Dan Kirshtein
Stars Gods Wolves
Book One: Carrion
First published by Stones & Cherries 2019
Copyright © 2019 by Dan Kirshtein
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
First edition
ISBN: 978-1-7357432-2-6
Editing by Jenn Bailey
Proofreading by Nick Hodgson
Cover art by Ryan Schwarz
This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy
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Special Thanks to Jack Murnighan & David Greenberg
1
Oh, come on. Do you know how often I get asked that?
Seriously.
Nobody actually cares what I believe. Nobody.
The kinds of people who ask me that are the people who doubt the existence themselves. They ask me because they figure I’m smart and that if I believe, then God must be real.
But truth be told, how could I know? How could anyone?
We used to think heaven was in the sky, but then we started living among the stars, so now where is it?
It’s fun to have religion, and sure it gives some people purpose. But it’s more practical—albeit more superficial—to believe in biology.
Biology is very similar to God, in that it creates, prunes, and encourages life. And it does this against impossible odds.
And, like God, biology has a way of suddenly changing its mind.
It finds the need to cull.
Interview with Dr. Martin Collier,
‘The J. Reed Pub-Cast’
October 1, 2298
Sabile: Former warm and cozy homeworld of the Heruleans, current icy apocalypse
Somewhere between Research Station 2 and Research Station 4
He’d taken four hyper-planet transports, traveled 6,326 light-years from Earth to a planet with no living populace, and yet Mitch still found himself amid the usual bullshit. Being the only one without his actual doctorate, it was as if his finger were eternally tied to the short straw. ‘Lab Assistant’ was a generous term for what he did, which was basically any job the doctors didn’t want.
So when Research Station 4 went dark for two days and wasn’t responding to hails, he was volunteered to endure the razor-sharp winds and gray snow of Sabile. It was like an Earth winter, he told himself as he trudged: the most awful, horrible, skin-splitting winter he’d ever experienced. Except on Earth the air didn’t smell like dead things. Mitch pulled his scarf up to his nose, hoping to block the wind from forcing the smell into his nostrils. The other small parts of his face and wrists that were exposed burned from the cold as he tried not to notice the amount of snow that had fallen into his boots.
He looked up to see the beacons that lit his way along the otherwise impossible-to-follow trail. They flashed slowly, shining a red light into an otherwise gray sky that occasionally crackled with blue lightning. The wind flung his hood back, but he caught it and held it forward with both hands.
The rocky terrain, unfit for any vehicles the scientists had brought, would catch his feet by surprise sometimes. The second time he tripped, he was convinced this was most certainly not like a trudge through an Earth winter. It was a herculean feat, he decided, one that he would tell his grandchildren about. Perhaps he would exclude how much he cussed and grunted the whole time, but in his defense, the climate was recently designed to be inhospitable. Only an idiot volunteer would be unfortunate enough to traverse it. Maybe he wouldn’t tell his grandchildren. Maybe he wouldn’t survive the trip.
As if in response to his thoughts of giving up, he spotted a small structure in the distance. Research Station 4 was a simple black square built to endure the harsh environment. Mitch was so relieved to see the station that he began to shout to it, though he didn’t think his voice carried through the wind. He probably sounded nonsensical: The freezing cold was making it difficult to move his lips.
If he squinted hard, he could see the station’s door and two windows. There were no lights on, but something hung out the window to his right. His eyes could not make sense of it. The station housed two doctors and an assistant, all of whom were intelligent enough not to open a window in this kind of environment. Frowning, he squinted and noticed that the window had not been opened, but broken.
The large object hanging from it was an odd color: a light blue top with a long white, flailing bottom, with some red in the middle. It flapped at the end like a flag, but seemed too heavy in the middle for that to be the case. Mitch grimaced, covering the top of his goggles as if that would help.
He walked closer to examine the object. His eyes, to their horror, finally made sense of it. Doctor Henrietta Weaver, forty-two years old, hung out the window by her waist. Her lab coat draped over her head and flapped in the wind, concealing her long black hair and pale skin. Her powder blue undershirt was stained a deep red, the same deep red that sat in a puddle below her.
The realization of what the ‘flag’ actually was occurred to Mitch all at once, and he leapt with surprise and horror. He let out a low yelp and gave no thought to examining the rest of the building. He was no longer a lab assistant, now just a man trying to survive. He simply turned and ran.
His heart in his stomach, hood flew backward as he sprinted. His scarf loosened and eventually fell away into the gray snow. His heavy boots refused to keep a steady pace, despite his legs’ demand.
As much of a struggle as he had getting there, he made great time getting back. He burst through the front door of Research Station 2. He didn’t see Doctor Howlette approach him; he stumbled past the doctor, barely hearing him speak.
“Mitch?” His voice held growing concern.
Mitch nearly collapsed onto the communications console and began dialing commands into it; it seemed more like slapping, given his nearly frozen fingers. In the corner of his eye, he could see Doctor Lee and Doctor Howlette hurrying over. Before they reached the console, Mitch was trying to form words from frozen lips. “P-Priority Alpha,” he stammered, half from cold, half from fear. “Emergency! Repeat. Emergency! Home base, please respond.”
“What happened, son?” Howlette placed a hand on the boy’s back, trying to get his attention.
It didn’t work. “Say again, Priority Alpha! Emergency! Home base, respond!”
“Mitch!” Howlette pleaded, nearly shouting into Mitch’s face.
Mitch finally turned to look at the doctor. “They need to come here.” His eyes were red, his lips bloody. His pink face still carried flecks of gray snow. He spat as he spoke from stiff lips. “They need to see what happened.”
Arlock-1: Lush moon, full of green fields and abundant wildlife
Medium-security political prison
As he stood upon the grass hill, James ‘Nitro’ Dockson’s leg bounced on the ball of his foot. It happened before every mission, especially when he was standing still. This wasn’t due to nerves. He was a captain; he’d been through more perilous missions than this one, and they always worked out fine; in fact, he’d survived long enough to have a bit of gray in his short black hair. His tall frame was not very intimidating at first glance: it seemed skinny, despite carrying muscle. Those that met him would only fear the look in his eyes: the look of
a berserker. He carried the energy of a shaken can of soda, and had very much earned his nickname. Most of Purple Company used an alias, as their real names carried criminal records or court-martials.
Josie’s name carried the latter, but none would guess it from the way she carried herself. Even the way she prepared was by the book. She covered her shaved head with a helmet and tapped each sidearm out of habit. She gave a half-smile to the demolitions expert as she tightened the straps of her armor to meet her fit frame.
Matthew Beumer, known as Boomer, carried his explosives with a grin. He swung his head, his blond, scraggly hair moving away from his one remaining eye. He had been attractive once, but the years of jobs had taken a few fingers, an eye, and apparently the will to wash. One of many shrapnel scars caused nearly half his head to be bald. Though he was just as mad as Nitro, Boomer carried it differently. He fancied himself an artist: a passionate and slightly unstable artist.
Behind Boomer sat a large Waykind. They called him Ox, as his real name was too long for the others to pronounce. Typically a shamanistic and one-with-the-universe type of species, Ox had lost his way and joined up with what his people would call, basically, monsters, but it sounded nicer in their tongue. The brown-furred, three-hundred-pound mass arose from his meditation, supporting his large upper body by walking with his knuckles, like a gorilla. On the rare occasions when he straightened his back, he stood one foot taller than Nitro. The fur around Ox’s large, circular head frayed out to reveal tan skin, yellow eyes, and a very small, Human-like, mouth. His staff—made of dark green wood, with detailed engravings, and wings at the top that spread in either direction—steadied him as he looked to his commanding officer. “I am prepared, captain.” His voice was deep and resonant: a cross between a person’s voice and a cow’s moo. It carried very far with very little effort.
Nitro nodded and patted the Waykind on his broad forearm. Purple Company stood at the bottom of a grassy hill. Upon the top of this hill was a massive castle made of a brown, steel-like material. The captain’s leg finally ceased its bouncing and he looked at the others. “Alright, take us in.” Ox eyed the structure with a fierce certainty before slamming the base of his staff to the ground.
“Never gonna get used to this,” Josie mumbled before the ground thrummed beneath her.With a roar, stone and dirt erupted, creating a moving brown hill with a platform, upon which the mercenaries stood.
Boomer carried the smile of a child on a rollercoaster as the stone on the hill morphed into a point at the front, massing into a large, sharp ram. He was nearly standing on the spear-end when a wall of stone burst up in front of him, creating a wall to shield them from the impending crash.
The earthen battering ram crashed through the second story of the structure, carrying its riders into the center of the cellblock. Alarms sounded immediately. Josie braced her shoulder against a nearby wall and used her sidearm to fire at the Arthen guards [clad in wood-like plate armor, carrying rifles that shot poisonous darts in front of them], while Nitro covered their rear with his rifle.
Josie’s shots were quick, precise, and deadly. She’d taken out three of the guards before they could return fire. Ox rolled his staff, and the mound of stone turned to shield her at waist height, allowing Josie to drop down to one knee and continue firing. Before long, the room was temporarily silent due to lack of opposition. She smirked.
Boomer approached a row of prison cells and began flicking the bars with his finger, while his other hand carried a laser redistributor. He was so immersed in his work that he didn’t notice the wave of guards in the hall beginning to fire at him. A wall of stone quickly rushed to provide cover for him as well, though he paid it no mind. He was pensive, as the apparently improper tool bounced in his hand. “Who still uses bars?” he complained gruffly. He swung a backpack from his shoulder and dug through it, putting his first choice of tool back into a pocket as a barbed bolt flew over his head. After a moment, he retrieved a small block of C-4 from the bag. He approached one cell in particular and eyed the lock. The green-skinned prisoner behind the bars looked confused and protested in a language the others couldn’t understand. In fact, the only people who would want to ‘rescue’ him probably wanted to punish him themselves. He tried to explain this, but Boomer met him with a blank face.
Boomer bit his lip before speaking. “No English, huh? I could see why. Did you know that the plural of ‘extraordinaire’ is also ‘extraordinaire’?” The demolitions expert typed some numbers into the block of explosives and attached it onto the cell’s lock as the green-skinned man looked on in apprehension. “For years, I’ve been introducing us as ‘Extradition Extraordinaires’. Man, I must’ve sounded like an idiot!” Boomer shook his head, chuckling. He stepped back and noticed the prisoner hadn’t done the same. Boomer shooed him, and he finally moved away as well. “Oh, you might want to cover your—”
A deafening pop echoed through the castle, and the cell door clanged against the side of the cell. The green man instinctively leapt further into the cell at the sudden noise. “—Ears.” Boomer finally finished after a pause, incapable of hearing that loud ringing that everyone else heard after such an explosion.
Nitro beckoned, and the others boarded the mound of dirt again. When it was clear the former prisoner wasn’t coming, the captain sighed. “Damn it.” He rolled his eyes as he stepped off the mound and walked to the cell. Josie provided covering fire, and Nitro walked to the cell as if about to scold a child, disregarding the venomous darts that whizzed past him.
When he arrived at the cell, he noticed the prisoner was huddled up in the corner. “Come on,” Nitro urged him. The man shook his head. “Come on!” Nitro insisted, pointing to the large hole in the building. The man shook his head again, this time sputtering some sort of explanation as to why he wasn’t going. Nitro didn’t understand or care. He punched the prisoner in the jaw to knock him out, hurled him over his shoulder, and carried him to the others. “There ya go,” Nitro grunted, patting his prisoner on the back.
Ox was now braced up against a wall of stone that he’d made. With a glance to the halls, the Waykind noticed more Arthen pouring into the room. “Perhaps we should be going?” he suggested, not wanting to give orders, but not wanting to stay.
Nitro walked past him, carrying the prisoner, as more darts whistled by him. “Agreed!” He gave the Waykind a backward nod before the mound of dirt and rock moved again. “Zerich, we’re gonna need to move fast, buddy!”
Not far away, a stocky white shuttle sat on a grassy hill. Within the ship’s cockpit, her pilot was readying for takeoff. A few flips of the correct switches, and the engines of the Wendigo purred like a kitten. That sound never failed to comfort him, and a small smile appeared on the pilot’s face as he looked around. He was an Obbitale, a red-skinned humanoid with black bug eyes and scales, and he—like most of his race—did not like surprises. He’d only recently decided that prison-breaking was a bad business to be in when one does not like surprises.
So, when the large-eyed pilot leaned over the controls to see his comrades’ traveling mountain being chased by a dozen Arthen, his warm and comforted smile slowly dropped into a disappointed—but not too surprised—grimace. “Aw, what the hell,” he grumbled as a tinny voice from the coms tried to get his attention. He paid no attention to whatever the captain was yelling while he got the Wendigo into the air.
She whirred and hummed to life, whooshing across the field and arriving just ahead of the rest of Purple Company. As she spun, several Arthen fired upon her. Spikes clanged against her hull; one went through the corner of the windshield.
Zerich cried out as he was struck in the shoulder. The pilot was quick to remove the red spike; it stung worse being pulled out than it did going in. He tried to ignore the horrible tingle that ran down his arm and into his side. His left hand dashed into a nearby compartment and pulled out a small, fat gun. He fired it at the hole in the windshield, and a gray gum plunked onto the broken glass, sealing it insta
ntly. He then fired another shot at his shoulder to stop the bleeding: not its intended purpose, but efficient.
The ship turned, and Zerich could hear a distant rumbling as the mountain of dirt rolled up to the stern of the ship. “That’s everyone,” he heard Josie, half over the coms, half from behind him. “Let’s go!”
He nodded and pulled the throttle back as far as it could go, favoring his right side. As Zerich grunted and fell back into his chair, the Wendigo leapt out of the atmosphere.
Bridos-1: The First Habitable Planet in Alpha Centauri
Capital Planet of the Human Government
Cities, as a general rule, don’t care about death; they carry on regardless. If the city had its way, the dead would be trampled over or forgotten. The inhabitants, however, make it a habit of honoring the dead, whether the city liked it or not. So when funeral processions did crawl through the city, they did so stubbornly and held up traffic. This one was no exception. It was long, slow, and comprised a train of black luxury crafts that floated along the busy streets.
Within one of the crafts, between scores of people she didn’t know or care to know, sat a twig-framed girl with tan skin. Her diamond blue eyes, now lonely and vulnerable, had once been full of life and light. When her father first saw them he had named her Galadriel. She never read the books that contained her namesake, despite her father’s insistence, and she hated her full name so much that she went by Gally.
With her elbows firmly tucked into her sides, it suddenly occurred to her that she had made herself as small as possible, and she wasn’t certain whether she wanted it that way or not. As the wide stranger next to her encroached upon her personal space yet again, she considered an attempt to re-institute the habit of reading books, if only for the sense of escapism. A pang of loss echoed within her; the memory of being curled up in bed while her father read aloud to her—which used to be such a happy thought—suddenly burned her.
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