Christie Golden: Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

The entire area exploded.

00:00.

In the control room of Alpha Station, still battling two remaining K-TRONs, Okto-Bar saw the clock. No… oh, no , he thought, the rawness of the shock and grief startling him. What have I done?

The general directed his impotent grief and outrage upon the final two robots, turning on them with sudden fury—firing and firing without stopping.

The last one toppled and fell.

Neza stared at Okto-Bar, his eyes wide. A few others got to their feet, dazed, shocked, silent.

Was it true?

Had they all been party to genocide?

Was there anyone left to tell them what had happened?

The silence and the stillness after all the madness was bizarre. Captain Kris could hear his own breathing, and little more. No… there were other stirrings now as other soldiers realized that they, too, had survived.

Cautiously, Kris peered out of the trench, eyes widening at what he beheld. His radio crackled.

“Survivors?” came Okto-Bar’s voice, harsh with emotion. “Captain? What’s going on?”

Kris didn’t reply for a moment. He was staring right at the site where the wall had been. But now, there was nothing. Not a broken wall, not the bodies of those behind it… only a vast hole, like some enormous crater at the heart of the space station.

“There’s nothing left!” he managed to tell Okto-Bar. “Just a gaping hole! Everything’s vanished!”

Others, too, were poking their heads out, eyeing the pieces of robots, stunned at what they beheld. “Any trace of our agents? Or the commander?”

Kris fished out his infrared binoculars and peered through them, making a slow sweep of the area. “No, nothing… hold on, I’ve seen something! There’s a body!”

In the middle of the crater, a body was indeed suspended from somewhere far above in the deepening darkness, twisting slowly back and forth. It was swathed in a strange sort of sticky, ropy substance. As Kris’s binoculars refocused, the body swung slightly, so that he could see the victim’s puffy, bruised face.

“It’s the commander!”

“Is he alive?” asked Okto-Bar.

The eyes, swollen to slits, opened. So did the mouth. “Get me out of here, you incompetent turds!”

Kris grinned. “Affirmative. He’s alive and kicking!”

“Good,” said Okto-Bar. “Arrest him!”

Laureline peered out the portal of the Destiny , smiling a little at the vastness of space and the twinkling of stars with no ship or station or planet in sight.

“Do you have any idea where we are?”

Valerian glanced at a monitor. “We’re… two hours away from vacation!” He grinned over his shoulder at her. “I just fired the distress beacon.”

“Two hours, sheesh!” she exclaimed.

“I know,” he said. “Two hours alone with me, what a drag!”

“No kidding,” said Laureline. She sighed melodramatically, still stargazing. “An eternity!”

“So,” he said, “now that the mission is over, perhaps we can finish our conversation?”

Laureline turned around. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back. “Conversation?”

“We were talking about the future,” said Valerian.

Laureline said, playfully, “Really? And what does the future hold?”

She expected a tall tale of an amazing adventure, or a flirty, less-than-subtle mention of other things best conducted in private. Instead, for one of the few times she had ever seen, Valerian seemed completely serious as he replied.

“You… me… us,” Valerian said quietly.

And he held up a ring.

The ring’s circle itself was as pedestrian, as ordinary a thing as could possibly be imagined: a wire loop he’d obviously just now crafted from one of her own hairpins, twisted and wrapped around the gem.

But the gem…

It was a single, small, perfect Mül pearl.

Tears stung her eyes as she gazed at it, at all it represented. All the blood and death, beauty and life. And when she gave him a tremulous smile, he saw that knowledge in her eyes.

Those eyes widened as Valerian went down on one knee. “Happy birthday,” he said, holding up the ring that was at once the most banal and most beautiful thing in the universe.

“Thank you,” she said. “That’s very romantic. Is this your idea?”

“Yes, Laureline.” He swallowed hard, and she realized the hand that presented the ring was trembling. “Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

“For better or worse?” she asked.

Anxiously, Valerian said, “Is this negotiable?”

Laureline smiled. She wanted to start laughing, to start crying, to start… other things.

“No,” she said.

He settled his shoulders. “All right, then,” he replied.

Laureline gazed down at him for a moment, then bent and accepted the ring. His happiness at the gesture turned to puzzlement as, instead of slipping it on her finger, she placed it carefully on the console. He got to his feet, his expression questioning.

She went into his arms, kissed him, and then began to unfasten his uniform.

His bewildered expression melted into a wicked grin. “Is that a yes?” Valerian asked.

“That’s a maybe,” Laureline replied. She had removed one of his gloves, and got to work on the other one.

He stared at her, totally at a loss. “I’m so confused. Is this how love works?”

“No.” Laureline gave him a teasing look with a hint of a smolder to it, and he inhaled swiftly. She leaned in for a kiss. As he began to enthusiastically return it, she pulled back and began to remove his jacket. When she placed her hand on his chest for a moment, she could feel his heart pouncing beneath her fingers.

“This is how women work. A woman lived in your body for a while. Didn’t you learn anything?”

She tossed aside the jacket and started to slide her hands up under his shirt. To her surprise, he stopped her. She looked up questioningly at him.

“I did learn something,” he said, grinning.

“And what might that be?”

“Don’t start something you can’t finish.”

She laughed a little. “We have two whole hours!”

Valerian gave her a slow, wicked smile. “Precisely,” he said, pulling her close and kissing her hungrily. Her arms slipped up around his neck and she pressed herself against him.

The stars were not eternal, but they were ancient beyond reckoning. They had seen much, and would behold more. But seldom had their judgeless gazes borne witness to events as momentous as those that occurred this day. Two worlds had been born. One, a vast, exquisite planet, with sea and sky and sand and tranquility.

The other, a much smaller, but no less significant world, consisting only of two.

The author must gratefully acknowledge Valerian and Laureline’s creators, Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières, and of course the astoundingly creative Luc Besson, who brings them to life on the screen. Thanks must also go to my agent, Lucienne Diver, and my editors on this project, Natalie Laverick and Ella Chappell.

Award-winning and eight-time New York Times bestselling author Christie Golden has written over fifty novels and several short stories in the fields of science fiction, fantasy and horror. She has writing in such franchises as Star Wars , Star Trek, World of Warcraft, StarCraft, Assassin’s Creed, Halo , and Fable , among many others, as well as authoring her own books.

Recent projects are two novels for the Warcraft movie, Warcraft: Durotan and Warcraft: The Official Movie Novelization , and Assassin’s Creed: Heresy and Assassin’s Creed: The Official Movie Novelization . Appearing on shelves in 2017 in addition to the novelization of Valerian and the City of A Thousand Planets will be Star Wars: Battlefront II: Inferno Squad .