The Imaginators (Of Stardust and Aether Book 1)

by M. K. Valley

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2021 by M.K. Valley

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or manner, physical or electronic, without the explicit permission of the copyright holder except for the of quotations by reviewers.

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  Book Design by M.K. Valley

  Cover Photo by Anastasiya Lobanovskaya via Pexels

  Cover Design by M.K. Valley

  For all those who imagined it possible.

  PHASE ONE

  THE CONTRACT

  The imagiSword in my hand is trembling. Or is it the hand holding the imagiSword trembling? One day, I’ll go back to this moment, unable to remember.

  A simple thought turns the weapon into optical refractors and space dust. But the blood stays. The blood always stays. That’s the thing about us Imaginators. We can wish anything into existence and back into oblivion, but we can’t wish away the consequences.

  “Fuck, I love those gloves,” I murmur, staring at the bloodstains caking the soft leather.

  “Wasn’t that supposed to be the easy part?” Twig rasps out, piercing the curtain of red haze hanging over my mind. “You done?”

  I round a crate and see him bent over a dead body, wiping his blade into the garbs. He always does that, cleaning a weapon seconds before wishing it into oblivion. As if the Aether would care that it’s been splattered with the blood that’s turning my partner’s dark, slender limbs to rust. I lean against the crate, hands crossed over my chest, and sweep my eyes over the hangar bay, now still and silent.

  “Yeah, and it would’ve been,” my voice’s gravel, rumbling through the high-pitched ringing in my ears. “But it was a trap.”

  Twig whips toward me, black eyes pinched and confused. “Did they get you in the head, boss?”

  I nudge the limp booted leg at my feet and push off the crate, hiding a groan in its creak. “Check the Contract panel and ask again,” I say over my shoulder and trudge back to the cutter.

  I’m tired. It’s in my voice, in the cold tingle numbing my fingertips, pale and twitching. I reek of blood, a rib grinds in my chest in all the wrong ways. And I know, I fucking know it. I’m not getting my 1-mil intergalactics.

  Three months ago, we accepted a Contract to assassinate the normieConsul of Ares, the prize on his head too big to ignore. We spent weeks researching, infiltrating, stealing information, prepping for the hit of our lives. We spent days carefully crafting our entry and exit strategies, when and where to strike with minimum collateral, and how to make it as clean as possible. We spent hours monitoring our prey, biding our time, only to have our plans blown to smithereens.

  The fact that the normie had contracted the imagiConsul of Ares as his personal guard dog wasn’t a problem. An otherwise tedious job turning into a bloodbath wasn’t a problem, either. The Imaginator fleeing the scene at the last moment instead of rightfully evaporating us was. My bones hum with the thought as I limp toward the cutter. Someone set us up. Now, a perfectly legal business arrangement will look like a murder, and we’re to take the blame for it.

  Twig’s gasp chases me on my heels. “It’s… It’s gone?! How the fuck does a 1-mil Contract disappear?!”

  “It doesn’t.” The hangar echoes the words, cold and indifferent to our predicament and the dead bodies littering its floor. “Given that we weren’t informed of its Champion withdrawing it…”

  “And both Consuls were here, unable to unanimously revoke it…”

  “It was a trap, Twig.” I hover by the yawning of our ship, resting a hand on the cold metal. “A tailor-made trap we walked into as if it were salvation on a platter. Let’s go.”

  But it was salvation on a platter. I dare peek at the vidFeed from our hull sensors. Twig throws a glance at the mess we’re leaving behind on the automated supply station, heartbreak furrowing his brow, pinching his lips. Not that we’re barely making ends meet. On the contrary, there’s always someone wishing someone else dead in the Infinite Universe. We’ll never be out of a job. But such a sum could buy us an asteroid in a ring or a small planet to retire to, away from the rest of the Cosmos.

  I sigh and slump into the co-pilot seat. Some other time, then.

  Twig boards muttering curses under his breath. I get it. Between the two of us, I’m the brawn, and he’s the brains. Missing a trap like that must’ve hurt his soft core, but he’ll recover. I’m known to sweep those around me in my momentum, and now I have no intention of brooding over a juicy prize.

  He’ll get through it, I repeat to myself, as he mounts the pilot seat. If we live long enough. Given the circumstances, the chances are slim. We need to get back to Ares as soon as possible.

  Our communicators ping in sync just as we strap in. We both freeze, but I’m quick to recover. I don’t have it in me to care about this right now, but my partner taps the transparent screen of the communicator, and the message unfurls in all its predictable glory.

  “One million… They offer 1-mil each, Andria!”

  “Let’s get going then. If the Contract’s out already, half of Ares will be on top of us in minutes.”

  As we buckle up, the Contract’s panel floods with notifications for every Assassin crew opting for it. Cold fury locks my eyes on the list, the sheer number. We’ve assisted or saved the hides of half the Imaginators on these crews on multiple occasions. And this is how they repay us – with a space-wide hunt for the Princess of Scorpio and her butler.

  It takes some effort to peel my eyes away and rest back into the seat. The imagiDrive’s needle punches at my nape as I reluctantly recognize this might be a problem. There’s no honor among thieves, but the Assassins of Ares will band together and combine their efforts and creations for a chance to get their hands on the reward. Sweet Aether, those 2-mil intergalactics can make anyone discard bonds and forget debts. They whet even my appetite.

  I can’t blame them. But when this is all over, and we expose the scheme, I’ll hold it against them. When the monster lives in a glass tower and drinks expensive wine, it’s easy to forget it’s not civilized. The future holds a promise of violence, and I’m ready to set it into motion right now, but we’re outnumbered and outgunned. Vexed, I let the Aether take my mind, and as the first of the Assassin crews exit imagiSpace in the vicinity of the asteroid belt, instead of taking aim, we take a straight imagiRoute back to Ares.

  PHASE TWO

  THE IMAGINATORS

  OF ARES

  It’s been three days since we snuck through the dome and landed in the relative safety of Ares. I already can’t stand it here. I hate this uninhabitable piece of space rock that someone, a long time ago, decided to call a planet. It has no breathable atmosphere, no viable natural resources, water is for shit, and the weather is even worse. Electromagnetic storms, blizzards, anti-matter ionic events that open up craters all over the surface… It’s a bouquet of “I want to murder you” natural occurrences that the Cosmos and the planet send to the inhabitants. You’d be right to ask why we would make our home in a place that’s incompatible with life.

  Millenia ago, the Imaginators lived in service of interstellar society, in harmony with all the species of the Infinite Universe. We helped them achieve technological progress, reach beyond their known stars, put the Cosmos to its knees. We gained pow
er, status, and influence in the process. Not just money but reputation. Fear poisoned the thoughts and goods of normies atop the food chain. For the first time since they’d put our talents to use.

  It was inevitable for the Imaginators to decide they wanted more. Something that didn’t define us as mere tools to be used. They could imagine it, and I suppose it was beautiful. So much so, it begot violence.

  The standoffs had been short and bloody. We’re powerful, but we’re few, and we can be overwhelmed through sheer numbers. And we lost. That’s why today, Imaginators live on pieces of cosmic junk. We’d been hunted down, persecuted as criminals, chained with psychic rings that limit our abilities, drugged, beaten, abused, and finally locked away. Thanks to a few sagacious traitors who imagined our prison, bound us to a system of twelve planets locked in a close orbit to a dead star.

  They all thought they could forget about us. We’d been, after all, imprisoned where no life could thrive.

  But if anything can survive the Infinite Universe’s harsh indifference, it’s Imaginators. Life prevailed. Our ancestors could imagine a better world, and they built it. Left to their own devices, they made the best out of the unexpected reprieve. They turned their backs on species, beliefs, habits, everything that tied them in any way to their roots and people. They discarded the legacy of those who thought them disposable. And they came together, united by the simple truth of being Imaginators.

  We’re not a race or species, we’re a phenomenon. We live and breathe the very essence of the Infinite Universe. We are the Cosmos, and the Cosmos is in us. We gave life to a hopeless system, and just like that, the prison worlds became sanctuaries.

  The Imaginators’ abilities allowed them to form self-sufficient communities. They partially terraformed our hostile floating tombs. Yes, we live under domes, in floating fortresses of glass and metal, and we have to imagine sunlight to experience it on our skin, but we’re alive today, and who’s to say we’re not free?

  You want something built? Dive into the swirling clouds of Hephaestus. You need the best fabric in the known worlds? Let the minds on Athena weave it for you. You want someone dead? Open a contract on the piece of space junk that’s Ares. Why our ancestors decided to name those lifeless rocks after the Olympians of Ancient Greece, I don’t know. But I find it fitting.

  The treaty with the normies came naturally. They couldn’t bend the essence of the Infinite Universe without us, after all. But there were conditions if we were to leave the Olympians without being gunned down. They wanted to monitor our socio-economic development and warfare capabilities. The normies were afraid we’d flourish and find a way to break through the suppression field around our dead star. And no one was ready for billions of Imaginators to go unchecked.

  Today, the five million inhabitants of Ares, just as the billions on the other eleven planets, live under the vigilant eye of a normieConsul and a representative of the local Imaginators. Well, they used to. As of three days ago, the normie’s missing, presumed dead. Elections at the Transgalactic Council are due in a month, and the investigation is in paperwork hell. Whoever’s the new normieConsul, they’d mean trouble for Twig and me. We can’t sit on our thumbs and do nothing for a month. As much as I hate Ares, it’s the only place where we can unravel the scheme without the threat of untimely death looming over us.

  The whole planet is a demilitarized, murder-free zone. And for a good reason. Otherwise, we’d snuff each other within the week. A little over fifty percent of the population consists of licensed Assassins. We’re not simpletons, a muscle for hire, or a mercenary army. We’re professionals. Many of us can afford to be picky with our Contracts. And we all excel at the art of killing others. But we are, after all, murderers. You need a certain kind of mentality to draw blood for money. Some are hotheads, others are outright psychotic. Violence itself is not forbidden, though, as long as you’re wise enough not to kill your mark.

  In other words, and to my dismay, Ares is the only place where no one can dispatch us legally. It gives us some time and space to work this out. Only the line of Zeusian investigators and Aresian bullies leading up to my doorstep might pose a problem. The good news is that there seems to be a crack in the dome over Sicarius Prima. The horrific weather conditions might dissuade more energetic attempts to bully us off the planet, I tell myself, rubbing at my bruised knuckles.

  My eyes roam the view while waiting for Twig. Acid rain pours down the glass towers of our capital. My apartment’s filters are working overtime to keep the stench at bay, but the air still clogs in my nostrils. This spells misery for us all in the next couple of days. Even the imagiTowers dominating Sicarius Prima, our dark and dangerous capital, the heart of our little Assassin civilization, look dull. The twin spires, with their knife-sharp lines and neon gleam, are a sight to behold. This city, alongside the whole planet, is a cliché I can barely stand. But I’ll give credit where credit’s due.

  I snap to attention with the buzzer and turn away from the view with a final squint at the heady illuminations of progress and industrialization.

  “Lose the raincoat, you’re not dripping acid on my tiles,” I warn Twig, opening the door, and he gives me the stink-eye. Huffing, he shakes his shoulders and wishes the coat into oblivion. I motion him inside, eyes trained on the stinking puddle at my doorstep as if it could spring and splash me. “Please, come in.”

  He brushes against my shoulder, and I bite my tongue. I deserve that. Creations tax him more than they cost me. A simple thing such as a slicker of protective cloth can wrinkle the bark on his forearms as if he’s contracted a rash. Born into a cruel fate, his life isn’t easier under my wing, but it’s appreciated. From time to time.

  Born and bred on Dionysus, he could’ve lived a life of parties and unbridled depravity. But Twig was born with a rampant ability to imagine that locked in on itself before devastating his mind. I’m convinced he imagined the lock himself, but he’s not ready to accept it yet.

  But that’s what got him on Ares and to me. Here, only half of us are actual Assassins. The rest are those with the least luck in the Infinite Universe. Either escaping lives chained to psychic rings or those with limited abilities. Twig, though, was determined not to spend his days brewing questionable spirits in even more questionable cellars. He got his shit together and somehow passed the licensing process. Despite his shortcomings as an Imaginator, he’s brilliant and crafty, could sell you your own creations. And I need that. I have a very short wick attached to casual violence. Twig’s the calm and cold of the Aether, with patience as infinite as the Universe. As I said, he’s the brains, and I’m the brawn.

  “Don’t sulk,” I call after him, reminding myself he’s loyal to a fault, and I should stop being an ass. “Tell me about your trip to the Consulate. Did they release the records?”

  “The trip was awful, thanks for asking, boss,” he hums and takes his sweet time pouring a glass of notoriously expensive Dionysian wine before dropping into a couch by the window. He cradles the bottle and offers me the glass. I grit my teeth and take it. “Ask me if anything went smoothly,” he says in between sips, a swift tongue catching a few drops on his lips, and I do my best to unlock my muscles as I sit across from him. “Because it didn’t.”

  “You’re cute. But if you keep at it, I’ll go there myself and cause a scene.”

  “They won’t let you in,” he snickers, and I take a white-knuckled breath.

  “What do you mean? Those are force majeure circumstances, they can’t just ban me!”

  My logic is reasonable at best and desperate at worst. The Consulate believes we snuffed out the normieConsul. The imagiConsul can’t afford to look incompetent, not just for letting it happen but for allowing the existence of such a Contract in the first place. There’s no way we’re getting close to the hard copies of those records. The Consulate will use its Hermesian bureaucrats to bury the Zeusian investigators under a mountain of documents
. If they somehow manage to surface for air, they’ll wander through the paperwork until they slip and break their necks and decide to focus solely on us while all the responsible parties cover their tracks.

  But the real question is whether the imagiConsul is tying up loose ends because of his incompetence, or he was part of the plot and framed us. It’s not that wild to want to remove an inconvenient normie, but why let us live? Why bail on his employer and give us the chance to snuff him out?

  My stomach turns, and I try to stave off the panic. Why raise a 2-mil reward for our heads and allow us back on Ares? Unless we’re supposed to live long enough to face trial.

  Twig leans forward and cups my bruised knuckles. I’m gripping the armrest so hard, bone could break skin. “You’re playing it through in your mind, aren’t you?” He says, dragging me, kicking and screaming, out of my head.

  “We can’t go on trial,” I rasp out, chugging the wine, and unclench my fist. “If someone at the Consulate staged the whole Contract, they can easily frame us and chain us. We can’t allow that. Did you get something, anything out of them?”

  “Scraps,” he sighs and tops up my glass. “A friend of a friend works at their maintenance depot. They haven’t received a hard copy of our case to demolish.”

  “Meaning the Champion of the Contract is an Imaginator?” He nods, but I shake it off. “I think I expected that, but it’s not very helpful. What are we to do? Point a finger at the imagiConsul without proof?”

  I suck on my teeth, the copper taste of the fight lingering. Only the creator of a thing can destroy it unless you’re an antiMagi, and those are a myth. If I imagine a piece of paper, and Twig feels offended, he could imagine a pair of scissors and shred it, but he cannot imagine it gone. I’m the maker. I’m the only one who can wish my creations back into oblivion. And I won’t be able to do away with his scissors when he tries to stab me. Pretty much the same goes for Contracts. When normie Champions submit them, hard copies are physically demolished upon completion when there’s a result or a reward has been collected. But only after the outcome has been confirmed. Our Contract disappeared on the assumption of completion. It was wished away by its creator, with no hard copy to be destroyed.