by Jacob Holo
Throne of the Dead
Jacob Holo
Copyright © 2015 Jacob Holo
All rights reserved.
Cover Art by Adam Burn
Cover Design by H. P. Holo
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The Seraphim Revival
Bane of the Dead
Throne of the Dead
Disciple of the Dead
Also by Jacob Holo
The Dragons of Jupiter
Time Reavers
Dedication
To Ben. For saying “why not?”
In the far future, the people of Earth have reached the stars and found they are far from alone, but not in the way they expected.
The galaxy teems with countless human civilizations, and the two greatest are the Aktenai and the Grendeni.
Betrayed five years ago, the Aktenai and their allies from Earth now fight a bitter war against the Outcasts, led by the ancient and treacherous intellects of the Original Eleven.
Table of Contents
Also by Jacob Holo
Dedication
Chapter 1: Broken Warrior
Chapter 2: Alliance
Chapter 3: Empath
Chapter 4: Debt
Chapter 5: Slayer and Empath
Chapter 6: Rewards of Service?
Chapter 7: Lies and Banes
Chapter 8: Rebirths
Chapter 9: Of Her Own Free Will
Chapter 10: Redemption and Death
Chapter 11: Death’s Invitation
Chapter 12: Genesis of the Eleven
Chapter 13: Parting Words
Chapter 14: Throne of the Twelfth
Chapter 15: To the Death
Chapter 16: Ascension
Chapter 17: Keeper of the Gates
Chapter 18: Path to Lunatic Ziggurat
Chapter 19: Apocalypse Cannon Mark II
Chapter 20: Lunatic Gate
Chapter 21: Lunatic Ziggurat
Chapter 22: Her Chosen Path
Chapter 23: The Second Long Hunt
About the Author
Chapter 1
Broken Warrior
The knife over her wrist gleamed. Luminous slats from a rising sun peeked through the room’s half-open blinds. The blade’s edge shone with the carefully crafted sharpness of surgical steel.
Quennin S’Kev held the knife in a firm hand, staring down at it like an accomplice to a crime. She toyed with the notion of finally using it, of finally drawing the blade across her wrist. Almost playfully, she placed the edge below her palm.
She shivered. The metal was cold against her naked skin.
Death held little fear over Quennin. As a seraph pilot, one of Aktenzek’s warrior elites, Quennin had confronted death more times than she could count. She had triumphed over impossible odds to make a true difference for her people. Her life had been filled with meaning and purpose.
But what she had now was not life. It was exile. Worse than death.
Why bother anymore? Why endure this pointless and repetitive shadow of an existence?
Quennin turned the blade over and drew its dull back across her wrist, trying to imagine what the pulse of crimson would look and feel like. She huffed out a frustrated breath, knowing she didn’t have the courage for this, at least not yet.
With a shake of her head, Quennin picked up the sheath and slid the knife in until it clicked. She tossed it onto an oval table next to her futon.
“Besides, I can’t kill myself today,” she sighed. “I have guests coming over, and that would just be rude.”
With a light press of her fingers, two dresser drawers opened smoothly.
“Now, where’s my swimsuit?”
She rummaged in the drawers, digging deep through the neatly folded articles. Near the bottom, her fingers brushed across a familiar texture, and she froze. It was her old pilot uniform, buried and forgotten with the armband scrunched in the corner. The soft feel of the storm-gray fabric sent a wave of nostalgia rushing through her.
Quennin pulled the armband out and gave it a sad, contemplative look. Against a silken green backdrop, the seal of the Aktenai resembled an inverse cursive i, the black shape encircling a white sphere. She traced its outline with a finger.
A symbol of all she had fought for.
An unwanted reminder of her past.
Quennin yanked the rest of the uniform out of the drawer, marched over to the room’s recycler, and tossed it in. The recycler let out a quiet threshing sound as it mulched the fabric.
She wiped her hands off. “Should have done that years ago.”
Quennin found her one-piece swimsuit in another drawer and dressed. With a mental flick over her neural link, she switched the room’s wall screen to a mirror and studied herself. She’d aged well in the five years since her combat injuries. No traces of white or gray marred her brilliantly red hair. Nor had slothfulness decayed her tall, elegant figure. She picked up a green cord off the dresser and bound her waist-length hair at the neck.
Quennin looked into her own emerald eyes. There was no look of defeat in them. Rather, they possessed a cold, silent determination. Yes, a part of her wanted to end her life, to rid herself of this useless existence, but only a small part. In a strange way, contemplating the suicide knife each morning strengthened her resolve to continue.
I will be of use to the Aktenai once again, she thought. I will see Seth again.
Seth…
Quennin bowed her head, the burning threat of tears rising in her eyes. She placed a hand over her face and sniffled sharply, pushing the thoughts away. She would not weep like some babe, without control over actions or emotions. She would not think of Seth today.
Quennin queried her neural link and requested the time. She’d dawdled too much this morning and quickly headed downstairs for breakfast. The Choir and the Sovereign of Aktenzek had not been unkind in their dismissal of her. They had granted her an estate on Earth: a fabulous beach house that overlooked the Pacific Ocean.
Lavish accommodations. Sandy beaches. Hot and sunny weather. Plenty of things to see and do.
But however pleasant, exile was still exile. Earth would never be her home.
She ordered breakfast from the autokitchen underneath a wide circular table. Her plate rose from the hole in the table’s center. She ate through half of the cold idri ball, which resembled a blueberry muffin in taste and texture, then stuffed two strips of Earther bacon into her mouth.
Quennin pulled a loose shirt over her swimsuit, rushed back upstairs, and slipped her sheathed suicide knife into a pocket. She patted the familiar shape, feeling comforted by its presence, then exited the house.
Her skin prickled from the mild morning chill. She followed a stone path down to the beach.
Zo Nezrii, pilot of Aktenzek and honor guard to its Sovereign, waved excitedly and rose from the sand. She stood a head shorter than Quennin, slight of build with long, black hair twisted together in a complex weave. Her braid bounced happily behind her as she jogged up the shallow sandy incline.
Quennin immediately noticed the swimsuit. It was very hard not to, since there was so little of it. “Scandalous” might have been a good word. It looked like an Earther style.
“Quennin! It’s been so long!” Zo hurried over and gave her a tight hug.
“Yeah.”
“You been well?”
Quennin broke away and held Zo at arm�
��s length. “As well as can be expected. Where’s Mezen?”
“Down by the dock. Someone—” Zo bobbed her head towards the dock. “—thought it would be fun to go for a boat ride. He has no interest in swimming but wants to ride in some rickety deathtrap made of wood! From trees! I swear, some of these Earthers are insane, and I think it’s contagious. We should just pitch Mezen overboard when we get out to sea.”
Quennin couldn’t help but smile. Zo hadn’t changed a bit.
The two women walked leisurely down the beach until they reached the dock. Craggy rock jutted up out of the ground, bisecting beach and ocean. Stairs cut up through the rock to the flattened top, where the wooden dock extended out further into the ocean. Quennin spotted Mezen walking back from several vessels. Some of them were so primitive they actually used wind to move.
Mezen, another member of the Sovereign’s honor guard, resembled a slab of muscle in storm-gray pants with a white shirt buttoned up to the neck. A crosshatch of scars peeked out near his throat and wrists: grim tokens from his imprisonment at the hands of the Grendeni decades ago. He had never spoken to Quennin about his scars and probably never would.
Zo cupped her hands around her mouth. “Are you done finding us a deathtrap to sink in?”
Mezen looked back at the boats for a few seconds, then turned to Zo and nodded.
“Well, we can all die out in the ocean later today!” she said. “We ladies are going for a swim!”
Mezen nodded again before heading back to the boats.
“Uhh.” Zo gave Mezen’s back a dismissive wave. “Come on. Let’s go.”
“Sure.”
They followed the shore towards the beach house. Wet sand squished between Quennin’s toes. The morning sun warmed her skin, and a cool salty breeze blew in over the waters.
“Are Kevik and Kiro stopping by?” Quennin asked.
“Yeah, the twins will be around later today.” Zo shielded her eyes and gazed across the ocean. A pair of seagulls flew overhead. “My, real planets are something, aren’t they?”
“If you say so.”
“Oh come on. You have beautiful weather, sandy beaches, and a real sun over your head. A real sun!”
“I can’t tell the difference.”
“And just look at this ocean! It goes on and on!”
“Same as ours.”
“Come on. Ours only look like they’re endless.”
Quennin grimaced at this.
A familiar shape peeked over the horizon. The fat off-white orb rose into the morning sky, appearing many times larger than Earth’s Moon.
It was Aktenzek, the fortress planet.
My rightful home, Quennin thought with a pang of bitterness.
The fortress planet’s surface was a random patchwork of pale armor plains and mountainous machines. Lights twinkled across its cold, airless shell, some of them marking passages into the planet’s subterranean labyrinths. Despite its obvious proximity and mass, the tides remained unaffected by the Earth’s artificial neighbor.
“My, would you look at that,” Zo breathed, grinning.
Quennin stared at her feet instead.
“Oh,” Zo said. “Sorry. I didn’t mean…”
“Don’t worry. I’m used to seeing it from here.”
“Try not to let it get you down, okay?”
“Mmmhmm.”
“You should be enjoying yourself more. Have you been socializing with the locals?”
“Not really.”
Not at all, to be honest, Quennin thought. The cultural rules were so different on Earth. So much hiding behind false words. She didn’t know where to begin, and even if she had, she still wouldn’t bother.
“It’s easy,” Zo said. “You remember Jared? The weird Earth Nation pilot that keeps hanging around my daughter?”
“Yeah, I remember him.”
“Well, he explained it to me once. The girl dresses nice and goes to something called a bar. A bunch of guys approach her, and she picks the one she wants.”
“I somehow doubt it’s that simple.”
“Come on. You should give it a try. It’s better than sitting at home feeling sorry for yourself.”
“Have you spoken to… to Seth recently?”
“No,” Zo said too quickly.
“You’re lying.”
“Seth is out of your reach. You need to move on.”
Zo’s words stung like a slap to the face.
“If you won’t tell me about Seth,” Quennin said, “then tell me how the war is going.”
Zo shook her head and let out a weary sigh. “You know, I’ve just spent six months on the front. This is the last thing I want to talk about.”
“Well, it’s something I want to talk about. All I get are watered-down news reports. I want to know how the war is really going.”
“It’s been tough,” Zo said, her voice growing quiet.
“Are we winning?”
“Hard to say.”
Quennin grabbed her shoulder. “Zo, are we winning the war?”
“Look, I shouldn’t talk about this, but…” Zo’s lips trembled on the edge of a word.
“Are things really that bad?”
Slowly, Zo nodded.
How was that even possible? How could Aktenzek lose when it had the seraphs and their pilots? Were the Dead Fleet and its Outcast allies really that powerful?
Quennin knew the basics of the war, but not much beyond that. Powerful enemies opposed Aktenzek, such as the Dead Fleet: thousands upon thousands of robotic warships controlled from the fortress planet Zu’Rashik. The Dead Fleet answered unswervingly to the Original Eleven: founders of the Aktenai people who were once their most revered leaders.
And then there were the Zekuut: Outcasts from the far side of the Galaxy, whom the Original Eleven had called to their banner. The Outcasts continued to send inexhaustible waves of ships and materiel against the increasingly stretched Alliance fleets.
“Zo, I can help. You know I can. Even if it’s menial work, just let me contribute. Let me help. I want to help!”
“I’m sorry,” Zo said.
A firm hand squeezed Quennin’s shoulder, startling her. She hadn’t heard Mezen approach.
“You should respect the wishes of the Sovereign,” he said in a quiet, gravelly voice. “He placed you on Earth for your own good. Please understand this even if you don’t know why.”
Quennin didn’t meet his gaze. She felt suddenly ashamed that she’d made her guest so uncomfortable. Zo and Mezen didn’t have to visit her, and they had. But a small flash of anger heated her cheeks. She’d been exiled for her own good? She didn’t believe that for a second.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Mezen said to Zo. “I want to get a few things for the deathtrap.”
“Sure thing, Mez.”
Mezen headed up the stone path and disappeared into the beach house.
Zo sat down on a wide, blue towel, and Quennin joined her.
“I’m sorry about that, Zo.”
“It’s not your fault. I know this isn’t easy on you. But Mezen is right.”
“It sure doesn’t seem like that.” Quennin buried her toes in the sand at the towel’s edge. “Can you at least tell me about Seth? You’ve spoken to him recently, haven’t you?”
“You know better than that. Please take my advice, and leave him in the past.”
“Yeah,” Quennin nodded, accepting her defeat. There would be other opportunities, but she’d lost this one. “Sorry about being a bad host.”
“It’s all right.”
“I know this isn’t much of an excuse, but I haven’t felt like myself lately.”
“Really? What’s been bothering you?”
“I haven’t been sleeping well.” Quennin lay back on the towel. She gazed up at the crisp blue sky. “I keep having these recurring nightmares.”
If Quennin had been watching, she would have noticed an immediate change in Zo, who was now listening very closely.
; “What kind of nightmares?”
Quennin smiled humorlessly. “They’re pretty weird. They happen in these surreal places. One is in the sky. The most perfect blue sky you could ever imagine, stretching up and down and to all sides, with magnificent white cities floating serenely through it all.”
“Sound nice. How’s it turn into a nightmare?”
“It’s strange. I feel so at peace in the beginning. And then this woman appears and forces me to the ground. Her face strikes me as familiar, but I’ve never seen her before, and her eyes are cold with these unusual silver irises. She’s so strong. I don’t even have a chance. She kills me, but I don’t wake up. I just lay there slumped against a wall, watching as she rips open my chest and starts tearing out my organs.”
“Eww…”
“Yeah.”
“You have that often?”
“Once or twice a week.”
“Hmm. Any others?”
There was another, more terrible dream, one filled with fire and brass and smoke and that same woman, but just thinking about it made Quennin’s heart race. She had no desire to talk about it.
“Just variations of the one,” she lied.
“A hobby. That’s what you need. Something to take your mind off things. Like Jared and those pointless Earther games of his.”
“I’ll pass on that, thanks.”
Zo patted her arm. “Only kidding. Come on. Let’s go for a swim.”
“Sure.”
The two women stood up and headed for the lapping waters.
Thunder cracked in a cloudless sky. The booming sound stunned her ears and resonated in her stomach.
A fast, sleek shape suddenly appeared. It streaked by overhead and crashed full force into the ocean. A gust of wind threw both women to the ground. Light distorted around them then snapped back to normal.
“A fold engine?” Quennin rose to her feet. She rubbed an abrasion on her elbow. “That was a ship folding in!”
“It couldn’t be,” Zo said. “Not this far into a gravity well. There shouldn’t be enough of it left to fill a spoon.”
“Then what did we just see? Did you get a good look at the ship? I didn’t recognize the type.”
