Shadow Call

by Michael Miller

  Qole would hate this plan. It would strike her as a betrayal, but maybe I could convince her otherwise. Just as she hadn’t belonged on Luvos, I didn’t entirely belong on Alaxak, and she knew it. Perhaps I could serve the purpose I was meant to fulfill, but without truly leaving her. Help both her and my family, something that I’d grown to think was impossible.

  It still might be impossible. I kneeled, head bowed, feeling slightly unsteady. My next words were careful; I knew I stood on a knife’s edge, and I wanted them to listen, to understand the fullness of everything I felt. “Are we not meant to be the power that protects the weak? Let me do that for you. I will serve Dracorva, and gladly, if it is for that.”

  I had to protect Qole, Arjan, and Telu, and even Eton and Basra, from becoming casualties of my family designs. And yet, as it was now, I was largely useless to them. What if, this way, I could not only protect them but be of much greater use to many more people?

  Solara choked back a sob. “Oh, just say you’ll come back to us, Nev. We all miss you. We need to be a family.” She held out her arms to all of us.

  I had spent most of my life preaching to anyone who would listen about my family, but after my time on the Kaitan, that word had evolved. I’d imagined, at times, how different things would be if I had experienced such closeness as I saw between the crew. Now I stood to see Mother walking to me, arms outstretched.

  A dam I hadn’t known existed burst, flooding me with relief. Tears filled my eyes as I found myself enfolded in her embrace, and even Father, as reserved as anyone I’d known, reached out to squeeze my shoulder. His grip was strong, unshakable.

  It lasted only a moment, but as we pulled away, I felt so much lighter I wanted to laugh. The Bladeguard, kneeling beside us in reverence at our private moment, stood as my parents stepped back.

  The blades at his hips whispered out as he did so. By the time I registered it, it was too late. They stabbed neatly upward—straight through the chests of Thelarus and Ysandrei Dracorte.

  Their gasps lingered in my ears as they crumpled. With a wet sound, he withdrew them in almost the same instant.

  A complete lack of understanding hit me, a thousand conflicting thoughts exploding like a dying ship. My parents sagged forward and I tried to catch them, only managing to break their falls. Then my training sputtered to life and I lunged at the Bladeguard. Droplets of blood scattered as he flipped the blades around with whistling speed and handed them to me hilt first, which my reaching hands mindlessly accepted. I barely registered that they were my weapons.

  But he didn’t attack. He didn’t even unsheathe his own blade. He retreated, dodging around Solara and out through a door that had slid open behind the dais to reveal a hallway beyond. An emergency escape route for my family, ironically.

  I couldn’t even think of pursuing. Dropping to the ground by my parents, I gathered them to me. Breathe.

  I was managing; Father was not. His mouth was open, his eyes sightless as he lay on his back. Mother was crumpled like a shattered vase, blood pooling around her. Stasis. I needed stasis. Stop the blood loss. Freeze them, prevent their tissue from dying. They could be revived. There had to be help, the best medical care in the galaxy, right here, on this ship. Solara wasn’t moving; she must have been in shock. Hopeless as it was, I started to rise, to run for the door, to scream for help, when I heard the faintest sound from the queen.

  “Nev…”

  I clawed at her, turning her over, putting pressure on the wound. “Mother, I’m getting help.”

  Her mouth quirked in a smile, and she ignored what I said. Her lips quivered, and I could barely hear her as she formed the words “We love you. The sundering is coming, and your heart will save us.”

  Her breath caught, sighed out of her, then ceased.

  “Solara,” I cried, “help me!”

  But Solara backed away, steadily holding my disbelieving gaze until she turned and stepped through the doorway, after the assassin. Her own eyes were flat, devoid of anything other than assessment. “Why?”

  She didn’t look back, and the door slid shut.

  Distantly, I heard explosions rocking the ship. But I hardly noticed as I kneeled on the bloody throne room floor, alone, with my mother’s head in my lap.

  “Firing back up,” I gasped, when a dozen streaks of white light flared and headed for the Luvos Sunrise. Someone had killed Nev’s parents, the Dracorte king and queen, and maybe even his sister, and now they were finishing the job by blowing up the entire ship. I only knew that Nev was still alive because I could hear him breathing.

  I knew, because I’d heard everything through the comm in his wrist feed, which Telu had hacked to transmit back to the Kaitan. The Kaitan was in orbit around Alaxak, hovering with our engines down and our signals muted from casual observers.

  He wouldn’t be breathing for long if those missiles hit their mark.

  So many. Never mind the mysterious blasts that had already rocked the royal cruiser from within; this was a rain of death even for a ship that size, especially since their energy shields weren’t up. “Why aren’t they defending themselves?”

  “Their whole central mainframe is on lockdown,” Telu said. “Somebody hacked the whole system, crippled it. And those initial explosions probably didn’t help—they likely targeted the shield generators since I’m not getting even the slightest response there.”

  I threw us into full throttle before I entirely knew what I was doing. But it was the only thing I could do.

  “Um, should we be going toward the fiery inferno?” Eton’s voice came over the comm from the weapons turret.

  Before I could say anything, Arjan bounded onto the bridge behind me. “What are you doing, Qole?”

  “I have to,” I said, without looking at him. “I have to try.”

  “He’s as good as dead!” My brother came alongside me and threw his hands at the viewport, where the Dracorte entourage was now pulling away, leaving blooms of fire in the blackness where the Luvos Sunrise was foundering.

  “We don’t know that,” I said. I couldn’t hear Nev anymore, but the roar of the Kaitan’s engines might have been masking any sound he was making. “Telu, patch me through to Nev so he’ll hear me, if he can.”

  “Captain,” Basra said, in the brief silence that followed while Telu worked, “I’m getting some very…disturbing…ripples across all my feeds. Something big is happening, and I don’t mean here.”

  If it was disturbing to Basra, it had to be cataclysmic. But right now, I couldn’t deal with anything except the giant exploding ship in front of us. “Later. Telu?”

  “Done!”

  “Nev?” I asked hesitantly, unable to imagine what I would do if only more silence answered me.

  “Hi, Qole.” His voice came back, broken, dazed, and empty. He must have just been sitting quietly, not moving.

  My relief didn’t last long. “What are you doing?” I snapped. “Ancestors, you need to go!”

  “My parents…Solara—”

  “I know, but tell me you’re running for an escape pod.”

  I heard a rustling on the other end. He was shifting now, at least. “I can feel the explosions. They’re shaking the entire ship. I don’t think I’ll make it. I don’t even know if—”

  “Nevarian Dracorte,” I practically shouted. “You get off your ass and run faster than you ever have, now. That is an order from your captain.”

  “Qole, I—”

  “So help me, Nev,” I hissed, “I am flying to help you, and if you aren’t ready when I get there, then we’re probably all dead.” I was playing dirty, but I couldn’t have cared less.

  He sucked his breath in on the other end. “Okay. I’m going.”

  The fire grew in the viewport. Ripples of it snaked and curled across the darkness, waving like tentacles, a monster of flame entwining the Luvos
Sunrise.

  “What do you expect we’ll be able to do against that?” Eton hollered.

  “I’m not sure,” I said through gritted teeth. “Just be ready, all of you.”

  “Qole.” Arjan was the one who sounded dazed now. “You’ll risk us all, for him?”

  “We did the same for you. It’s all about how you die, right?” I said with a short laugh. “Anyway, I’m not planning on dying.” I closed my eyes and inhaled. When I opened them, a film of darkness coated my vision. “Not yet.”

  Shadow. I could feel it humming in my veins, buzzing along my skin, filling my muscles, sharpening my sight. I hadn’t called forth this much of it since we had barely escaped Dracorva with our lives. I could feel even more, a lot more, packing the Kaitan’s containment hold like a held breath, waiting to come rushing out at my signal.

  “Nev, are you running?” I asked.

  “Fast…as…I…can,” he panted over the comm. I could hear the strain behind his words.

  “Do you need Telu to locate an exit?”

  “No, I—blasted hell.” A distant roar rumbled in the background behind his curse.

  “What?” I nearly screeched. I could see so much—individual tendrils of fire, small pieces of debris, and even dust dissipating into space from the Luvos Sunrise. I dodged everything coming at us, as if it were all moving in slow motion. But I couldn’t see what Nev was seeing, and it was enough to make me want to panic. “Telu, do you have eyes on him?”

  “No, Cap, I’m trying to get in, but the ship’s cameras are routed through the mainframe, and I can’t—”

  “I’m fine,” Nev gasped, his voice breaking through Telu’s response. “That hallway was…compromised. Changing routes.”

  We were close enough to the royal ship now to practically count the cracks through the viewport, to feel the heat on our faces. Craters marred the once-sleek surface, and gas and water from leaking lines, along with fire, were glittering like atmospheric clouds around it. It was a huge, burning planetoid. “Where are you headed?”

  He was running again. “Escape pods…fourteenth floor…sector E—”

  “Where is that? I don’t have the blasted schematics in front of me!”

  Good thing Nev knew his ships. “Port…stern…about midway…next to a huge vent. If it’s still there.”

  I rocketed the Kaitan around the starboard stern, headed for the port side. There, I saw a massive vent, and several huge round openings, sealed with retractable doors—launch tubes.

  “Almost…there,” Nev groaned.

  There was a hum that sounded like a door opening, and I didn’t wait to ask. “Are you in an escape pod?”

  “Closed and sealed. Buckling myself in.”

  Just then, a new shock wave of explosions began erupting along the hull of the Luvos Sunrise. Something must have triggered a chain reaction, because they weren’t stopping.

  “Nev, launch now!”

  There was a pause where I heard only his breathing. It lasted a mere second, but a lifetime could have passed. “It’s…it’s not working.”

  “All primary systems are down, but there should be a manual override,” I insisted.

  “I know, and it’s not launching.”

  “Telu?” I said, unable to keep the desperation out of my voice.

  “Been working on it for the last few minutes,” she muttered. Her fingers were flying along her various screens and infopads. “They tried to wipe the system. I can only get low-level responses, which would be enough if I could…Got it!”

  “Go, Nev, hit it!”

  There was a rush of air blasting into space from one of the launch tubes—the portal had opened. But…there was no escape pod. The wave of explosions was still headed our way, almost like a retracting ripple, closing in, constricting around us.

  “Why hasn’t it launched yet?” I shouted at no one in particular.

  “I don’t know!” Telu shouted back, her voice loud from beneath me and over the comm. “It should have!”

  “I think something physical is blocking it,” Nev said, breathing hard. “There was a grinding, then nothing.” He paused, and his silence was a weight on my chest, like I couldn’t speak, or breathe. “I think I’m stuck.”

  The fire was almost upon us, all around us. The Sunrise was nearly as bright as its namesake.

  “No…” I started.

  “Qole, this might be it. I just want to tell you—”

  “No!” I cried again. And then there wasn’t fire surrounding us. There was Shadow. Everything I could pull from the containment hold and direct at the Luvos Sunrise.

  Shadow was the fire’s opposite: where the flames were frenetic and brilliant orange, Shadow was liquid smooth and black. The only glow it had was a purplish cast with occasional bursts of white. In a sense, it was still like fighting fire with fire, since Shadow was just as deadly. No, even deadlier.

  More powerful.

  “Qole,” Nev tried again, “whatever happens, my—”

  “Sorry, I’m sort of busy.” My voice wasn’t harsh. More like it was coming from far away, somewhere outside my body. Maybe because a large part of my focus was outside my body, with something else—first in the containment hold, then pouring through the maglock and back out into space in a dense black mist.

  I raised my arm, and a wave of Shadow coiled in response. I threw it at the Sunrise, where it ate into the hull, then spread. The blackness carved out a half sphere bigger than the Kaitan around Nev’s escape pod, as easily as a hand scooping up fresh snow. Deadly though the substance was, I controlled it, directed it away from Nev and toward the collapsing inferno. It was just another energy shield, in a sense. One that devoured everything else. When the flames encountered my barrier, the darkness swallowed them. I tried not to think about what—or who—else it might be devouring in the ship.

  At the very least, it ate through whatever was trapping the escape pod and generated an immense amount of heat and pressure. The pod fired out of its launch tube like a missile.

  That was for the best, because I couldn’t hold the Shadow barrier any longer and the Luvos Sunrise took that opportunity to dissolve into its constituent parts, with even more fire and explosions than there had already been. Many chunks of metal and pieces of scrap rocketed outward like missiles, not just the escape pod.

  I tried to reach for the controls, but I froze when I saw my skin peeling back from my fingers, flaking away into the air and leaving only bone. I blinked, and my hand was back to normal.

  That split-second hesitation nearly cost us our lives. A sheet of metal plating whirled like a deadly saw blade straight for us, large enough to cleave the bridge from the ship. Eton unloaded a string of photon rockets into it, blasting it into smaller, but still-deadly chunks, while Arjan seized the controls and dove the Kaitan out of the way. Everyone was yelling curses at the same time.

  “I thought you didn’t want to die!” Arjan shouted at me, dodging a few more flying pieces of the Luvos Sunrise, which grew more scattered as he took us farther away. “You waiting for an invitation to your funeral or something?”

  “No, I—” I gasped, clenching my fingers into fists, not wanting to see them coming apart again. “I’m sorry. The Shadow—I was hallucinating.”

  Arjan’s eyes widened. “Are you still?”

  I shook myself and reached for the controls. “It doesn’t matter.”

  There was only brotherly concern in his voice now. “Of course it—”

  “Where’s Nev?” I interrupted, and Arjan reluctantly moved out of the way.

  Telu answered immediately, despite having just been swearing up a violent storm along with everyone else. “He isn’t responding. The comm in his wrist feed has gone dead. But the pod is still intact, from what I can see,” she added quickly.

  I ignored my heart as it
tried to skip several beats, pinching in my chest. There were a number of reasons his comm could have gone out. That didn’t mean anything for certain. But it did pose a problem. “How are we going to dock with him if we can’t communicate?”

  “Um.” She chuckled nervously. “Docking won’t be an issue, since the momentum of his pod fired him into the gravitational pull of Alaxak’s atmosphere. He’s, uh, in the process of landing.”

  “Do you mean crash-landing?”

  “Not necessarily,” she said, at the same time Eton said “Probably.”

  Telu scowled. “No, he’ll be fine if his parachute deploys. Even if he’s experiencing electrical and mechanical failure, it should still activate. As long as the chute mechanism took no direct damage, it should automatically sense the correct air pressure—”

  “That’s a whole lot of should and if,” Eton growled. “Let’s add another: he should survive if he still has oxygen and life support. Why isn’t he responding?”

  “Like I said, his comm is down.”

  “And why is his comm down?”

  “What, do you want him to be dead?” Telu cried.

  “Shut up!” I shouted, interrupting their argument. “Telu, direct me.”

  She rattled off Nev’s coordinates, which were changing rapidly by the second. I had to lay on all speed to catch up. The Kaitan shook around us under the strain, while the pod itself was already like a meteor, flame streaking behind it as it plummeted through the nighttime darkness of the Alaxan atmosphere. I kept pace alongside, well off to the side, to avoid getting in the way of the chute.

  If it deployed.

  “Come on, come on,” I muttered to myself, my eyes riveted to Nev’s slash of light across the glowing curve of the horizon. The flames abruptly sputtered out like a torch without fuel, and white streams took their place as the pod began to cut through the clouds. “Telu, when should the chute deploy?”

  “Um…” I could practically hear the rapid fire of her gaze as it shot along her screens. “If I pulled up the manual for the correct model, it should be…about…now.”