by A. K. DuBoff
A LIGHT IN THE DARK
DARK STARS TRILOGY: BOOK 2
A.K. DuBoff
A LIGHT IN THE DARK
Copyright © 2018 by A.K. DuBoff
All rights reserved. This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. No part of this eBook may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles, reviews or promotions.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Charlie Obert
Nick Rayl
Leo Roars
Publisher: BDL Press
Cover Copyright © 2017 A.K. DuBoff
Cover Illustration by Marko Stankovic
Copyright Registration Number: TXu002110161
First eBook Edition: 9 August 2018
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Key Terms, Cast, and Locations
Book One Recap
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Also by A.K. DuBoff
Author’s Notes
About the Author
KEY TERMS, CAST, AND LOCATIONS
Key Terms
Crystalline network – A series of special crystals scattered across the known worlds; unique properties allow the crystals to record the physical state of reality at set moments in time, enabling “resets” to past configurations
Darkness – An alien weapon spread throughout the crystalline network, which transforms and shrouds the infected worlds in shadow
Hegemony – The collection of settled worlds in known civilization
Master Archive – A central repository of all backup data from the crystalline network; seems to exist outside of normal space and time, accessed on the planet Crystallis
Reset – A roll back to a previous physical state of reality from a past moment in time; resets can be on a local scale within a specific crystal’s zone or on a universal scale
Dark Sentinel Team
Elle – Point-of-view character, wields the Valor sword artifact (strength focus); also exhibits traits from Spirit and Protector (magic and defense) focus areas
Kaiden – Spirit caster (magic focus) with Spirit circlet artifact, agriculture background; Elle’s romantic interest
Toran – Protector (defense focus) with Protector gauntlets artifact, engineering background
Maris – Spirit caster (magic focus) with restorative and defensive spell specialization
Ship Crew
Commander Alastair Colren – Captain of the Evangiel and Hegemony representative
Chief Taminoret (Tami) – Head engineer and maintenance tech
Locations
Evangiel – Hegemony ship that serves as a mobile base
Capital – Seat of the Hegemony government and records repository
Crystallis – Planet containing the Master Archive, the backup for all reset crystals
Erusan – Elle’s homeworld
Dunlore – Toran’s homeworld
Falstan II – Kaiden’s last world of residence
Yantu – Maris’ homeworld
THE STORY SO FAR…
Recap of Book 1, Crystalline Space
The unique crystalline network spanning the Hegemony’s worlds records physical states at set moments in time, allowing reality to be reset.
Elle Hartmut was a regular teenager living on the backwater world of Erusan, getting ready to attend college in the coming months. She had dreams of going to Tactical School and becoming a Space Ranger for the Hegemony, but a childhood injury derailed those aspirations.
One afternoon, while enjoying her last summer break, Elle and her friends discover a dark cloud in one of the crystals outside their hometown. Before they can investigate, the mayor calls a town meeting and initiates what should be a routine planet-scale reset.
Instead of returning to the reset point, Elle awakens on a spaceship. Her consciousness has been extracted and synced with a new, enhanced body. She also has new abilities, granting her amazing fighting skills and the ability to cast magic, though she’s not sure to what extent. Most crucially, she’s told that she holds the fate of known civilization in her hands.
An alien Darkness is corrupting the crystalline network, threatening to destroy the Hegemony as it transforms the infected worlds into twisted wastelands. The only hope of saving the Hegemony’s worlds is to seal the Master Archive, the backup record for the reset points of all known worlds.
Elle joins a team with Kaiden (a magic caster) and Toran (a fighter built like a tank). They begin searching for ancient artifacts that will allow access to the Master Archive so they can seal it. After retrieving the Protection artifact for Toran (a set of gauntlets), the team get a new member, Maris—another magic caster specializing in haste, protective, and restorative magic. The quartet then retrieves the Spirit artifact (a magic circlet) for Kaiden, and then the Valor artifact (a sword with magical blue flames along its blade) for Elle. Finally, they are ready to take on the last trials to seal the Master Archive.
The team enters the Archive and defeats a series of foes, using the skills they have mastered in their respective disciplines. In the process, they each receive visions related to the Darkness: an invasion force is coming.
Upon passing the tests, the team is greeted by an ethereal voice who confirms that their visions will guide them in the fight to come. The team is then given a small shard of a Master Crystal. With the Archive sealed, it will enable them to control a universal-scale reset. They now have a means to fight back against the Darkness.
THE STORY CONTINUES IN A LIGHT IN THE DARK…
1
Limbo was my least favorite state of being.
I drummed my fingers on the touchscreen surface of the conference table, not sure if I could sit idle in our lounge aboard the Evangiel for a moment longer.
The other members of my team seated around the table looked as anxious as I felt, their brows furrowed and lips drawn into scowls. In the week since we’d sealed the Master Archive, we’d hit dead end after dead end with our investigation into the Darkness’ origin. If we didn’t have a breakthrough soon, there wouldn’t be any worlds left to save.
“We can’t just sit around here doing nothing,” I insisted.
“We’ve been training and preparing,” Toran replied.
I shook my head. “But practicing isn’t action.”
Kaiden sighed in his seat next to me. “Elle, we’ve already been over this.”
I raised an eyebrow. “We agreed to give it a week, and it’s been a week.”
“As I recall, you set that timeframe, not the rest of us,” Toran countered. He crossed his muscular arms and fixed me in a level gaze.
“Yeah, it’s a terrible plan,” Maris agreed, flipping her dark hair behind her shoulder. “I say we keep waiting.”
“Look, if our visions in the Archive were even remotely accurate, then an alien invasion force could be coming any moment,” I continued. “Do we really want to sit around and wait for them to come to us, or are we going to do something?”
I turned to Kaiden for backup. I wasn’t sure if our budding romance was enough to buy me favor for my crazy idea, but if I could convince one of my three companions to go along with it, it’d be him.
He shifted in his seat. “I don’t like the ‘wait and see’ approach, either, but intentionally exposing ourselves to the Darkness is reckless.”
It wasn’t an outright ‘no’. I could work with that.
I smiled disarmingly. “We’ve already faced it once. This is what we were called to do.”
“No, we were brought together to seal the Master Archive—which we’ve done,” Maris said.
“You don’t need to come,” I told her. “But this is something I want to do, because I think it’s the right move. If there are any clues to be found about the Darkness and how to stop it, we’ll find them on the first world that was consumed.”
Kaiden sunk deeper into his seat. “It’s been more than three months since the Darkness appeared. There’s no telling what that world might be like by now, considering the transformations that have happened on other worlds in hours.”
“All the more reason for us to investigate,” I replied.
He examined me. “You won’t let this go, will you?”
I shook my head. “I’ll go alone, if that’s what it takes.”
Toran sighed. “I can’t endorse this plan, but I also dislike the idea of any one of us going off on our own.”
“So, you’ll come with me?” I asked.
The huge man nodded. “Very well.”
Kaiden threw up his arms. “All right.”
I looked to Maris. “What about you?”
She frowned. “This is a terrible idea.”
“So you’ve said.” I started to stand up. “All right, we’ll see you when we get back.”
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t go.” She folded her hands on the tabletop. “You’d all probably die without me.”
I smiled. “Let’s talk to the commander.”
The lines of reporting and leadership had been somewhat blurred since our arrival on the Hegemony’s ship, the Evangiel, two weeks prior. We were civilians, yet we’d been tasked to serve the government and military in an attempt to stop the Darkness slowly consuming our worlds. With the leadership having nowhere else to turn, we’d been given a degree of autonomy far outside standard operating procedures, and I knew it would ruin me for life.
We made our way to the top deck and proceeded to the nose of the vessel, where we were buzzed into Central Command through the main door.
Commander Alastair Colren rose from the lone seat at the center of the bridge when we entered. “Do you have news?” he asked.
The dynamic threw me off every time I talked with him. A hardened military commander in his fifties, and yet he was looking to me—a teenager from a backwater world—for a plan of action. My universe had been turned upside down in more ways than one when my consciousness was extracted and downloaded into my new, enhanced body bioprinted to my personal specifications.
“Not news, exactly, but a proposed plan,” I replied.
He motioned us toward the conference room adjacent to the bridge on the port side of the ship.
When we were seated around the table, I took a deep breath and spread my hands on the tabletop. “I know this is going to sound crazy, but I think we should go to the world that was first consumed by the Darkness.”
Colren’s eyes widened. “Why?”
“Well, we’ve only been to one world that was tainted, and that was when the Darkness was still in the process of spreading across the planet. With what we learned on Crystallis in the Archive, we now know the Darkness is some sort of tool for an alien invasion—transforming each planet to suit them. But we’ve never seen the finished product. If we go to one of the first worlds, we can see the result of the transformation, and maybe we can learn more about the enemy we’re facing.”
“While I don’t disagree with the reasoning, it’s a huge risk to go into that unknown environment,” the commander replied after a slight pause.
“You brought us here to help. Shouldn’t we be doing everything we can?” I pressed.
The commander shook his head. “Yes, but there are other factors.”
It didn’t take much to read between the lines. The Hegemony needed representatives from all three disciplines—Valor, Spirit, and Protection—to un-seal the Master Archive once the Darkness was defeated. Losing all of us would mean starting over. I hated to think of myself as replaceable, but the fact was that we were resources, not just people.
“What if two of us went to scout it?” Kaiden suggested, clearly thinking along the same lines as me.
“But the team—” Maris started to protest in a surprising turn from her earlier objections.
“I can’t in good conscience send all four of you into a dangerous, unknown environment on a whim,” Colren cut her off, firm.
I understood the commander’s reasoning, but I didn’t like it. We were stronger together, but I was desperate to have any forward progress, even if it meant only half of us got to go. “That might be a good compromise.”
“Magic casting would be a good complement to Elle’s skills,” Kaiden continued. “Plus, we already have two Spirit casters, so that minimizes the risks.”
Maris eyed the two of us. “Yeah, I’m sure that’s the only reason the two of you want to go alone together.”
My cheeks flushed in spite of myself. “This is about what’s best for the mission.”
“Sure,” she muttered.
I couldn’t tell if her reaction was coming from a place of envy about our relationship or just her incessant need to be contrary. Either way, I figured it was better to ignore her.
Colren steepled his fingers while he sat in thought. “Very well. That’s a reasonable course of action,” he agreed.
“Where is the first world, anyway?” Kaiden asked.
“The first planet touched by the Darkness was Windau,” the commander replied, seemingly unfazed by the other comments. “It’s one of the outer colony worlds—fewer than ten thousand residents.”
I straightened in my seat. “How long did it take before the Hegemony realized what had happened to the world?”
“That was before my involvement in the matter,” Colren stated. “As I understand it, several days passed. There was a report of a cloud in one of the crystals, and then it wasn’t until a supply freighter arrived three days later that anyone outside realized the seriousness of the issue. The world was already fully shrouded in the Darkness.”
“I guess it’s time we find out what’s happened on the surface in the three months since then,” I said.
He inclined his head. “I was hesitant to suggest it myself, given the dangers, but an investigation does seem like the best course of action at present.”
“And what about the alien ships?” Toran asked. “Can we help prepare?”
The commander folded his hands on the tabletop. “The accounts of your visions are everything we need at this time. The admiralty has already begun planning.”
“The aliens are close. I know it,” Toran murmured.
I shared his concerns about a potential invasion. However,
as much as I wanted to prepare, we had no idea what timeline may have been attached to our visions. Beyond that, we didn’t have a way to fight the aliens unless we got more information related to the Darkness. Our new recon mission was the best bet for both countering the Darkness and fighting whoever was behind it.
“We’ll be ready,” I tried to assure Toran, despite my own doubts.
His eyes revealed that he didn’t believe the assertion, either, but he nodded.
“I’ll make the jump arrangements to Windau,” the commander said, rising from the table. “As always, thank you for the proactive attitude. I hate that all of our moves are now acts of last-resort, but I’m willing to try anything.”
“We’re committed to the cause,” I replied.
He nodded absently then departed the conference room.
Kaiden sighed. “I already regret this.”
Toran sat in silence for several moments. “It still unnerves me every time to see someone in Colren’s position unsure about what to do.”
“Can you imagine what it was like for him before we got here?” I asked. “He was in a command of a group who were sent down to planets and killed without warning. I don’t blame him for wanting people to volunteer rather than order anyone to go into a dangerous situation.”
“That’s the job of a commander—to make those tough calls,” Kaiden said.
“But we’re not soldiers; we’re private citizens. The most he can do is request we do something, unless it’s an order related to him captaining this ship. I think we’ll need to keep driving the investigation forward ourselves.”
“It’d be great if some of that involved worlds not already overtaken by the Darkness,” Maris interjected.
“Don’t count on it. If Kaiden’s and my upcoming field trip doesn’t kill us, that means we’ll have a lot more worlds we can explore,” I replied.
Toran paled. “That means we could visit our homeworlds.”
