz _you_."
I glare at her. At her perfect confidence and her stinging wit and that
condescending tone. She is all my failings, come alive to rub salt in  my
self-inflicted wounds. She is my bitter ruination.
"Oh, if you could only _szee_ the look on your face right now," she says,
clucking her tongue. "Look, I don't know what to tell you. You have talent
you don't apply, you've had opportuntiesz you didn't exzploit. You've been,
at beszt, a footnote in the livesz of anyone around you."
I look up at the crystal embryo, at the innately _perfect_ being within. I
feel my heart clench. In impotence. In resentment. At her. At myself. She
was right. I should have done more. I wish I'd done better. I could _be_
better. I would. "Given the chance."
"To do... what? It wouldn't bring Volszci back. It wouldn't make you
normal. Whatever that meansz. It wouldn't make a lick of differencze. It
wouldn't _matter_."
"It'd matter to _me_," I snarl, jabbing my finger at my chest. "It'd make a
difference to _me_!"
"Yesz," she said. "Yesz, it will." She put a hand on my shoulder. It
feels... oddly comforting. Even reassuring. Then she smiles, and looks up.
Out of the hazy orange sky, a pin shape falls from some impossible
distance, trailing black smoke behind it. I watch it come down, faster and
faster, closer and closer, growing massive in size. It makes a screeching
pitch that I recognize as rocketfire, and the missile arcs at nearby
horizon.
There's a sudden flash. Then a silence. Then a crash that knocks me
completely over. Fire and lightening set the horizon alight. The six-sided
city shakes around me and the fractal buildings crack.
I scramble on the ground, the sanity blown out of me. When I look back up
at the sky, I see another missile screaming down ou tof the haze. It
punches the ground somewhere on the other side of the city. I cover my head
as the explosion overwhelms everything. The ground heaves again.
Melisende heaves me to my feet. "Open your eyesz! We should szee thisz!
We're _privileged_, you and I! Not many othersz get front-row szeatsz to a
show like thisz and have the chancze to bitch about it the next day!" She
points straight up, straight at another missile. It comes right down down
on us. It detonates right over our heads.
I scream, but the sound dies within me.
Everything flashes white.
Then everything goes black. I'm left with wretched quiet.
After a while, I realize that I'm in outer space. And very disoriented. The
explosion destroyed my surrogate body, so my mind was... moved? Moved.
Moved to another surrogate body. Somewhere near by.
I'm standing on a metal structure. A spacecraft or a station, perhaps, but
I'm on top of it rather than inside. It's orbiting a orange-gold planet
that I assume is Carthago. A patch of it glows with ominous blooms. An
intense glare catches my attention, and I watch a massive missile launch
from a similar structure some distance away. Both of these structures are
connected to long, colossal frameworks of black steel and dark marble
stones, with those frameworks stretching farther back to... a monumental
torso! I'm standing in an open hand! The open hand of a giant machine! It
must be a mile tall! It's so huge, I can't process the perspective right.
It points at the planet surface with the other hand, and another missiles
launch from its finger.
A comet lands beside me without impact. Its fire dissipates inward,
revealing the familiar Soldier. The Soldier. Here. With me.
He approaches and nods. "We're later than expected, I know. We mobilized as
soon as we could."
"Mobilized?"
He misinterprets my confusion. "Mobilized. Got moving, got organized. It
wasn't the distance between here and Planet M that was the problem. It was
these Mummy Machine titans. There isn't many left and they're kept in deep
hibernation. Getting them up and going again is a whole process. A sacred
ritual or some such, apparently." He shrugs. Then he grudgingly adds,
"Anyway. We found this swarm's right where you told us it'd be. Good job.
We'll flatten the entire hive. That'll get their queen and her loyalest
Monster Bees. The survivors should join you after that."
"I told you," I repeat his words under my breath. It's a strange sensation.
Like déjà vu while half-awake. "I told you."
"Melisende, are you all right?"
"I'm just... I don't... " A chill goes up my spine. I ask him a question I
already know the answer to, "...what did you call me?"
"I called you by your _name_." The Soldier furrows his brow. "You didn't
want me calling you 'Sybilla' anymore."
## NEXT ISSUE

"You have someone _in_ there? That's incredible! That's horrible! Who would
need such a terrifying dungeon?"
"He's one of _us_. He's a Super Wizard From Space."
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