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

by Ben Hale

  The duel intensified, driving across the room. She demonstrated clever tactics and an inventive mind, as well as a gift for bladecraft. He’d rarely seen such an intrinsic ability.

  “How much are you holding back?” Alina asked.

  “Half.”

  “And she’s still doing this well?”

  He motioned her to silence as the duel came to its conclusion. In the vid, Reklin swung his blade, the strike timed in a way she could not evade. It was a blow to end the duel, and one that, if landed, would have smashed her to the deck, bloody and unconscious, a reminder of who was greater. She raised her blade for the only possible block, but even an adult human would have failed to stop such an attack.

  The holo did not permit for the sound of impact when the two blades collided, but Alina sucked in her breath, betraying her shock. For a long second, the two combatants stood in place, the surprise evident on the girl’s features before Reklin kicked her in the chest and drove her into the bulkhead.

  “That swing wasn’t half your strength.” Alina returned the vid to right before the block. “How much strength were you using?”

  “Most.”

  Her eyebrows climbed toward her horns. “How could a slave girl stop a real blow from a dakorian blade?”

  “Like I said, I don’t know. Show me again.”

  Alina returned to the vid, and they watched it again, and then again. Alina pointed to the girl’s arms. “They aren’t even shaking. Maybe they embedded mechs into her arms?”

  He considered the suggestion and then discarded it. Although mechs were sometimes embedded into slave bodies in an effort to enhance their faculties, such experiments were rarely effective. They hadn’t been used in ages.

  “It’s something else,” Reklin said.

  “Why was she surprised?” Alina stopped the vid and approached the wall to examine Siena’s features. “Did she not understand her strength?”

  “I don’t think so,” he replied. “Do we have another angle?”

  “Let me see.”

  Alina stooped to the crystal banks and used her holoview to shift the vid. The holo changed to a different viewpoint in the room, closer to the conflict, but the perspective did not show the girl’s body as much, her limbs obscured by Reklin’s bulk.

  “This doesn’t look much better,” Alina said. “I’ll change it back.”

  “Wait.”

  Reklin squinted and scanned Siena’s arm, just visible below Reklin’s swinging blade. If he was not mistaken, a dull brown light darkened her skin. He ordered Alina to move it back.

  “I want to see her arms, second by second.”

  The holo gradually moved, and just as Reklin had swung the broken blade, a flicker of brown light flowed from her skin. It vanished so quickly it was easy to miss.

  “That.” He pointed to the light. “That’s what made her as strong as a dakorian.”

  “That’s just a reflection off something in the room.” Alina swept her hand to the ship. “The ship is ancient, and the vid recorders are retired models.”

  “Something altered her body, and it wasn’t present earlier in the fight.”

  “You sure you’re not just old?”

  He glared at her, and she raised her hands in amusement. “It’s possible,” she said.

  “A sixteen-year-old girl stopped a dakorian blade,” he said. “That takes muscle strength, conditioning, heightened nerve response time, bone density. That didn’t just change overnight.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying she’s been augmented.”

  “Augments are forbidden, not to mention impossible.”

  Reklin stabbed a finger at the girl blocking his attack. “That’s impossible.”

  Alina was dubious. “Thousands of krey have tried to augment humans. It’s never worked.”

  “That doesn’t mean it couldn’t work,” Reklin countered. “That girl shouldn’t be stronger than a six-year-old whelp, but she showed as much strength as an adult soldier.”

  “I think that’s a stretch.”

  He pointed to the holo, where the vid was frozen with the ferox slave blocking Reklin’s blade. “Have you ever seen a human do that? Or even come close?”

  “No,” she admitted. “But things happen. Maybe it was just adrenaline.”

  “It wasn’t,” Reklin stared at the vid. “Look at her features. She’s not afraid or panicked. She doesn’t think her life is threatened, so adrenaline levels would be minimal. That’s the face of a fighter—a powerful one.”

  Alina still wasn’t convinced. “Even if it’s true, how does this change our assignment?”

  Alina glanced to the door when a pair of footsteps came in their direction. Reklin made a cutting motion, and she touched her holoview, ending the vid of the room.

  Worg appeared in the opening. “What are you two doing in the holochamber?”

  “Just checking the security vids,” Reklin said. “Seeing what we can learn.”

  “Anything?”

  “No audio,” Alina lamented.

  “Did you expect anything less?” Worg flicked a finger at the bulkhead. “This ship is thousands of years old.”

  Reklin pointed to the back of the ship. “Get Teridon and find the tools to install the gravity drive.”

  “We’re really going to do grease work?” Worg made a disgusted expression. “We’re soldiers, not engineers.”

  “We are this time,” Reklin said.

  Worg departed, muttering under his breath about stupid assignments. Before the duel with Siena, Reklin would have agreed with him. House Bright’Lor had fallen hard and had few assets. They could barely afford the gravity drive, let alone the installation. The assignment to investigate a treasonous House was anything but simple. But now, Reklin’s curiosity burned to discover the truth about Siena.

  “Why not tell Worg about the slave?” Alina sounded confused.

  “I want to keep my suspicions private until they are confirmed,” Reklin said.

  “I don’t like to keep things from the team.”

  “Agreed,” Reklin said. “But for now, we need to.” Reklin didn’t say it was because he didn’t want Worg or Teridon reporting the revelation back to the Empire.

  She shook her head in confusion. “If this slave is really augmented, why is there only one? And why is Skorn bringing us in at all?”

  Reklin thought of Skorn, and what he’d said back on Dedliss. He’d brought the four of them into the House because he needed them to control the slaves and probably believed they would not report the presence of an augment. Was he foolish? Or brilliant?

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “But Skorn is not at all what I expected from a member of a fallen House.”

  “You mean desperate?”

  Reklin stepped to the door and checked the hall before turning back to his first officer. “Until we can determine exactly what is happening, I want to keep the idea of an augmented slave to ourselves.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive,” Reklin said. “There’s more to this assignment than we can see, and until we know more, we’re going to do exactly what Skorn and Ero expect of us.”

  “So we are going to install a gravity drive?”

  Reklin grinned at her distaste. “It could be worse. They could be asking us to clean the air scrubbers.”

  She shuddered, and he couldn’t blame her. The algae sludge that kept the air fresh on ships had been engineered to perfection and could survive for decades without any maintenance. But when it began to die, the air scrubbers had to be cleaned by hand, an onerous task for anyone.

  “That’s where I draw the line,” Alina said.

  “I’ll go and assist with the installation of the gravity drive,” he said. “I want you to scan all the archived security vids. Find any more vids that show augmented abilities.”

  “As you order.”

  He paused in the doorway. “If Worg and Teridon hear that House Bright’Lor has an augmente
d slave, they will probably kill the girl.”

  “I’m surprised you haven’t already done that,” Alina said.

  “We can’t kill her until we know what made her.”

  He shook his head, considering for the first time that the Empire might have known of the augmented slave before he’d been sent on the assignment. Was that why he’d been dispatched in the first place?

  She gestured to the bank of crystals. “I’ll also record past beamcast communications and make a copy.”

  “Just make sure your efforts cannot be discovered. We can’t have Skorn knowing what we were up to.”

  “I assume you want me to erase the vid of what happened in the cargo bay?”

  “Make a copy for me,” he said, grateful for Alina’s forethought. She’d been his first officer long enough for him to trust her instincts.

  Alina set to work, and Reklin shut the door. Their ship swerved slightly to the side, the shipboard cortex dropping them out of hyperlight. Reklin advanced down the corridor to where a side window allowed a view into space. A space station approached on the port side, gradually growing bigger.

  Korgith Space Station was named after the system. It was composed of thousands of seracrete girders, with corridors and leisure pods mounted between the beams. Extending from the retrofit station were a dozen ports that allowed for the docking of ships. Long, clawlike appendages grasped ships and held them in place while repairs were performed. The entire station was contained inside a double shield wall, the barrier separating the station’s atmosphere from the vacuum of space. Reklin had been there on a past assignment, and an idea crossed his mind. Perhaps there was someone on board that could give him answers.

  He returned to the rear of the ship, arriving just as the ship passed through the station’s outer shield. He imagined the sparks cascading across the ship’s hull as the sound crackled through the corridors. The ship then passed through the secondary shield, entering the artificial atmosphere that surrounded the station.

  The ship’s cortex interfaced with that of the station, and it banked to the side. Clawed mech hands reached out and grasped their ship at the stern and prow, drawing them into a mechanical embrace.

  Their ship docked at one of the ports on the outer ring, and a neighboring platform extended toward the stern of their ship. Reklin made his way in that direction. Teridon and Worg were standing beneath the empty void where a gravity drive had once hovered.

  “Alina is performing a task, and I’m going into the station,” Reklin said. “You two can install the drive.”

  “You’re leaving us to do this alone?” Teridon made a disgusted face. “Why would you do this to us?”

  The mechs on the outside of the ship fastened to the ship’s hull, attaching to matching claw protrusions. The Korgith cortex recognized the ship’s codes, identifying it as a vessel approved for retrofit, and the ship unlocked the seracrete panels at the back of the vessel. A trio of krey engineers stood on the platform extending from the station. Dressed in the green-and-black robes of engineers, the krey caught sight of Worg and Teridon holding portable gravity emitters, and their features contorted in dismay.

  “Soldiers?” The leader pointed to the gravity drive resting on a sled in their midst. “Your kind cannot install a drive.”

  “We can operate a lance, we can install a drive,” Worg said.

  As they fell to arguing, Reklin departed, leaving the krey engineers to direct his soldiers. Skorn had obviously not paid for the installation, just the drive, and the engineers of House Thorn’Vall, marked by their silver eyes, would not be pleased. But that was not his problem. The slave girl had created questions.

  And he wanted answers.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  The space station opened other sections of the ship’s hull, cracking the thick seracrete plating like one of the skittering, carapace-covered creatures on Reklin’s clan world. The krey claimed that opening an entire ship was necessary in order for them to do their work, but Reklin knew they only wanted to sell more repairs.

  The lead engineer watching the ship open looked on in disgust, obviously realizing the entire ship was borderline garbage. The plating across the port and starboard opened up and outward, revealing all the exterior cavities, along with the patches of rust. Seracrete wasn’t supposed to deteriorate.

  “You don’t need repairs,” he said. “You need a whole new ship.”

  “Do you complain this much with all your work?” Worg asked.

  “Only when the ship is a pile of scrap.” The engineer stepped onboard and peered at a power conduit that had been wrapped to keep it together. “And scrap is being generous.”

  “Just get the job done,” Alina said.

  Reklin left the arguing krey behind and stepped onto the port. The long, open-roofed hallway extended out from the station and was flanked by several platforms holding new parts and equipment. Threading through a stack of seracrete beams, a crate of power converters, and parts to an ion propulsion drive, Reklin entered the station.

  Contained within the double shield, the atmosphere of the space station reeked of oil, seracrete, and the char only made by fusing lances. A krey on a neighboring ship repaired a broken seracrete panel, the lance in his hands glowing bright blue as it molded the seracrete to an adjacent panel.

  Reklin had been on plenty of retrofit stations, and they all looked the same to him. A skeleton of girders, open bulkheads, and clawlike appendages for servicing every type of vessel. Retrofit stations were always in low orbit to a gas giant and used the excessive gravity to recharge gravity drives. Korgith’s gravity well was a large brown planet with massive storms sweeping across its surface.

  Reklin walked along a corridor with a glass decking. Beneath his boots, he could see krey, slaves, and other station employees walking upside down, their feet just inches from his own. Gravity lines pulsed faintly in the glass, keeping his feet on the floor and their feet on the ceiling.

  He reached the end of the walkway and followed the upward curve until he walked on the wall, allowing him to enter to one of several spheres positioned throughout the station. The leisure pod was the largest in the station and was about twice the size of the Bright’Lor ship.

  Although technically an inverse sphere, the leisure pod was too small to support a sun or plant life. Its girders and bulkheads were all marked with white paint spelling out the pod’s designation—Ki2, affectionately known to patrons as Kit. Long counters allowed workers to drink their wages in brightly colored bottles of drey and wistor, a dakorian drink. Halfway up the curving interior, slaves worked to clean the vomit from the floor. Reklin wrinkled his nose in distaste as he passed a dakorian slumped on a large table, surrounded by a pile of empty glasses on the chairs and the floor. Faint music came from somewhere, a raucous blend of sounds that had an unpleasant effect of vibrating Reklin’s bones.

  He paused near the entrance to the room, his eyes searching up the curved floor that wrapped up and onto the ceiling of the sphere. The gravity was strongest on the exterior of the room, and subdued in the center, allowing a slave to jump from one side and float to the other.

  The serving slave rotated and landed near a pair of krey speaking in low tones. Depositing the two bottles of amber drey between them, the slave jumped again and floated back to the counter. As the slave soared through the center, Reklin spotted his target across the sphere. Although he was upside down from Reklin’s perspective, he could still make out the distinct double twist to his horns.

  Reklin jumped and entered the weak gravity at the center of Kit, his momentum carrying him to the opposite side of the sphere. He landed heavily, next to a circle of chairs occupied by dakorians. His arrival drew the attention of a trio of dakorians, all of which scowled at his appearance. The one in the center leaned back and regarded Reklin with thinly veiled distaste.

  “Captain Gellow,” Reklin said. “It’s been a while.”

  “Reklin,” the leader said coldly. “I’m surprised to
see you here.”

  Reklin claimed the empty seat and eyed his former captain. The dakorian, a short, muscular warrior with part of his shoulder bones chipped and gouged by an explosion, studied Reklin in turn. He’d replaced his officer grays with rich red fabrics that reflected the light. His horns were polished, and the remaining shoulder bones sharpened.

  “I didn’t invite you to sit,” Gellow said.

  “You looked better in uniform,” Reklin remarked. “But I think you found the restrictions of your military service uncomfortable.”

  “It wasn’t my choice to leave the Empire, if you recall.” Gellow sneered, and his two companions leaned in, obviously eager for a fight. Both were dressed in darker shades of black, with blue stripes that accentuated their bulging muscles.

  One leaned forward and spoke in a deep snarl. “I don’t think the boss cares for your presence.”

  “Relax, Bruiser,” Gellow said. “Before he crushes your hearts and tosses you into space.”

  The dakorian eyed Reklin. “He’s just a hornless grayhorn.”

  “He may be hornless, but he was recently offered the rank of Bloodwall.”

  Reklin chuckled at Gellow’s knowledge. “As always, you are well informed.”

  The former captain swept his hand at the spherical room. “It may not be the training room of a Heltorgreathian, but Kit has its charms.” He glanced to his two companions. “Go find yourselves an amusement.”

  Both grumbled as they stood and walked down the curving floor to the nearest counter, where a female dakorian in a revealing dress sipped a drink. Their departure showed the tattoos marking their backs, many of which were luminescent.

  Reklin managed to contain his disgust. Dakorians were born to honor but not all lived by such a code. Those that left the military usually ended up in the employ of the Houses, helping with security or slave control.

  Others, such as the disgraced Captain Gellow, had chosen a more nefarious route. He’d been a decent fighter but never promoted into the Shard ranks. The last Reklin had heard, the captain now owned the Kit and spent most of his time smuggling slaves, illicit goods, and weapons through the station.