Magnitude: A Space Opera Adventure (Blackstar Command Book 2)

by A. C. Hadfield

  “Damn it, Marella, just tell me.”

  “Because I was ashamed! That’s why. I was ashamed that your father rejected me and left me to die. I was ashamed that I wasn’t good enough for him, that I represented a deep regret on his part and that he’d rather he hadn’t done what he did…”

  She turned away from Kai, her shoulders bobbing up and down as she sobbed into her hands. She collapsed to her cot, resting her elbows on her knees as she continued to cry.

  A wave of sorrow came over Kai, along with a sense of regret for pushing her so hard. He stepped closer and placed a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be so…”

  She turned to face him and shook her head. “It’s okay,” she said, wiping the tears from her face and gaining control of her emotions. “It’s actually a relief to get it off my chest, but I have something to tell you. You were told my real name was Marella Maio and that my pseudonym was Lexis Dray. Well, the former is a lie; that too is a pseudonym. You see, Kai, I’m none of those people. I’m not even a citizen of the Coalition, not originally.”

  Kai removed his hand and shifted back. The regret of pushing her too hard turned to anger that she had deceived him. He clenched his fists. “I’m tired of this. Who the hell are you?”

  “MY REAL NAME is Gilla Pallista. I was born on a Host world and was traded to a criminal family on Yarth when I was just a small girl.”

  Her words struck Kai like a bolt of lightning. “Yarth, as in the Battle of Yarth, the last place my father was known to have been with the CDF?”

  She nodded.

  Kai’s chest tightened, and he had no doubt she was telling the truth. Her eyes were still, the light fur on her arms likewise. And deep inside himself, he knew this to be true. He had read a report that postulated his father had died in combat during the Battle of Yarth. There was no way Marella, or Gilla, could have read that top-secret CDF report.

  His throat went dry, but he managed to croak out the words, “Tell me everything, from the beginning. How did you meet my father and what is he to you, really?”

  “Please, take a seat, and I promise, I’ll tell you everything I know. And for the sake of ease, keep calling me Marella. I’ve not gone by Gilla since your father and I met.”

  Kai and Marella both sat down and faced each other. The Lantesian took a few breaths to compose herself and began her story.

  “I was just a small girl when I was taken from my home. I barely remember it now, as I was sedated. My parents had died sometime before. I grew up in an orphanage on a Host planet far out by the boundaries of their space. Its name isn’t relevant. I was quickly sold to a trader and was transported to Yarth, where a wealthy Host crime lord bought me with over a hundred others.”

  “For what purpose?” Kai asked as he tried to relax in the chair despite the tense tale.

  Marella shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t really know. It could have been anything. Sex, slave labor, domestic labor. Back then, kids from broken homes were often sold for all kinds of reasons. Yarth is in the interstitial zone between the Coalition and Host governments and is somewhat independent, meaning there was no real government to speak of to enforce justice. The crime lords did what they wanted. Until the CDF realized that a segment of the Host army was using it as a base of operations and invaded.”

  As she spoke, her voice became calmer and quieter, almost as if she were at confession and didn’t want anyone else to hear. Kai watched her closely, but she didn’t show any obvious signs of deceit, which didn’t mean she wasn’t lying—up until now she had shown a skill for withholding the truth.

  “And when the CDF invaded, is that when you met my father?”

  “Yes. The family I was staying with, cousins of the crime lord, came under fire as the compound in which they lived had been reported to CDF intelligence as a target. Before I had arrived, the palatial home was used to house Host spies and army officers. The attack was brutal and short. Your father was leading the attack. I remember hiding from the bombs and the destruction.”

  “Were there many others in the palace at the time?” Kai asked, not because he wanted to know, but rather he could tell Marella needed a moment. Tears were welling up in her eyes and she took a few sips of water. After a few moments, she nodded and continued.

  “At the time of the attack, the family was hosting a dinner for the soldiers and spies. It was a celebration of some other battle the Host had won based on their intelligence. I remember how everyone seemed so happy. I was even smiling at the time, not truly understanding until much later what they were celebrating. They invited me to a room with other children, where we were fed properly for the first time since we had been taken there. I truly thought that things were changing, that I was going to be looked after.”

  “But you weren’t?”

  “No, when the attack happened, everyone ran for safety, leaving the other children and me to fend for ourselves. I knew of a hidden place. A place where one of the spies used to go to send secure information to his handlers. I only knew it as the ‘secret place’, as I used to play there sometimes when the family started getting aggressive. I led the other children there and we stayed inside for what seemed like hours while the fighting went on outside.”

  “Were there any survivors on the Host side?” Kai asked.

  “None that I saw. Perhaps your father’s squad managed to get some prisoners to interrogate… But I really wouldn’t know. When the door to the secret place opened, I thought we were going to be killed too. Your father was standing in the doorway as he aimed his rifle at us, the flashlight attachment shining right in my eyes.”

  Marella broke away for a moment, leaving Kai with the image of his father confronted by a group of Host kids. His stomach knotted as he waited to hear what happened next.

  A long pause stretched out and he was about to prompt her when Marella seemed to understand his concern from the expression on his face.

  “He didn’t shoot or harm us in any way, Kai. Your father saved us. There were six of us in total and he helped to take us to the Coalition ship, but there were more forces on Yarth than the Coalition had anticipated and the ship was destroyed. Soon, the place was overrun, leaving your father and me alone in a war zone. But he didn’t abandon me, Kai. He got me out of there and kept me alive until he could get passage off Yarth.”

  Kai’s chest throbbed with the pounding of his heart. He had inched to the edge of his seat and sweat pooled at his lower back. “What happened when you left?”

  “He took me on as his daughter as we hopped from one rogue trader ship to another until we were safely back in Coalition space. It was some time during this journey that your father came across the tetrahedron that sent him on his journey to discover more about the Navigators. Over the years, I helped him with research until I became old enough to look after myself. That’s when he and I split for some years. I only found him again much later after my stint on the great library ships. It was through our shared fascination with the Navigators that we developed a bond and it ultimately reunited us.”

  “I don’t understand why he would let you go if he had sacrificed his former life to look after you.” Kai couldn’t help but keep the bitterness out of his voice. It didn’t take a genius to work out that for many years while Kai had thought his father was dead or, at best, lost somewhere on a remote planet, that he was in fact fit and well and being a parent to someone else while Kai was barely surviving on Zarunda.

  “It is during the period he let me go I believe he met up with the Navigator queen and fathered you, Kai. When I met him again, he was desperate to get to the other side of the Veil. I agreed to help and it was our combined research that led us to Oberus. Before he left, however, he arranged for you to retrieve the tetrahedron via the shuttle. He couldn’t bring it to you himself, as he was being tracked by the shrain. They had picked up his trail shortly before we left for Oberus, so he tasked me with sending the shuttle.”

  “What if it ended up in someo
ne else’s hands? I had to fight pirates for it,” Kai said. “It’s a bit of a stretch that he would have left something so important to me in such a way.”

  “He had little choice, Kai. But you’ll need to question him further to fully understand his decisions. I couldn’t possibly speak for him. Besides, he knew Bandar was looking out for you on Zarunda. That’s why you two met each other that day. If you hadn’t gotten to the shuttle and retrieved the tetrahedron, Bandar would have. He was tracking it all the way after I made sure he knew about it.”

  Kai stood up, drained the glass of water and paced the room, running her story through his head, trying to find anything that could be used to contradict her account, but it all sounded plausible, and the timeline did match what he remembered growing up and what he had read in the CDF files. Not to mention what his mother had told him.

  That Marella had been somehow in on all this and had so far failed to volunteer this information only served to make his guts churn with a multitude of emotions—few of them positive.

  “To recap,” Kai said, turning to face her—his, what, adoptive sister? “My father kind of adopted you as his own after saving you from the Host on Yarth. The two of you then had some unspecified adventures while researching the Navigators only for him to drop you when he met a queen and fathered me. Later on, you met up again and helped him find the Blackstar, which he used to travel beyond the Veil. He then sent that back to me via whatever the hell that was on Oberus and entrusted this artifact to me because the shrain were hunting him?”

  “That’s a pretty accurate account,” Marella said. “I know it’s hard for you to believe, but the journals do back up what I’m telling you.”

  Kai’s temper got the better of him as he lurched forward and bellowed, “Then why the hell didn’t you give them to me earlier? Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?”

  Marella backed away from him and held out her hand palm up.

  Breathing heavily, Kai tried to calm himself as he took a step back.

  “How would you have reacted at the outset if I dropped all this on you?” she said, a pleading tone in her voice. “You had just realized that your father was alive and that you had access to a Navigator ship. And then the chaos of battle and all the trouble we’ve had to deal with here. When would have been a good time to tell you? I’ve had Brenna questioning me and giving me dirty looks. I’ve had to deal with the ship’s AI being a hindrance… I admit it, Kai, I’m not damned perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but your story isn’t the only one that needs resolving. You’re not the only one who wants to find your father and get home. You’re not the only one who has suffered. I was sold to slavers! And even when I thought I was free on Parsephus, I was conscripted into a criminal gang and used against my wishes. This is the first taste of freedom I’ve had for years, and it’s taken me a while to get used to that.”

  Marella sank to the cot and rested her head in her hands as she recovered from the outburst. Before Kai could say anything else, she reached to the desk for her terminal and tapped a few commands. Then, turning to face Kai, she said, “There, you have access to all the journals that I could find, including a password Kendal gave me to give to you when the time was right. You’ll find that your father corroborates everything I’ve said. Now if you don’t mind, I would like some peace and privacy.”

  She stared at him with a steel he hadn’t seen before. He checked his own terminal and noted that he did indeed have the journal files in his possession. He’d make it a priority to read his father’s words, but he had to first decide what to do about Marella.

  Even if everything she had said was true, it didn’t change the fact that she had lied to him and withheld information, regardless of the situations they had found themselves in.

  It hadn’t changed the fact that she had an ulterior motive to find his father and had engineered her way on to the Blackstar. Kai needed a crew that could trust each other completely and he still had doubts about her.

  “We’re not done,” Kai said. “I need to think about all this. I need to be sure your presence here won’t harm our mission.”

  Marella barely reacted to this. Presumably, she knew how he would take the news. She simply shrugged. “Fine, make up your mind and tell me what you want to do. If you want to get rid of me somewhere, do it. I’ve survived all these years, I’m sure I’ll continue to survive. But either way, I know I’ve told you the truth. The rest is on you.”

  Without a further word, Kai turned away and left the cabin. Once outside, he took a deep breath and headed for his own cabin when he received a status report from Eesoh. The terminal message informed him that the repairs to the hull and gravity drive were going well and better than expected due to the help from Wiggs. Eesoh estimated that they would be fully operational and ready to travel within four hours.

  That gave Kai four hours to read the journals and decide what to do with Marella, or Gilla, or whatever the hell she was called.

  Chapter 20

  FOUR HOURS and twenty minutes later, Kai woke with a start and groped into the darkness to get his bearings. His breath came in ragged gasps. Where was he? His heart raced and he rolled over, hitting the floor with a heavy thud.

  Something sharp jabbed into his thigh.

  A moment later, a glow of pale light bathed his surroundings—his cabin.

  He remembered then: he was on the Blackstar and no longer in the dark crystal city of his dream… his vision. It was hard to tell these days the difference between the two.

  He stood up and noticed the tetrahedron on the floor. He picked it up and rolled it over in his palm. It was warm to the touch, more so than just from the contact with his leg. A vision of him placing the artifact into a semitranslucent receptacle flashed in his mind.

  The symbols on the artifact glowed and then dimmed so briefly one could have easily mistaken it as a flash. He sat down on the edge of the cot and held up the pointed object, wondering what secret it held within and why he couldn’t seem to activate it at will.

  What do I care? It was just another mystery to add to the growing pile.

  Kai shook his head and took a few deep breaths. The recycled air was starting to taste stale to him. He made a mental note to ask Senaya to investigate the system and ensure there was no problem. He guessed it was just his heightened state, however.

  “Come on, Kai, get with it,” he said to himself. He stood up and splashed some water from the basin onto his face. The sensation helped to snap him awake again, but what he really needed was a long span of unbroken sleep.

  Checking his terminal, he noted that he’d only had two hours of rest after spending the previous two hours poring over his father’s journals that Marella had forwarded to him. He still wasn’t sure if he believed it all.

  If it weren’t for his experiences with the Blackstar and the artifact so far, he would have had no compunction in declaring his father insane or suffering from some drug-induced fever dream.

  One thing the journals did do, however, was corroborate the tale Marella had told him. Not that this fact changed his opinion or distrust of her. She had read them before handing them over, after all. It wouldn’t have been that difficult for a scholar like Marella—assuming she was one—to memorize a tale.

  His instinct didn’t tell him one way or another if he believed the story. The chances were she was telling the truth, but until he saw his father with his own eyes and heard the old man’s story with his own ears, he had little choice but to remain skeptical.

  That aside, he did need to process some of the stories he had read. He sent a silent message to Senaya to see if she was awake. A few seconds passed and she responded with a text reply:

  — What’s up, Captain?

  — Kai’s fine, Sen. I want to talk with you. Are you busy?

  — Just digging through Wigg’s programming. I could use a rest, though. What’s bothering you?

  — Everything. My father. Marella… I need to tell you what I read in
his journals to see what you think. I’m not sure I can trust my judgment anymore.

  — Sounds important. Give me five minutes; I’ll get us a couple of brews.

  — Thanks, Sen. And don’t tell anyone else we’re meeting.

  — Righto!

  While Kai waited for Senaya to arrive, he thought back to the overriding sense of impending doom he had experienced before waking. He knew it was the Darkarahn with every cell of his body. Maybe it was a racial memory handed down by the Navigators? Maybe it was just his imagination building a phantom antagonist, because if there was something to fight against, it would make everything he had gone through so far have some kind of meaning. Either way, Kai knew that there was a reckoning in his future and this Darkarahn entity would be involved in some capacity.

  His father, according to the journals, certainly believed that it existed. He even mentioned that the strange tentacled spacefaring creatures, the Sumahn, could potentially be enlisted as allies in the fight against the great evil.

  Given Kai’s only interaction with one eliciting a vision, he was glad to read that they weren’t overtly hostile and could potentially be of help. This side of the Veil, it appeared they had few options in building allies and finding a way home if their experiences with the Patari were anything to go by.

  Once he had found his father, he considered dealing with the Sumahn as the next step in getting back to Coalition space.

  A flash on his terminal told him that Senaya had arrived. He unlocked and opened the door for her, letting it close automatically after she had entered. She brought with her the smell of bitter coffee and mechanical grease.

  She was smiling at him, and her eyes were as large as ever, but Kai noticed shadows beneath, indicating that, like him, she too was exhausted. The quicker he got this journal situation over, the quicker they could decide on a destination and get some rest while they traveled through the wormhole.