Erebus Dawning: A Space Opera Adventure (Seven Stars Saga Book 1)

by AJ Super

  It was quiet.

  Not just quiet, but altogether silent. All the shooting had stopped. The Queensmen had figured out her group wasn’t firing back. It was time to take the bomb and run. Nyx gripped the tied and battened rifle and grimaced. This was going to hurt.

  Red turned to Kai, glancing at Nyx. “They’re advancing.”

  That at least meant the Queensmen were closer together, not under cover and spaced far away from each other. The small bomb’s radius should be large enough to catch them if they were in a tighter group. Now or never. The bomb was heavy enough that she wouldn’t be able to toss it far. She would need to be right in the middle of the white-and-gold-caped soldiers. Soldiers who would start firing as soon as they saw her.

  She dug her feet into the ground. And pushed.

  She sprinted out of the cover of the crates and towards the knot of Queensmen advancing down the narrow ramp.

  The woman she winged stood at the head of the four in the path. She held a pistol in one hand, her other arm close to her body, and aimed. Nyx dodged back and forth. The other Queensmen behind the wounded woman raised their weapons, trying to resolve a shot on Nyx zigzagging up the short walkway.

  Nyx’s breath came hot and fast. The white tendrils boiled off her fingertips. She could make it.

  A shot rang.

  Something zipped by her head.

  The gun in the Queensman’s hand wobbled. The woman’s eyes widened. Nyx charged forward, the world focusing on a small point three-meters in front of her. If she could get there, she could toss the gun-bomb and run back to the crates for cover. The white shoes of the bullet-winged Queensman stood in the spot, shining cleanly. Nyx’s gaze centered on the neatly pressed legs of the white uniform dribbled with brilliant red blood. Her eyes followed the trail of blood to the woman’s shoulder. Her face blurred. She was just another soldier holding a gun, hand shaking as Nyx barreled towards her. The Queensman pulled the trigger again between breaths, her companions fighting to get a shot with her standing in the line of sight.

  Three shots rang.

  Searing pain for a brief moment in her shoulder and thigh pushed her back a step. She sprinted forward, stutter-stepping as her left leg gave out.

  Nyx lifted the gun-bomb and pulled the trigger. Right shoulder hitching, she swung it through the air at the Queensman’s severely coiffed head, knocking the woman to the ground. The woman crumbled in a pile of white and gold, her pistol skittering to the corner of the dock.

  The soldiers behind the woman scattered, leaves in the wind.

  Nyx turned to run, counting down. “Cinq.” She stumbled, put a hand to her left thigh and found blood oozing from a gunshot. She looked at her shoulder. Crimson flowed down her arm. She didn’t feel any pain, and the bleeding was already beginning to stem, but her leg was still limp. She eyed the bomb on top of the struggling Queensman.

  “Quatre.”

  She pulled her leg after her, down the ramp. The Queensman tossed the gun-bomb off her and lunged for Nyx, snagging her ankle. She fell to her knees and scrambled to the side of the walk. The Queensman clawed her way to Nyx, pulling at her gunshot leg. Nyx cowered behind a narrow recycler barrel. She kicked at the Queensman’s white gloved hands scratching up her black jumpsuit.

  “Deux,” Nyx muttered.

  The Queensman pulled herself up to face Nyx, fingers scrabbling at Nyx’s throat. She pushed the woman away, digging her thumb into the woman’s wounded shoulder. The woman screamed and gripped tighter. Nyx gasped for air as the Queensman crushed her windpipe. She wrenched the white-uniformed woman’s fingers away from her neck, croaking, “Zéro.”

  An explosion rocketed through the berth. A piece of silver gun metal crashed through the edge of the barrel and sank into the Queensman’s temple. Blood blossomed around the embedded shrapnel, and the soldier’s hands loosened from Nyx’s throat. She toppled from Nyx.

  Red and Elizabet ran up the walkway, guns ready, and began searching for the other three Queensmen.

  Nyx sat up and gulped for air. She nodded the two women by and sank back.

  Malcam stood among the carnage. “Guess we’re the last ones standing.” Red looked at her empty weapon and tossed it aside. Nyx rose from behind the recycler barrel. The queen sent these soldiers on a suicide mission. Malcam was right. Blood was blood.

  Kai motioned imperceptibly to Elizabet as he picked a pistol off the body of a Queensman. Betty raised a black pistol in both hands and put it against Malcam’s head. Red lurched forward, and Kai stepped in front of her, a Queensman’s white pistol in his hand.

  Malcam turned into the gun barrel and pressed his sandy-blond widow’s peak into it. “Go on. Do it. See if I die. Nyxie broke death.” He smirked and pounded where he’d been shot in the chest and healed. “I’ll heal right up. Then I’ll happily gut you.”

  Nyx swallowed the rock in her throat. He had come to the same conclusions she had. But she remembered the headshot that killed her maman as if it happened yesterday. Her maman had the same healing powers, but still died when the back of her skull was blown off. “Malcam. You were there when Kai shot maman. Right?”

  He tilted his head, bright blue eyes searing, forehead pressed to the barrel of Betty’s pistol. “What does that…?” he snapped.

  “She was…” Nyx stepped towards the defiant man. She had broken death, but the tendrils eased off of her and twined with his fiery blue waves easily. “Like me. And I made you like me. We can heal. But… don’t make Betty shoot you in the head. You won’t come back from that.”

  Malcam eased away from the gun, eyes round. “Fine. Fine. What is it you want exactly?”

  “The Medusa,” Kai hissed.

  Malcam put his hands up and nodded to Betty. “She’ll shoot me if I don’t give her to you, huh?”

  Elizabet grinned and raised the pistol slightly. “In the head, apparently.”

  Matthews walked up the smoky ramp, eyes glazed. “In the head, and you’re dead.”

  Malcam grinned. “She’s yours. But you don’t need me to tell you there are armed men and women on the command deck you’ll have to convince.”

  Malcam’s people would never turn over the Medusa without an order from him. She kicked a loose Queensman’s pistol. She looked down at the white and gold energy weapon and toed it. The only way he would give up the Medusa, the only way to get them off the planet safe and free, would be if he were dying. She bent over and grabbed the energy weapon.

  She turned the energy pistol over in her hands, then pointed it at Malcam’s center mass and squeezed the trigger. “I think you’ll be doing the convincing.”

  The force of the energy blast knocked him back. He squelched and put his hands to his solar plexus as he stumbled.

  Instinctively, Betty shifted her aim to Nyx, then relaxed and dropped her pistol in a low arc and aimed back at the faltering Malcam. Falak jumped, and Matthews put his hands to his ears, shaking his head.

  Crimson burst darkly from Malcam’s mouth, and he sputtered a trail of blood down his navy blue tee-shirt and grey swinging jacket.

  Malcam cursed in pain, pulling his bloody hands away. “Why did you do that?”

  Nyx lifted an eyebrow, lips tight. Blood was still blood. She hated that Malcam was right, that he, like her, seemed to feel no pain after the initial shock of the wound and stood straight, showing signs of healing already. “You don’t feel the pain now, right? After the initial shock of it.” She fingered her white wisps through his blue eddies towards the flame connecting the two of them.

  Her tendrils entwined with Malcam’s aura, dancing like waves and crashing together as if they were crest and froth. She snaked her smoky energy around the white flame feeding his energy and squeezed, suffocating the flame.

  Malcam doubled over his shot gut, groaning.

  She eased off the white flame, shiver running down her spine. This was her power. The power to control someone’s life.

  He panted, forehead sweating.

  Nyx motio
ned to Elizabet to take her gun off Malcam. Betty shook her head, but did as she was ordered, backing away.

  “Nyx, don’t,” Matthews warned, sitting on his haunches, rocking back and forth. “You’ll turn into her. All over again. You’ll be Nue. You’ll be worse than Nue.”

  She tipped her head and rolled her burning eyes to Matthews. “Stay out of my way.” She walked to Malcam and bent next to the prone man. “I control what you have. It’s my blood in you. It’s mine. You’re feeling pain now because I want you to. And you’re not going to heal unless I want it to happen. So, if you’re thinking of double-crossing us, or not cooperating, you’ll die. Slowly. Painfully. I’ll pull the life right from your body,” Nyx threatened, damping down the white flame, letting the pain seep into Malcam’s torso where the energy blast had shattered his internal organs.

  Malcam gurgled. “Make it stop.”

  Nyx relaxed her grip on the white flame feeding Malcam’s blue miasma. Her code, her blood, was ingrained in Malcam. She could feel it beating, breathing, vibrant white just under his electric blue vapors. She was tied to him now, and the closer she was to him the more connected she felt.

  It was electric, the feeling of power. She could control his life, his pain. All she had to do was manipulate the tendrils of light surrounding him and control the white flame connecting them. A lump welled up in her throat. The flesh on her arms prickled.

  It was the same with Kai. His crimson fires were fed by the same beating, breathing whorls of white incandescence. She had shared something with these men in her rage and sadness that day Malcam killed Kai, and all because Erebus had begun a process of waking the code in her blood. Nyx didn’t know if she should be angry or sad. Now these men would suffer excruciatingly long lives, as would anyone else who came in contact with her blood. It was a weapon, an infection. Something to be feared.

  Just like her.

  Her maman had cut her hand and brandished it as a weapon in front of the queen. The queen had feared the blood. The queen had feared her maman.

  If it was code inside Nyx, and it could control life energy, what could it do to the Star of Phoebe, to the queen? To Erebus? To the other AI?

  Whatever Nyx was now, she wasn’t human. She was something far worse.

  30

  “Nyx?” Kai pulled at Nyx’s arm, struggling to get her attention. “We have to go. The streets are starting to fill, and this place is a mess. We can’t get caught here.”

  Falak put plastic restraints on a limp Malcam. Malcam’s wound barely oozed as it began to heal. Betty poked Red with a white and gold pistol she had found on one of the dead Queensmen as she cajoled the copper-haired woman into wrapping her wrists with plastic ties from Falak’s stash. In the middle of the docking ramp, Matthews sat on an overturned recycler barrel and muttered to himself.

  Nyx pulled her arm away from Kai. She had held Malcam’s life in the cresting waves of light. She needed to know what she was and what that meant.

  The Medusa didn’t have those answers; the Thanatos didn’t either. Erebus and Matthews were incomplete at best with their answers. And the Star of Phoebe, well, Nyx couldn’t get answers from her without putting Erebus in danger. She needed to find another Star.

  She grimaced. It was a longshot, but it couldn’t be a cosmic joke that Crius had the same name as one of the Seven. Not to mention they had hinted at knowing a lot about the queen and even about Erebus lingering in the camera system in the jail cells.

  “I can’t go yet,” Nyx whispered.

  “What?” Kai grabbed her shoulders. “What are you talking about?”

  “I have to find Crius.” Nyx paused. “I need to know what I am.”

  “What are you talking about? You’re Nyx Marcus, daughter of Xaoc and Nue.” Kai said, adding with firm resolve, “And you’re going to be my wife.”

  “Daughter of Nue.” Nyx looked at her alabaster hand and smoothed the thin gold ring with her thumb. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  Kai shook his head, brown-black hair tumbling into his eyes. “She was a great lady, but she didn’t have superpowers. And whatever you’re going through, we can figure it out.”

  “She was a Star.” She swallowed hard. “If she was a Star, what am I? Am I the daughter of a God? An AI? Am I still human?”

  Kai put his hands over her cheeks. “You’re Nyx. Your mother wasn’t a god. She couldn’t be. None of these things, these AIs, are gods. She had a baby. AI doesn’t have children. She was a human being. That makes you human.”

  “But what if this AI is different? What if it’s coded in the DNA? What if what makes me human, also makes me AI?”

  “Not possible. That technology doesn’t exist.”

  “But what if it does? Right here in front of you? And what if what’s in my blood makes me infectious? Makes me a plague? What then?”

  “You’re still you.” He smoothed her cropped hair back.

  Nyx shoved off Kai’s hands. The gold ring snugged warm on her finger. Darkness swam through her vision. She closed her eyes, which burned with tears. Kai’s image seared through her lids. “I’m not, though. And I can’t trust anything around me.”

  He’d lied to her. He let her believe someone else killed her maman. For all these years. She took in a shuddering breath. She couldn’t trust anything he said. Not now. He didn’t know. He couldn’t know, and if he did, he just wanted things to stay the same. They weren’t the same. Not anymore. Nyx fingered the gold ring on her left hand again.

  “That’s not true. Trust me. I’m here. I’ve always been here,” Kai begged.

  “The world is unfolding. I need it to unfold without anyone else.” She slowly pulled the ring past her first knuckle.

  Kai looked down at her hands. “What are you doing?” he choked.

  She grabbed his clenched hand and unrolled his fingers. She set the gold ring in his palm.

  “Why?” he muttered.

  Tears split her eyes open. She looked up at Kai. “Not now,” she said. “Maybe not ever.” There was no way she could trust him right now. The sobs pulled at her chest, and her back tensed as she held them in.

  “I’m not leaving you behind.” Kai gripped the ring.

  “I’m not right. I’m a danger. Even with me not knowing what I am, there’s still the queen. She’ll keep looking for me now that she has Erebus. You can’t have someone like me on your crew. You need to get the Medusa out of here.” Nyx squared her shoulders. “There are people who depend on you.”

  “What about the Thanatos?” Kai hissed. “I’m captain of her, too.”

  “Technically, I’m captain of her,” Matthews piped in.

  Kai pointed to Matthews, “You’re going to let the crazy man captain the Thanatos?”

  Nyx bowed her head. “No. When I get her back, I’ll take her, if Erebus and the crew let me.”

  “So, this is another mutiny?” Kai asked.

  “This is life. Moving on.” Nyx sighed. “You’ll get the ship you were meant to have. And I’ll have my sister and the ship she is downloaded on.”

  “Your sister? Erebus is AI. You’re human. You are not like her!”

  Nyx turned down the walk.

  Kai grabbed her wrist. He garbled, umber eyes watery, “Keep this.” He held up the ring. “Please. For someday. For maybe.” He put it in her hand.

  Nyx smiled weakly. She didn’t know if she could forgive him. She stared at the gold circle in her hand. There was always a chance. She wanted there to be a chance. He was her only family, and he had lied. The truth of it lit inside her like a red-hot iron. “I can’t.” She pulled her wrist.

  Kai’s eyes cemented. His grip tightened.

  Nyx pulled again. “Let me go, Kai.”

  “No. You’re going to come back to the Medusa with us. As ordered.” His voice was hard.

  Nyx clamped her jaw down and narrowed her eyes. “Please don’t make me do this.”

  Kai nodded to Falak and Elizabet, securing Red and Malcam at the gang-way of
the shuttle with zip-ties. The engineer and the markswoman exchanged glances and Betty trudged towards Kai and Nyx, leaving Falak with an energy weapon pointed at the bound duo.

  “I’m sorry about this.” She reached into Kai’s blazing crimson inferno and grabbed the white flame with her tendrils and crushed it.

  Kai’s eyes rolled back, showing their whites, and his head lolled. His limbs went limp, and he tumbled to the ground, fingers trailing from Nyx’s wrist.

  Betty trotted up to the fallen Kai and put two fingers to his neck.

  Nyx released the white flame, cradling it with her smoky tendrils until it brightened again. His red fires glowed around his crumpled body, and the underlying white flame burned softly. He was alive.

  “Take him,” Nyx whispered. “I’m leaving.”

  Betty glanced at Nyx warily. She picked Kai up off the ground, draping his arm around her neck and dragging his feet behind her.

  Nyx nodded to Falak to board the shuttle, Red and Malcam marching in front of him.

  She put a hand on Matthews’ shoulder. “I’ll track you down when this is over. You can stay on the Thanatos with me.”

  Matthews grimaced. “Don’t be too much like your mother. She may have liked to save things she couldn’t, but in the process, she toyed with people. Used them as pieces on a board of her making, and it backfired.”

  Nyx pursed her lips. “I’ll try.”

  Matthews backed up the gangplank. “You’re determined to do this alone?”

  She looked around the dock. “I’m sure I have family here. Crius is in town. I just have to find them.”

  His hazel eyes were wet, and he looked down at the ring in her hand. “I hope you’re right. And that answers fly to you in the wind.”

  She held out her hand, gold ring shining in her palm, and a lump in her throat strangled her words. “Would you give this to him when he wakes up?” she croaked.

  Matthews crumpled his forehead. “Are you sure he’ll want it?”