A Star Reborn: A Space Opera Adventure (Seven Stars Saga Book 2)

by AJ Super

  She wove her way through the people on the market street. The passage to the docking dome wasn’t far.

  A woman with a red parka with her hood up walked in front of Nyx, staring. Something in the stiff way she moved made Nyx pause. It was like she moved in armor, stepping wide and authoritatively. Nyx glanced at the woman’s parka-covered hip. There was a slight abnormal bulge, but she couldn’t tell if the woman in red was carrying a weapon for sure, or even if it was a Queensman’s white and gold pulse weapon. Still, Nyx had a bad feeling.

  She veered to the right, down a side-street with smaller vendors, away from the passage to the docking dome.

  Nyx ground her teeth. “Putain. Putain de merde. Putain.” The crowd was thinning, but she had left Boucher far behind in the market. It didn’t mean she wouldn’t find Nyx, especially if that woman was a Queensman as well. She needed to get to the Thanatos.

  She was getting closer to the edge of the dome, and the temperature was dropping. Her breath fogged, and she pulled her parka tight. She yanked a pair of white gloves from her pocket, fingers numbing. The closer to the edge of the dome, the more the cold from the ice-flats radiated into it. The energy it took to keep the dome a livable temperature was phenomenal, so much so that the government didn’t even bother making it temperate.

  If she was getting closer to the edge, that meant Nyx could find a hatch to the flats that she could hack and walk the surface to the docking dome. She’d bypass anyone who would be blocking the narrow, crowded passage who could stop her from getting to her ship. If she were Boucher, she’d have left some people waiting for her there. All Boucher would have to do was herd Nyx into their net. The woman in the red parka was probably just a scout looking for her to make sure she fell into their trap.

  Nyx quickened her pace. There was next to no one browsing the stalls lining the side-street. Only a middle-aged man picked through a stand selling fruit and a couple of young boys flipped through some printed paper magazines with bright illustrations on the pages. Nyx tilted her head. Not many places sold printed paper media anymore, since datapads were more efficient to use and media streamed quickly. The stall clearly had something collectible, and the boys’ eyes sparkled. They smiled, engrossed in the treasures, as she brushed by them.

  The dome’s wall turned down and an arched hatch rose in front of Nyx. The temperature-controlled and pressurized airlock had a giant red triangle with an exclamation point on it, warning its danger.

  She could die on the ice-flats if she stayed out there too long. She wasn’t well equipped for temperatures reaching negative thirty-six Celsius during the day. The walk between domes would only take a few minutes, so she wouldn’t get caught in the dark, which would be a disaster. But being out on the ice-flats longer than that would likely kill her as well.

  Nyx pulled her knife out, jimmied loose the panel by a black ID scanner, and yanked the wires out. She stripped two and crossed them, and the locked hatch rolled aside. She glanced behind her. There was no sign of Boucher or the woman in red. Maybe she actually lost them. She breathed. She could hope, but she didn’t actually think the infected woman would give up looking for her.

  The door rolled closed behind her. Hanging in the hatch-tube were heavy-duty black parkas and full-face, warming breathers. Nyx tugged a parka off a hook and yanked it over her own parka. Then she lifted a breather from its hook and strapped it to her face. A display lit across the mask, mapping the path across the ice-flat from dome-to-dome. She blinked. That would be helpful.

  Standing in front of the door to the flats, Nyx pulled the hood of the black parka over her head. She couldn’t waste time out there. Quick, she had to be quick. She slapped the red button by the outer door, and the pressure in the hatch-tube changed, popping her eardrums. The air went from cold to icy with a whoosh and the tunnel was flooded with bright white light.

  A giant pounding resounded behind her on the door to the dome. Nyx’s heart stuttered. Boucher must have caught up to her. It would take a few minutes for the hatch’s temperature and pressure to normalize before the Queensman could open it and follow her. By then she would be half-way to the other dome. She could still outrun her and get to the Thanatos.

  Nyx stepped onto the icy flats. The door rolled closed behind her. She had to move quickly. She had to find her family. That’s all that mattered.

  10

  Nyx tugged the heavy black parka closer to her body and adjusted the warming breather strapped across her face. Without it, the snowy wind would instantly frostbite her nose and cheeks. She blinked, and the mask pulled up a directional map pointing her way over a frozen lake. She had hoped Boucher wouldn’t pursue her through the blizzarding flats. She was wrong. Even Malcam, before she had made him immortal and her ExO, hadn’t been as persistent at chasing her when he was after the Star of Erebus, as this Queensman.

  She clenched her teeth against the cold. Boucher. It was too late for her to get revenge for the Queensman’s double-cross back on Elysion. But she still didn’t know how the woman was infected by her power. She also didn’t know how Boucher had found her. The Thanatos had kept a relatively low profile since escaping La Terre months ago and had avoided the NAU, ACG, and Queen’s Navy by staying on the edges of dark space, preying on the shadiest vessels and other pirates to subsist.

  She pushed her way through the snow. Boucher couldn’t be far behind. The environmental airlock would have opened by now. If the Queensman moved fast, she might catch up to Nyx. The frozen lake popped beneath her white, fur-lined boots. Once she got to the leave-emptied Thanatos peacefully orbiting Oglae, she’d call the crew back from their short furlough, and they’d set out again. Find a safer harbor to break and restock before using the information on the data card to track down Phoebe. She needed her crew in top condition to rescue her family from the coup.

  She squeezed her gloved fingers and glanced behind her; a shadow in the storm trudged ominously closer. A nightmare. Boucher had powered through the blowing snows and was catching up. A muffled shout blew away on the wind. She turned away and quickened her pace to the Pascal Fouqué docking dome.

  A thwap echoed across the frozen lake flat. Nyx’s skin buzzed and goosepimples raised across her arms under the layers of fabric keeping her warm in the icy wind as a bolt of energy passed near her. She gasped in the warm air of her breather and pivoted.

  Boucher wasn’t a silhouette anymore. She was a fully visible figure caked in snow, pointing a Queensman’s pulse weapon at Nyx. The scarred woman stalked closer. Nyx froze in place. White wisps rose off her body, her energy reaching for the Queensman’s glowing black clouds. If she could quickly twine herself into Boucher, she could control her, weaken her, even kill her, and get away. Nyx set her jaw and looked back over her shoulder. She could see the mound of snow signaling the rise of the docking dome, and her mask’s display indicated it was only forty-five meters away. She was so close.

  Nyx narrowed her eyes. A blue shadow lurked in the blowing snow near the docking dome, as if someone was walking towards her and Boucher. She shook her head. No one knew she was out on the ice-flats. If someone was coming, it was to back up Boucher. And it looked like another unknown infected… She would have to get rid of the Queensman quickly if she were going to survive.

  She turned back to the scarred woman who had stopped about twenty paces from her. Boucher knew enough not to get close. Nyx snorted. Not smart enough. She was already infected. Nyx reached her smoky white tendrils into the black thunder clouds surrounding Boucher, twining through, finding the little white flame at the bottom, burning brightly. Nyx took a step to her.

  “Stay where you are,” Boucher warned. Her mask transmitted a comm signal to Nyx’s.

  She tilted her head and took another step forward. Whoever had given this Queensman her orders would want Nyx alive. Boucher wouldn’t shoot her. Nyx raised an eyebrow. Boucher may shoot at her, though. “Why are you following me?”

  “Contain and capture.” She shrugged and placed two
fingers to her heart in a religious salute to the Seven Stars. “Orders. I’m sorry.”

  “I see you actually believe I’m one of the Seven.”

  “I saw what you did on Elysion.”

  Nyx squeezed her tendrils around the white flame engulfed in Boucher’s black glow, slowly extinguishing it. The Queensman’s shoulders sank a little. “How did you manage to infect yourself?” Nyx had questions before she killed the woman.

  Boucher pursed her brow, the scar creasing on her cheek. “Infect? I wouldn’t say that. It’s not a curse. It’s a blessing. The blessing of your blood. The blood of a god.”

  Nyx swallowed. She was a fanatic and delusional. People weren’t meant to live forever. “How?”

  “I was curious and touched it before Queensman Frizzel’s body was quarantined.” She grinned. “It was the most special and amazing thing I have ever done.” She waved her weapon. “I want to thank you for your gift.”

  Nyx held back the anger boiling in her gut. The blood she left on the Queensman she killed in the Underground fiasco hadn’t dried fast enough. How many others had touched it? How many others were self-infected?

  “Don’t worry. I didn’t let anyone else take the blessing.”

  “So… if that’s all you want, let me go.”

  Boucher’s face grew dark. “I can’t. Better a captive god than one roaming free and creating havoc.”

  Nyx’s strands of white gossamer pulled at Boucher’s thunderous energy as she quietly smothered the white flame connecting them. The scarred woman’s face grew pale, and her gun began to tremble. Only a few more moments and she would collapse, then Nyx would smother the flame completely, severing their tie and killing her.

  Boucher inhaled sharply, eyes widening. She flicked the barrel of her pulse pistol. “Stop.”

  “You’re starting to feel it. Aren’t you?” Nyx’s face was stone.

  “I’ll shoot,” she threatened.

  “No, you won’t. You need me alive.” Nyx crossed her arms, satisfied that at least she got to kill the woman slowly for her betrayal on Elysion.

  Boucher lifted her weapon and a short thwap resounded through the swishing of the blowing snow, followed by a great crack pealing through the air. Nyx fell backward as the reverberations from the pulse-pistol set on broad-range racked through her bones and shattered the mining-thinned ice below her.

  The Queensman lurched forward, grabbing for Nyx as the ice crumbled away.

  Nyx sank into the freezing black water below the ice. The shock of it took her breath, soaking through her parkas, filling her mask. She thrashed and yanked the plastic tech from her face. She was drowning, limbs numbing, mind crawling in the dark, icy water.

  She pulled at the blocks of ice around her, clawing to the surface. Her body slowed, muscles freezing. The nanobots Erebus used to wake up the AI-code in her blood wouldn’t be able to keep up with the repairs to the frostbite, and, eventually, even they would freeze. She would go to sleep in the water. She shuddered, beginning to feel warm as the air leaked from her nose, edges of her consciousness turning a brilliant crimson.

  Someone grabbed the back of her parka and dragged her up through the ice. A chunk slid across her face and cut her brow. It wouldn’t bleed long between the nanobots and the cold.

  Something inside her said she wasn’t breathing as someone put their mouth to hers and gave her air. The nanobots barely kept her alive. This person was breathing life into her. She sputtered black water out and retched what little food she had in her stomach with it.

  She blinked, bleary-eyed as the person who pulled her from the water gathered her in strong arms and lifted her. The silhouette washed in fiery blue waves. Her heart stopped as she tried to focus. He was infected by her, too.

  He jostled her into the crook of his arms as she coughed, throat raw from vomiting the icy water.

  She blinked hard again, attempting to stay conscious, gaping at his face. The square jaw punctuated with a broad, pierced nose—a diamond in one nostril and a silver hoop in the other. A dark, heavy brow with a dishwater blond widow’s peak slicked backwards. Glowering azure eyes covered with a warming breather. Malcam. Malcam had pulled her from the ice.

  He would want something from her. She shuddered, head lolling into darkness.

  11

  Nyx could barely feel her fingers and toes. Her head spun, consciousness in frozen fragments, as someone carried her quickly down the corridor of a shuttle. It looked like the Thanatos’ shuttle, but the blur of the tan panels as they sped by could have been any other of the same make and model. She moaned. Her black jumpsuit and green sweater were soaking wet and icy, and the layered parkas, drenched and frost covered. She shuddered with the cold.

  A door slid open, and the person cradling her set her on a soft bed.

  Fingers unzipped, pulled, and unbuttoned, peeling wet fabric from her body. The soaking white tank underneath clung to her in iced folds. She shivered hard in the warmth of the room. The ends of her hair melted in dripping icicles. Nothing was going to reheat her body.

  Her eyes fluttered open as the hulking figure of Malcam, surrounded in an electric blue miasma, sat her up. He pulled her tank and underwear off, then wrapped her in a warm, dry blanket.

  She heard shuffling next to the bed, then a weight settled next to her, hot and heavy. Arms circled her and pulled her close to their heat, and her uneven breath slowed, heartbeat steadying. Another blanket fell over the top of her and a hand rubbed hard up and down her arm.

  A lump rose in her throat. Kai. Kai had once held her and run his hands up her body. More playful than this. Less urgent. She didn’t understand why Malcam was so insistent. So forceful. She tried to turn, but the blanket wrapping her was tight, and her limbs were numb from cold.

  Something had happened. Her mind iced. She had fallen in water. A familiar sinking darkness overtaking her. She slid into an old memory, drowning as a child in warm dark water. She pushed against the blanket binding her, struggling for consciousness, struggling for breath. She wouldn’t die. Couldn’t die. The nanobots that Erebus programmed would keep her alive. But they wouldn’t allow damaged tissue to be a part of her system. Frostbite could be battled; however, she could still lose her toes, her feet. The nanobots would cut off resources to that part of her system if deemed irreparable. They would concentrate on what could be fixed. So, she had to move her toes to prove to the system they were viable.

  She fought to open her eyes.

  His voice was in her ear. Malcam’s voice. “Come on. Warm up. Don’t go to sleep yet.”

  A small gurgling moan erupted from her throat. She wanted to tell him she was trying.

  “That’s it. Stay awake,” he whispered. “Stay with me. Don’t leave me.”

  Nyx flexed her fingers with tiny motions, painfully, one by one. She hadn’t lost any appendages to frostbite. Malcam was keeping her warm, holding her close.

  “That’s it. Move. Just a little.” His voice was frantic. “Can you try moving your toes?”

  He quickly unwrapped her and pressed his warm, naked body against hers, and then folded them both in the blankets together. Nyx counted her breaths, too cold to blush. When did he strip? He pressed his fiery bare feet against her iced toes. The pain of the temperature difference seared through her legs. She inhaled sharply and shut her eyes tight. Her toes were hardened by the cold. She pushed them straight, but they wouldn’t move. She curled them in, and they still wouldn’t move.

  Malcam wrapped his legs around her legs, twining his feet with hers, the heat from his body pouring off.

  “Try. You have to try. Move,” he begged.

  Nyx’s cold-fogged mind dimmed.

  She gripped Malcam’s hand. He curled his fingers with hers, warming them painfully. She squeezed her toes down as hard as she could, pain ripping through her legs. Her toes clenched, gently scratching the tops of Malcam’s feet.

  She groaned.

  He pulled her closer, murmuring in relief, “You’re goi
ng to be fine.”

  Nyx’s mind pushed out of the cold fog. Malcam had saved her. What would he want in exchange for that?

  She rolled her head towards Malcam, their faces close, lips nearly touching. His breath was hot on her face. His bright blue eyes gleamed.

  “What do you want?” she croaked, her throat raw with the icy water she had inhaled.

  Malcam leaned on his elbow. “Want?”

  “You want something for doing this. Right?”

  He shook his head, bright blue eyes boring through her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “How did you even find me?” She stared at him.

  He set his jaw. “Tracker in your jacket.”

  Nyx shivered. Malcam gathered her to his hot chest. She pushed away. “Why? I told you I was going solo.”

  He shrugged, a strand of hair falling into his eyes. “I wanted to make sure you didn’t do anything stupid on your own. We are family now.”

  Electricity buzzed up Nyx’s spine. Family. Her crew was her family. Malcam knew she felt that way. But she didn’t trust him. He killed her father. He couldn’t be her family… He was her crew, though. He was her ExO.

  “You may be family, Malcam, but I still can’t trust you,” she whispered, her jaw tight and shoulders hard. The memory of what he did threatened to bring tears to her eyes, but she shuddered with cold and squeezed the impulse away. “You killed my father. How am I supposed to forgive that?”

  He looked away from her, still clutching her in his warm arms, heating her cold body. “It’s always going to come down to that, isn’t it?”

  “Why wouldn’t it?” Nyx hissed. “You killed my father. Kai killed maman. The two men I grew up with betrayed me. What do I do with that?”