Empire of Ashes: An Epic Space Opera Series (The Augmented Book 1)

by Ben Hale

  Siena suppressed the prickling of hope. “What you say is impossible.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe the leader we need hasn’t been born . . . until now . . .”

  He seemed to lose his train of thought. Standing, he plodded back into the maintenance supply room and fumbled for a pack of tools. He packed a hand ion fuser, a lance cutter, and several conduit shapers, mumbling to himself all the while. Then he picked up a short piece of pipe and examined the end.

  Siena, still standing in the doorway, wasn’t sure if he’d forgotten she was there. She took another step into the main room, but her gaze returned to the old man. What had he meant? She’d been running from Thet and his crowd for months. She’d known a fight was coming but had hoped to delay it for as long as possible.

  She finally turned to leave and spotted Morena striding across the room. Overweight and dressed in slave grays, the woman spotted Siena and turned in her direction. As the overseer, appointed by Laurik to watch over the slaves in the cavern, she was the only human with authority. And her expression spoke volumes.

  “Siena,” she said, “please tell me you didn’t hit Thet with a pipe.”

  “There were five of them. What did you expect me to do?”

  The woman passed a hand over her face and sighed. “I’m sure he deserved it, but if you fight a krey, they’ll kill you without a second thought.”

  Siena grimaced and mumbled, “I’m sorry.”

  Morena sighed, making her weight rise and fall. “It’s okay,” she said. “But as a human, you have to let go of the part of you that wants freedom. Even if you don’t want to.”

  Her words were soft and tinged with regret, surprising Siena. Just talking about rebellion was a way to get burned, and Siena tugged on her earring. The krey had used the earring to send an electrical current into her nerves on numerous occasions, and it felt like being burned on the inside. The earring was both a mark of ownership and a means of punishment. Siena had never seen a human without one.

  Morena spotted Felis mumbling to himself and frowned. “I’ll take care of Thet,” she said, steering Siena away from the storage room. “But you stay away from Felis. He’s not well.”

  Siena followed Morena, but she cast a lingering look at the open door. Within the slave quarters, she’d never heard a slave speak of treason, not even in whispers, for fear that there were listening devices hidden in the rooms. And now she’d heard it twice in a single day.

  Felis was sold within the next week, and Siena never saw him again, but what he’d said did not fade. As Siena watched slaves come and go, sold and bought like property, she managed to bury her instinct to fight. But as much as Laurik, the dakorians, and the other slaves ground submission into her identity, in Siena’s most private of moments, she dared to dream of freedom.

  Seven Years Later

  Chapter One

  Reklin picked through the tar pits, working his way up the slope. He scanned the rocky surroundings for any sign of movement. Behind and to his flank, his dakorian soldiers advanced in silence.

  Worg, the youngest in his command, covered his back with his hammer lance up and ready to fire. Alina, his second-in-command, watched the opposite flank, while Teridon, his third officer, claimed the rear. All three had two scars on their horns, marking them as lieutenants. Only Reklin, with three scars, carried the rank of captain.

  At over ten feet, Reklin was the tallest of the group. Like all dakorians, his group possessed natural bone armor that grew over their legs, torso, neck, and arms, with gaps that allowed for movement. The bones formed a hardened exoskeleton strong enough to withstand significant damage.

  Horns grew from Reklin’s skull, slightly curving outward, a common trait for dakorians born to clan Hammerdin. The other three soldiers had varying twists and colors to their horns. Horns were always unique, with some long and sharp, others short and stubby. Reklin’s mother had possessed divided horns, both split to resemble four spikes. His father had possessed large, curling horns of pure gray.

  Reklin eyed the unforgiving landscape of Urgin-4 and then motioned for his soldiers to advance. The elite dakorian patrol worked its way forward in near darkness, each soldier relying on their night vision as they searched the tar pits for movement. One bubbled next to Reklin’s foot, the tar popping in a burst of noxious fumes. Infamous for sucking captives to their doom, the tar pits were the distinguishing feature for the moons of Urgin.

  The curve of the planet blocked most of the stars, its red-and-gold coloring marking a gas giant. Urgin was even larger than most planets of its calls, its inhospitable surface covered in volcanic activity and a toxic atmosphere.

  In contrast to the planet, Urgin’s four moons were all large enough to support their own atmosphere. They had been dragged away from other planets in the system and placed in orbit around the optimally positioned Urgin. The composition of minerals in the rocky moons made deep scans impossible, and over time, the moons had become a haven for outcasts and criminals.

  Night covered Urgin-4 as it sped around the backside of the planet. When they passed around the planet, the light coming from the yellow star would reflect off Urgin’s surface to illuminate the entire surface of the moon. Three days of total darkness. Three days of total light.

  “Twenty minutes until dawn,” Worg whispered.

  Reklin acknowledged the report but kept his attention forward. They’d landed on Urgin-4 sixteen hours ago, using their ship rather than one of the Gates on the moon, all of which were carefully watched. From their landing site, they’d worked their way through the tar pits on their approach to Heblon, the largest of the moon’s cities, and the most vile.

  Reklin slowed as he ascended the rocky slope, twisting to avoid a narrow aperture between two rocky points. His outer chest bones scraped on rock. On the opposite side of the gap, he dropped behind a pair of broken boulders and eyed the city.

  Heblon, home to thousands of krey and dakorians, most wanted by the Empire. The buildings were hewn from the rock of the moon, thick and windowless. Rain fell only during the long night, and it had rained the night before. Water slicked the streets between the haphazard buildings, and krey, dakorians, and humans hurried to complete their business before the approaching dawn, which already glowed on the horizon.

  Most of the buildings were three levels high, with straight walls and flat roofs. Several pyramidal structures dotted the city, towering over the rest. They too lacked windows, the stone dark and gray, still wet from the rain. Tar bubbled in the channels next to the pyramids or in holes in the streets. The infamous pits always found a way to reach the surface, sometimes swallowing whole buildings overnight in the process. They were also a source of tremendous value. A mineral in the tar was an essential component for gravity drives.

  A nearby shout caused all four of them to drop deeper behind the boulders. Through a gap in the stones, Reklin spotted a pair of dakorians urging a line of human slaves to hurry. The slaves carried large jugs from their neck, the weight causing them to stumble.

  “If you don’t hurry, you won’t make it inside before dawn,” a dakorian snarled. “You want to see what it’s like to burn? Now pick up the pace.”

  One tripped, slopping tar onto a dakorian’s feet. The soldier tapped him on the head, hard enough to make him shout in pain. The dakorian leaned down and snarled into his face.

  “It’s worth more than you, slave. Spill another drop and I’ll drop you in the next pit.”

  The man struggled to lift the burden and continue, and the dakorians continued to push the slaves down a rough path that wound close to Reklin’s position. Too preoccupied with getting under cover before Urgin-4 passed around the planet’s edge, no one even looked up.

  Other lines of dakorians and slaves appeared around Heblon, the groups hastening to return. Some of the slaves carried two containers, suggesting that several slaves had not survived the long nights.

  “Why does the Empire not destroy the moon?” Alina whispered. “Eve
ryone knows these moons are the dregs of the Empire.”

  “The tar has energon,” Reklin murmured. “And the Empire never destroys anything of value.”

  Alina eyed a nearby pit. “But tar only has trace levels. There’s materials with a thousand times the concentration. Destroying these moons wouldn’t make a dent in the energon market.”

  Worg eyed a bubble forming in a nearby tar pit. “All I can say is dying by tar pit would be the worst way to go.”

  “On that, we can agree,” Teridon said. “But Alina has a point. No House lays claim to these moons, so they would be easy to destroy. Or at the very least, they could send in a few fleet ships and just take control. Most of the krey and dakorians living here are wanted for a host of crimes.”

  Shard teams were intended for advanced recon and infiltration. He and his soldiers had trained to the peak of dakorian ability in every facet of combat, including weapons, tactics, krey technology, and stealth. Shard teams always included a captain, and experts in long lances, mechs, and explosives.

  Reklin had been a Shard captain for three decades. Alina, his explosives expert, had a gift for obliterating ships and enemy camps with little more than a discarded cortex and a hammer lance. Teridon had been with Reklin the longest, and Reklin had once seen him kill a dakorian from a neighboring mountain peak. Worg was a recent acquisition, filling the hole for his fallen predecessor, and was a master of mechs and communications.

  Teridon touched the runes on his hammer lance, a sleeker version than the standard model. His weapon was designed to fire at greater distances. The long lance glowed as he tapped it on the stones, its symbols brightening as the hammer used kinetic energy to charge the ions that powered the lance.

  The lance had been the favored weapon of the Empire for ages, and dakorians typically chose to wield a hammer variety for close-quarters combat. It absorbed every blow to power the weapon. Higher quality lances, such as those carried by Reklin’s solders, converted power at a faster rate, retained that power for longer, and possessed increased accuracy.

  “Perhaps the Empire likes knowing the location of their criminals.” Reklin pointed to the third building on the street. “Our target is there. You know what we have to do.”

  Abruptly the moon passed around Urgin, and the sun cracked the horizon, rising into a ball of fire that burned away the darkness. Even through his hardened bone armor, Reklin felt the heat and shifted to remain in the shadows.

  “Start the clock,” he said.

  Worg tapped the crystal embedded in the flesh of his wrist, marking the time. Sunrise brought a spike in temperature, and the heat would continue to rise until it reached four hundred degrees. The dakorians had thirty minutes before the heat would burn through their armor and permanently disfigure them. Another ten minutes and their blood would boil in their veins. Death would be a mercy.

  As the last of the residents slunk into heavily insulated structures to escape the rising sun, Reklin leapt from behind the boulder and sprinted down the makeshift path. Worg and Alina ran at his back, while Teridon took aim from their previous location, his long lance braced on the stone.

  “Ten seconds to the door,” Reklin said.

  His voice transmitted through the crystal embedded in his jawbone and to those of his team. They heard him as easily as if they stood together. Reklin’s communicator was linked to the wrist cortex in his wrist, another crystal commonly called a holoview. Nearly all dakorians and krey used a wrist cortex for communication and entertainment, but Reklin and his team had military-grade equipment, the crystals encoded with high level encryption and shielding against hacking. As captain, his holoview had dozens of tools illegal on the open market.

  Reklin accelerated when he reached the city, sprinting to the third building from the edge. His powerful legs closed the gap in seconds, and he relished the power in his body. Despite his age, he was still stronger than his soldiers.

  Teridon fired, his beam of white light streaking over Reklin’s shoulder and striking the door. The metal exploded from its hinges and clattered into the interior, eliciting shouts of pain. Before the occupants could react, Reklin was in their midst.

  Although most dakorians favored a hammer lance for its ranged power, Reklin preferred an older weapon. A sunderblade. Wide and flat, the length of silver seracrete was sharp enough to sever bone and heavy enough to crush a skull. It was as tall as a human male. Reklin reached up to his shoulder and pulled the weapon from his back as he burst into the room.

  Two dakorians and one krey struggled to recover from the door’s sudden explosion, all three coughing in the cloud of dust. The door lay atop one of the dakorians, with a large dent in the center.

  Reklin reached the nearest dakorian and stabbed high. His blade bit through the dakorian’s chest armor and plunged into his upper heart. With a twist, Reklin pierced the lower heart. The dakorian tumbled backward with a dying growl, his hammer falling from his grip.

  Worg dropped on the second dakorian. He delivered two blows, his hammer crushing the upraised arm and then the dakorian’s neck, leaving his enemy dead and half-buried under the heavy door.

  About the size of a human, the lone krey had gray skin and slightly pointed ears. His features were wide, his golden eyes marking him as a member of House Ruath’Is. His clothing and tattoos marked him as an outcast.

  The krey bolted. He sprinted down the corridor extending backward from the room, but a streak of white light entered through the door, passed between Reklin and Alina, and struck the krey in the back, sending his lifeless body tumbling down the corridor.

  “Too close for comfort.” Alina examined the faint burn on her shoulder where the ion blast had passed. “Watch your aim, Teridon.”

  “Can’t let you have all the fun.” Teridon’s voice was amused.

  Reklin stabbed a finger upward. “Search the house. Remember, our target is a krey with a recent wound across his forehead. He’s escaped the Empire twice, and this time he’s not going to slip away.”

  They parted ways. Alina stepped on a circle of white light, the riser allowing her to descend to the lower floor. Worg darted down the corridor to search the back of the structure, while Reklin took the riser to the upper floor. The gravity energy glowed inside the glass circle, bringing him to the upper level and to an empty room, but from the scuffle nearby it was obvious his presence was known. He stepped into the open and almost lost his head to an ion blast.

  He jerked back, the light scalding his cheek and drawing blood. The beam of light struck the back wall, cracking the thick stone and allowing a spot of sunlight into the room. Debris from the broken wall tumbled onto the dingy couch and crushed it.

  Reklin picked up a stone the size of his head and tossed it into the open. Another bolt came from the corridor, exploding the stone into dust and bits of rock. Reklin used the cloud as cover and jumped to the opposite wall, avoiding the hasty blast that followed. He caught a glimpse of a dakorian at the end of the hall, his hammer resting on a table.

  Reklin gauged the gap. There was no way he could reach the end of the corridor before the dakorian landed a blow, so he reared back and launched his sunderblade.

  The heavy weapon spun end over end. Carving through the table and the dakorian’s hammer lance, the blade spun for the dakorian’s head. He flinched away, but the blade sliced across his arm and chipped a bone spike on his shoulder. The weapon thudded into the wall behind the dakorian and quivered in place.

  “A sunderblade?” the dakorian scoffed, reaching for the handle.

  His fingers closed on the hilt, and the embedded power crackled through the dakorian’s flesh. He cried out and snatched his hand back, the momentary distraction allowing Reklin to reach the end of the corridor. He leapt and brought his knee into the dakorian’s side, slamming him into the wall. The dakorian grunted and rolled away, using the movement to pick up the shaft of his hammer lance. Reklin grabbed the hilt of his weapon, his holoview allowing him to wield it without being shocked. />
  The dakorian towered over Reklin, his skin covered in iridescent tattoos of spikes and whirls, fearsome weapons, severed heads, and an impaled krey. In the center of the dakorian’s chest, there was another tattoo of a burning dakorian skull. It was the mark of the Burning Ghosts, the most feared criminal organization in the Empire.

  The dakorian wiped at the blood on his nose and sneered at Reklin. “I should have expected a sunderblade from such an elder. You must be two hundred years old.”

  “A hundred eighty-two,” Reklin countered.

  “Your skin is turning gray, and your bones are probably brittle.” The dakorian laughed and closed the gap in a rush, flicking the hammer shaft to swing at Reklin’s shoulder.

  Reklin picked up the broken table and hefted it with one hand, throwing it into the incoming blow. The sound of the impact reverberated throughout the house as Reklin whipped his blade up and around, driving for the dakorian’s head. His opponent expertly rotated, raising the shaft to deflect the weapon high. The criminal feinted with his free hand before bringing his arm down, using the spikes on the back of his forearm to slice across Reklin’s chest. The backhand blow was meant to show he was superior, and the dakorian sneered his disdain.

  “You’re as slow as a human.”

  “I have the target.” Worg’s voice came the earbone crystal. “Extracting now.”

  “Dakorians are in the street.” Teridon’s voice was muffled as he fired his long lance. “Recommend using the back exit.”

  “There is no back exit,” Alina said.

  “Make one,” Reklin growled through clenched teeth as he strained to keep the powerful dakorian at bay. His enemy was young, probably just forty years old, and he had the strength and arrogance of youth.

  The dakorian twisted and hurled Reklin against the side wall. He swung the hammer shaft, battering at Reklin’s blade. Reklin twisted in response, rolling under the swinging arm and kicking the dakorian’s leg out from under him. The dakorian grimaced and went down, but used the momentum to evade.