Shadow Stars (Universe on Fire Book 2)

by Ivan Kal

  “Now I think that we should interfere,” Aiko said.

  Kane looked at her with a large grin on his face. “After you,” he gestured and Aiko rolled her eyes.

  A moment later they were in the thick of it.

  ***

  A few hours later, Kane stood in one of Prometheus’s briefing rooms. In front of him sat Jaila, the tiny former slave girl. She was avoiding looking in his eyes, but that was nothing new. It was Kane who had taken her from her previous owner and brought to the Prometheus, and while they had taken her collar off and set her free, she was still considered a slave anywhere other than on the ship. The laws out here were disgusting, which meant that she could never leave the Prometheus without an escort, or risk being caught and sold again. It had taken a long time for Jaila to truly believe that she was free, as she had grown up knowing that that was not possible. She was still a frightened little thing.

  Kane glanced at the woman sitting next to her, Specialist O’nga Uhra, a Wanderer, a native to Ethorria. She was green-skinned, with tusks peeking out from behind her lips. But every human who saw them was familiar with her race, even though they didn’t like being called by the name. It sounded too close to what their real name used to be. Her people were outcasts in Ethorria, nomads who had forsaken the use of magic for a crime that they had committed long ago. She was an alien born on an alternate version of Earth, yet she and her fellows that had agreed to work with humans and teach them spellscripts had fit in easily. The Wanderers might not actively use magic anymore, but they still developed and used spellscripts; they just didn’t activate them themselves. The Wanderers were kind, likable, and they rarely resorted to violence, except when they were forced to in order to protect those in their charge.

  Kane noticed Jaila sneaking glances at O’nga. She had grown very attached to the Wanderer ever since Kane had brought her to the ship. The young alien girl had somehow sensed O’nga’s kind nature.

  “So,” Kane started. “Do you want to tell me what happened, Jaila?”

  The girl didn’t respond immediately. Instead, she looked around nervously, embarrassed and scared. She had always been timid, and unwilling to speak to anyone other than O’nga in the beginning. Nowadays she interacted a bit more with the rest of the crew, but for some reason she was still a bit intimidated by Kane. He understood why; he had saved her in a way, but she had been there when he threatened the trader Jaquil and demanded her as a part of payment for his debt. He could only imagine what she thought he would do with her in the beginning, before they had explained. In truth, he had acted on impulse when he had taken her with him. He just wanted to stick it to the alien trader for betraying them.

  Kane had a hard time coming to terms with the fact that slavery existed in “civilized” space, and other humans did as well. There was nothing that they could do to change it, however, as they couldn’t liberate every slave out there. They all had to learn to live with it.

  Finally, O’nga nudged Jaila with her elbow and the girl turned to look at Kane. “I—I tripped, I’m sorry.”

  Kane nodded, he already knew what had happened: she ran into one of the miners and made him spill his drink. He wasn’t mad at her at all. But he needed to get her to speak up more; the little girl had become something of a surrogate daughter or little sister to the rest of the crew. Everyone was protective of her, which was why all the crew members in the bar had jumped in to defend her, causing several injuries in the resulting bar fight, on both sides. The colony administrator had already complained to Aiko, but there wasn’t really much that he could do—and they would be leaving soon, so it wasn’t an issue.

  “It’s all right. I’m not mad at you, Jaila. But I believe that we told you that you should try to keep a low profile while not on the ship.”

  The laws about slavery were absolute, and as a true slave Jaila was property of her owner: in this case, Kane. The fact that he had removed her collar would get both her and him in trouble if it was found out, which was why they didn’t want her drawing attention to herself. As a slave she had an id-chip implanted inside her bone, one that couldn’t be removed. If anyone scanned her and found out…best case they would punish her and then return her to her owner as an escaped slave. Worst case, they would take her to be sold again.

  “I’m sorry,” Jaila repeated.

  Kane sighed. He knew that she wouldn’t speak much with him, so he waved his hand. “It’s okay, you may go.”

  She hurriedly left the room, leaving Kane and O’nga alone.

  “She still can’t open up to me,” Kane said as he gazed at the closed doors.

  “Every person in authority she ever knew was her owner. Looking at you reminds her of that,” O’nga said.

  “I set her free,” Kane replied.

  O’nga shrugged her shoulders. The Wanderer remained silent. Kane knew her well enough to know that she thought that it was his responsibility to figure out what to do with Jaila, despite the fact that it was O’nga who had taken the girl under her wing.

  “This isn’t going to work, is it?” Kane asked. “She will never be able to relax here.”

  O’nga grunted. “She will never be free in this universe of yours.”

  “Right,” Kane sighed. He had been hoping that he could find a solution, but he had been deluding himself. He had always known that the girl couldn’t continue like this, living on the ship. She might not be treated as a slave here, but as long as she was here she couldn’t be anything but.

  “I’ll send a few messages to Earth, see if we can work something out,” Kane said, looking O’nga in the eyes.

  “It would be for the best,” O’nga responded, then stood and walked out of the room, leaving Kane alone with his thoughts.

  INTERLUDE I

  The man woke up screaming, the memory of being shot, of dying, fresh in his mind. But as air surged into his lungs, he knew that he was alive. He was weak, but nothing hurt. He looked down at his naked body, looking for any sign of the wound in his stomach, but there was none. The only thing he saw was skin and bone, his ribs clearly defined. He frowned. He was thin; more than that, he was emasculated. Every movement seemed to take a great deal out of him. It felt as if he had never worked out a day in his life.

  “Ah, I see that you are awake,” came a voice, and the man turned around to see an alien standing on the other side of the room.

  Immediately the memories came rushing back to his mind: the mission to the planet, the search for ancient tech. The temple, with statues of aliens who looked exactly as the one standing in front of him.

  And the attack, him getting hit. His death.

  The alien walked closer, slowly studying him. He was just shy of two meters tall, with a hunched-over posture. Short, fine fur, gray in color, covered his lizard-like head. A side of his snout had a long scar running from the top to the bottom, leaving dark skin showing through.

  “I am Antaris Truthspeaker,” the alien said, dipping his head. “Battle Commander of the Third Verse in service to the Val’ayash. And I have been waiting quite a long time to speak with you.”

  The man looked around in panic, but the more he moved, the weaker he felt. He could barely move as it was, leaving him stuck to the bed he was in.

  “What is your name?” the alien—Antaris—asked.

  The man had no intention of answering, but somehow the words left his mouth anyway. “I am Darko Kovac.” He looked at the alien in horror, his mind confused and dazed.

  Antaris raised a clawed hand and scratched his snout. “Good. I see that your mind has accepted the new implant. It was quite the procedure, removing the old Zhal’Qash implant. But alas, we do not have the knowledge to alter their old implants as much as we would wish. Certainly not enough for what we need now.”

  “What do you mean? Where am I? How am I alive?” Darko asked in a rush, almost leaving himself out of breath. He wasn’t convinced that he wasn’t dead, not yet.

  Antaris waved his hand. “That does not matter. You
are on one of our worlds, where we brought you after we recovered your body during a confrontation between our peoples, almost a year ago.”

  “A year ago?” Kovac asked in disbelief.

  “We had thought you dead, and had put your body in stasis so as to prevent it from rotting. After we returned to our territory, your body had been taken out of stasis for study, which is when a most curious thing occurred.” Antaris looked at Kovac for a long moment. “Your heart started to beat—and the great wounds we had caused began to close up. It was a fascinating thing to watch. Your body cannibalized itself, eating your muscles and flesh to repair the damage. We were shocked, of course. Our scans showed no signs of technology inside your body, and the genetics analysis dismissed the idea that it is something unique to your race. We were, for a while, stumped…until we started studying the equipment we took back with us. Your technology is very strange, Darko Kovac. We were hoping that you could answer our questions.”

  Kovac looked down to his chest, and the spellscript implanted there. He’d had no idea that the healing script was so powerful, but then again they had never tested its limits. It also explained why he was so weak—his body had quite literally eaten itself.

  He turned back to look back at the alien. “I won’t tell you anything.”

  Antaris tilted his head. “We wouldn’t have woken you up unless we were certain that you would have no choice. Other races like to implement various tactics for information extraction, but we are the Val’ayash, and we do not stoop to such barbaric means.”

  Kovac remained silent, resolving himself not to speak. The name he used, Val’ayash, seemed familiar to him, but his mind was engulfed in a haze and he couldn’t exactly remember. He thought that he had read the name in a report, he just wasn’t sure what the report was about.

  “Tell me, what is the secret of your technology?” Antaris asked.

  “It is not technology, it is magic,” Kovac said, and for a moment after he spoke the words he just stared at the alien. “How are you doing this?”

  “As I said, we’ve replaced the Zhal’Qash implant in your head. It was necessary, unfortunately. We’ve learned how to influence their bio-implants somewhat, but they have created many protections against interference with the brain’s higher functions. Because we needed you to be cooperative and answer truthfully, we replaced it with one of our own. It had taken us a while to adapt it to your biology, but I believe that it will be worth it in the end.” Antaris nodded to himself. “Now, please continue. Tell me, what is this magic?”

  Horrified, Kovac realized that he was compelled to answer. “Magic is a power to bend reality to your will.”

  Antaris narrowed his eyes at him. “Your equipment, even your body has patterns inscribed on them. We believed that they were ornamental at first, but we have since discovered that they are somehow connected with your technology. This magic… Tell me, what are these symbols, and how does magic work?”

  “Only those who are born with magic can use it.” Kovac found the words just leaving his mouth against his will. “They can shape spells inside their minds to cast them and achieve desired results. The patterns are spellscripts, a language of magic. There are two ways to use them: a mage can supply a spellscript with power, or the spellscript can be made to draw power from another source.”

  “Very interesting,” Antaris said. “And how did you discover this? The Val’ayash have never heard of it.”

  “We didn’t discover it,” Kovac said, and stopped. He frowned for a moment—he seemed to only be compelled to answer questions based on their specificity.

  “How did your people learn of it?” Antaris asked again.

  “We learned about magic from the Ethorrians,” Kovac said. With every question he tried as hard as he could to prevent himself from speaking; he even tried to force himself to bite his tongue—but he just couldn’t do it. It was if his thoughts were not being interpreted as orders to his body by his brain.

  “And who are these Ethorrians?”

  “Alternate versions of humanity,” Kovac said clearly, but in his mind he was screaming.

  Antaris became interested when he heard that. “And how did you came in contact with these alternate versions of humanity?”

  “We discovered them on the other side of the portal.”

  “What portal?” Antaris asked as he took another step closer.

  “The portal to Ethorria,” Kovac said. He realized that there was nothing that he could do to prevent this alien from finding out. Every time he asked a question, Kovac just answered. There were no thoughts; not even a feeling of being compelled, actually. He just spoke.

  “This portal, what is it, precisely?” Antaris asked. Kovac could tell that the alien was intrigued, but that he didn’t really understand what Kovac was telling him.

  “It is a breach in the fabric of our universe, leading to another parallel universe.”

  At that, Antaris paused. His nostrils tightened and his eyes narrowed, in what Kovac assumed was shock or disbelief. “Another universe… And your people have found this portal?”

  “No. We created it.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know, it was classified,” Kovac told him.

  Antaris nodded his head, clearly deep in thought. “You found this magic on the other side, but how does it work here? Do you need something special from the other side in order to make it work here? You mentioned people with magic—what does that mean?”

  Kovac closed his eyes in defeat. He couldn’t keep anything from this alien, and he was too weak to try to fight, although he doubted that he would even be able to act against him. His mouth opened, and he answered the alien’s questions.

  “Our opening the breach changed the nature of our universe. The laws of the two merged, and so magic is now possible here. Several decades after we opened the breach, children started being born on our world with magical potential. But no, there is no need for anything extra for it to work here.”

  “And the portal is on one of your worlds?”

  “It is on our homeworld,” Kovac answered.

  “Good. Now, tell me more about your people. Start at the beginning,” Antaris said as he moved over a seat and sat close to Kovac’s bed.

  Having no other choice, Kovac resumed speaking, every word out of his mouth a treason.

  ***

  Several days later Kovac lay in the bed of the small medical room. Aliens came and went, checking up on him and making sure that he was recovering. They didn’t want him dead, and at least that made him feel some glimmer of hope that perhaps someday he would be able to escape. But he knew that it would be hard. The bio-implant in his head prevented him from doing many things, yet it still left him with a lot of freedom. Antaris had explained why that was: apparently placing too many restrictions and creating a complete slave tended to break a sentient’s mind and create a mindless husk. They needed him healthy, able to answer their questions.

  He couldn’t kill himself. He had tried that as soon as he had been left alone for the first time. He just couldn’t perform the action. But he could choose to neglect himself—or at least he had been able to. The aliens—the Val’ayash—had noticed and had ordered him to take care of his body, and now he didn’t have a choice in that matter either. It was an eerie feeling, having complete freedom to think and to speak, but not to act. He was a prisoner inside his own body.

  The aliens had questioned him for hours each day, learning about everything that he knew, and silently Kovac was relieved that he didn’t know much about the details. He knew how to use magic, but that wouldn’t be useful to the Val’ayash unless they had someone with magical potential that could benefit from that. He knew a little about spellscripts, but his training had been focused more on the combat applications of the spellscripts he had imprinted on his body. He knew the basic theory behind them, but that was not enough for the Val’ayash to properly reverse engineer the spellscripts they had recovered, not without a whole lot of tr
ial and error.

  The rest, however… It was bad. The Val’ayash now knew the location of Earth, knew that humanity had no strength to fight back. When Kovac had left Earth, they had only one ship, the Prometheus, and he wasn’t even certain if his old crew had survived. At least he thought that they survived the Val’ayash—if what little information he had gleaned from his conversations with Antaris was to be trusted. Regardless, he knew that Earth couldn’t have much more than that single ship, considering they were at war with the Qash’vo’tar, and even if Kovac hoped that they had won, he knew that even that was unlikely.

  A part of him half wished that the Prometheus had failed, that Earth had fallen. At least that way anything that he told the Val’ayash would not be used against Earth. But that was a foolish hope, meant to alleviate some of his guilt. He knew that this situation wasn’t his fault—but he still couldn’t feel like a traitor, no matter how much he tried to tell himself that he was acting against his own will. It doesn’t feel like I am.

  There was no pain, he wasn’t being tortured. He was only being asked questions, questions that he answered without hesitation—and that was the thing that hurt the most.

  Kovac heard the doors open, and he glanced over to see a group of Val’ayash enter. He knew them to be scientists working on the magi-tech they had recovered when they captured him.

  Kovac took a deep breath and prepared himself for a long day of answering their every question.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Councilor Isabella Rodriguez stood next to the window of her office looking out at the city spreading outside of the Council Hall. It was late, the sky already dark and the street lights shining brightly. The doors to her office opened and then closed as a single person entered.

  “They all think that they are free,” Isabella said, shaking her head. “If they really knew how much those bastards are holding us back…”