Blackstar Command 1: Prominence

by A. C. Hadfield

  “It’s not quite that,” Senaya said.

  Kai stopped and looked at her. “What is it, then? Anything to be concerned about?”

  Senaya shrugged. “I doubt it, but that twisting motion and the fact that it’s very narrow tells me that the source isn’t from the planet’s natural magnetic field; the poles aren’t located there. The field is coming from that mountain or somewhere close to it.”

  Kai turned to Marella. “Is that where you lost Kendal?”

  “A little further beyond it, yes. Near a cave system. We’ll see the ruins shortly, and I’ll be able to pinpoint the area more accurately.”

  “Okay, let’s carry on, then,” Kai said, striding forward, P&G in hand as he went.

  The rain did make the going slower than he expected, and Marella was right: every step was fraught with danger of slipping. The rocky surface refused to give them a flat path to their destination, necessitating much slow climbing over boulders, hills, and the traversing of shallow gulches.

  Apart from some sludge-green algae and lichen, Kai saw no real flora to speak of. If creatures did inhabit this place, he couldn’t see a source of food for them. He hadn’t even seen any worms or other signs of life in the mud.

  “Why anyone would want to build on this crap-hole is beyond me,” Senaya said, backing up Kai’s thinking as he helped her up and over a jagged rock.

  Marella stopped and wheezed. Kai and Senaya turned to help her, but she waved them on. “I’m okay,” she said. “Just catching my breath. As for why anyone would build here, I figured from the ruins that this was the nearest habitable moon or planet for an old race to travel to. A race that didn’t have subspace technology. If they didn’t have a wide choice of places to expand to—and there’s very little around here for at least a couple of light-years that would support life—then I suppose they tried to make the best of it. We’re not far actually from the ruins where I split from Kendal. They’re just over the hill.”

  Kai and the others stashed their weapons in their suits’ holsters and approached the incline.

  Behind the hill, the mountain loomed, and somewhere off to the east, a river flowed out into one of the moon’s seas. Kai zoomed into the mountain’s summit with his helmet’s binocular function and saw how the rain was gathering and racing down channels carved over the centuries into the rock.

  A yearning cry called out somewhere off to the right, echoing through a valley cut between two cliffs. Another call, higher-pitched, seemed to answer it, and back and forth they went.

  Kai shivered at the sound but continued, climbing a thirty-foot-high rock face, grabbing on to outcrops for handholds and using the cracked surface for footholds.

  When at the top, he turned and reached down to heave Senaya and then Marella up and over the edge. All three of them turned to their new view: the ruins.

  A dozen or so small dark creatures sat on the top of one particular column of carved stone. “Looks like we’ve finally found signs of life,” Kai said.

  “Birds?” Senaya asked.

  “I didn’t see any when I was here,” Marella added as she stepped to Kai’s side.

  One of the creatures turned to another, opened its beak, widened its wings, and crowed. They sounded off to and fro, flapping their wings at each other for a few moments before they stopped for a moment and then, together, flew off toward the mountain looming behind the collection of ruins.

  “Okay, this would be a good time for you to lead us to where you and my father split up," Kai said as he unholstered his P&G and switched off the safety via the internal control system of his suit.

  “Sure, it’s just up here.” Marella indicated to a point within the ruins and led the way slowly across the rocks.

  They drew closer, scaring the cawing, birdlike creatures away.

  The sunlight was dimming. Kai switched on the suit’s external lights, bathing the old ruins in artificial luminescence.

  The ancient formations stretched up into the sky like broken fingers reaching toward something greater than them for mercy. Column structures ten feet wide and straight as a laser circled silver rocks shaped into unfamiliar forms.

  As interesting as these archeological phenomena were, it was the absence of any inhabitants that grabbed Kai’s attention: the very clear and apparently intended path that led through the center of the ruins. Straight as a laser beam on the muddy and rocky ground, the road led up an incline until it reached a stone archway. Within that archway was a door.

  “That’s where your father and I parted ways,” Marella said.

  Chapter 21

  Brenna woke with a start. At first, she couldn’t remember where she was; the space she had rested in was tight and hot and in complete darkness. Her head struck something solid when she tried to sit up.

  Lights blurred her vision, and she held her breath, willing the sudden burst of pain to dissipate. Her mind swam with the familiar subspace feeling, but when a massive explosion roared all around her, the equally familiar sense of coming out of subspace washed over her, bringing with it the clarity of where she was and what was happening.

  Shrain, she thought… she was on a shrain ship, and the booming sounds of rending metal and explosions told her that it was under attack, presumably by Lopek’s ship.

  Brenna eased herself out of the tight space, negotiating the maze of pipework and ducting until she came to the access panel. Through the narrow gap, she saw a dozen or so engineers and shrain running past toward the center of the ship: the opposite side from where the cells were located.

  A swirling red light bathed the otherwise monochrome corridor with vibrant color, reminding her of the shrain she had killed to get here. Her hands and shins were still sore from the attack.

  There was little time to analyze her memories. Lopek and his crew had done their bit; now she had to help them. Looking around the maintenance room, she found a large wrench and tested it in her hand; it’d make a formidable bludgeoning weapon.

  Armed and focused, Brenna stepped out into the empty corridor and stumbled her way back toward the cells. The shrain she had killed earlier had been taken away, but his blood had stained the floor.

  With a small smile of satisfaction, she moved on past the cells and followed the corridor, twisting and turning, until, finally, she came to an ops room. Inside were two shrain working at a pair of transparent freestanding consoles.

  A large video screen to the back of the darkened room showed a high-resolution image of a Coalition ship: the Spearhead. It was Lopek’s heavily armed destroyer. For a brief moment, as she stood outside the transparent doors, watching the Coalition ship and its support fighters unload their formidable ordnance against the shrain ship, she felt a swell of gratitude that Lopek would risk one of the best Coalition ships to rescue her.

  Her hesitation was cut short with another loud blast.

  The hull of the shrain ship roared in protest of the attack, the deafening sound traveling through the ship’s infrastructure like waves on a pond.

  A burst of flame and black smoke came from the end of the corridor, and her chest tightened at the sight of a squad of Coalition Special Forces.

  Half a dozen of them, fully armored in the best tech the Coalition could afford, turned to face her in unison. They wore the standard blue and gray uniforms, formfitting graphite-weaved materials. Their helmets were the new custom-fit, hyper-thin types, following the contours of the wearer’s skull as well as their own scalp. Each member carried the standard-issue CoreArm multipurpose rifle.

  Brenna raised her hands and touched her thumbs to her pinky fingers: the signal to indicate she was with the Coalition. The woman at the front of the group reciprocated by sharply dipping the gun barrel of her rifle toward the ground twice.

  Directly to Brenna’s left, the two shrain within the operations room looked up from their consoles and saw her. They both withdrew a pistol holstered to their hips and rushed toward the doors.

  “Two enemies coming on my left,” Brenna
said while quickly stepping back away from the doors.

  The Special Forces woman nodded curtly, subvocalized an order, and crouched to a knee. The two men next to her did the same while the three other members remained standing.

  The two shrain burst from the doors. They turned to Brenna and raised their pistols. Brenna sidestepped around the corner as the Coalition squad opened fire. It was just a short burst, barely three rounds each.

  When she poked her head back around the corner, the two shrain were obliterated, their bodily remains spread up the sides of the corridor.

  “Agent Locke?” the lead woman called out once the reverberations of the gunfire had ceased.

  “That’s me,” Brenna said. She made to move toward the squad, to safety, but the first woman and her team remained in fighting formation with their rifles up. Brenna halted.

  “ID pass,” the woman ordered.

  “Glasshouse,” Brenna replied after a moment. Her mind was fuzzy, and she had to think of the most recent password given to her by Lopek. But even that didn’t seem enough. A flash from the woman’s eye snapped a photograph of Brenna. A few seconds later, presumably after the security servers had confirmed her identity, the woman subvocalized an order to her squad.

  As one they aimed their rifles to the floor. The woman stood and approached. She held out a hand and introduced herself. “Squadron Leader Dele at your service, ma’am.”

  Brenna shook the woman's hand and fought the urge to collapse on her. Fatigue had gripped her, and the relief of seeing her Coalition compatriots had tipped her over the edge.

  “I’m glad to see you,” Brenna said. “I’m assuming we’re making a hasty retreat?”

  “The assumption is accurate, Agent Locke. We’re to escort you to safety ASAP. Captain Lopek is waiting for you on the Spearhead. We’ve retrieved your ship and demolition of this shrain hellhole is under way.”

  Disgust for the shrain curled the squad leader’s face.

  “There’s something I need to do before we go. It won’t take long.”

  Before Dele could protest, Brenna slipped into the ops room.

  As she had hoped, the two consoles were still active; the shrain didn’t have time to apply security protocols before they came out to confront her. Using her extensive language knowledge, Brenna figured out the majority of the system. It was written in Hallucian—a common dialect among the Host species.

  Working quickly, due to Dele glaring at her through the glass doors, Brenna managed to access the starboard weapon’s controls. She deactivated the ion cannons and rotated the dozen blaster turrets to face away from the Spearhead.

  “We need to leave,” Dele said with a growl in her voice.

  “Almost done,” Brenna said. Although she outranked the other woman, she didn’t want to pull rank during a rescue attempt. These people had risked their lives for her, after all.

  Her spy skills urged her on, however. There was data here, intelligence, albeit encrypted. Orders from a Host commander to this shrain ship and others in its squadron. This ship must have been on a solo mission, as the system showed no recent communications with others in its fleet.

  “Dele, do you have a mem-chip? We’ve got some intel here.”

  The woman retrieved a small mem-chip from her thigh pocket, walked into the room, and handed it to Brenna. The rest of the squad split their attention, covering both sides of the corridor.

  “Will it take long?”

  “No, a few seconds.”

  When the transfer of data was complete, Brenna let Dele do what she was trained for: rescue. The woman and her squad quickly whisked Brenna out of the corridor and through the breach.

  They jogged through a twisting series of tunnels through the guts of the shrain ship, one of the younger members of the squad taking point and leading them through, presumably following a map.

  Brenna had to force herself to keep up. Although they weren’t running at a significant pace, any effort was tiring. She breathed heavily, and sweat poured from her forehead. She hadn’t consumed any food or water for at least a day, possibly longer, and the extended time in subspace had taken its toll. She began to fall behind.

  A muscular man from the squad threw her arm over his shoulder and carried her along. Brenna’s vision and hearing became fuzzy, and soon she was completely disorientated as she fought to stay conscious.

  The darkness of the tunnels suddenly changed to a bright light. Brenna squinted against it. A few voices exchanged orders, and then she was carried through the air into what she could only assume was a shuttle.

  Behind her a deep grinding noise boomed and then, as quickly as it had come, it disappeared. The man who was carrying her let go, and she floated in zero gravity, her body slowly nudged against the walls of their escape craft.

  She tried to take in the details, but her eyelids were too heavy to keep open for very long. She did, however, spin around so that she was now facing a porthole within the shuttle. For a few seconds, she saw the formidable firepower from the Spearhead and its retinue of fighters slam into parts of the shrain ship in what appeared to be a highly coordinated attack.

  The shrain ship listed to one side under the barrage. Flames and debris burst from its center, and the ship began to break apart, the hull ravaged and torn. Images of the previous war came back to her, and as she allowed the fatigue to take her, she smiled, satisfied.

  Chapter 22

  Kai shivered within his suit and adjusted its temperature controls. A sense of doom quickly followed by a sense of inevitability overtook him. He knew, within every atom of his body, that he was meant to be here and that this was his path to follow.

  “Why did they put a door out here in the open?” Senaya said. “It’s right there in the middle. One could easily just walk around it, right?”

  Marella shook her head. “Look carefully; the image you see on either side of the door is an illusion. I followed it around for miles. It rings the mountain. It’s some kind of energy force field. The only way through is via the door, and one needs a particular kind of key.” She looked to Kai with a knowing glance.

  “The artifact?” he asked.

  “The very same. It’s obvious now, isn’t it, how you found it in your father’s footlocker on that crashed ship?”

  “Yes, it makes sense… well, let’s not hang around; time is of the essence.”

  With that, Kai stepped onto the path and led his companions to the door.

  Inset within the stone was a recess. The tetrahedron slotted inside perfectly, and when Kai pushed it into place, a beam of light flashed around the edges of the door, and it opened with a creak.

  On the other side, there were no ruins, just the path, cut straight as a laser through a valley and into the base of the mountain.

  “This is all very cool,” Senaya said. She studied the inside of the door, analyzing its mechanism. “I wonder if we have time to…”

  Realizing he was getting close, Kai concentrated on what they had to do. As much as he would have liked to hang around and research places, he sensed he was getting closer to his father and was eager to get on with it.

  Kai marched toward his destiny, the artifact in hand and destination in sight. “Keep up, Sen,” he said. “We don’t have time at the moment.”

  The three of them hustled quickly down the path, weapons out and eyes scanning the tops of the valleys for any potential enemies. It was still possible they could have been followed by the Host’s agents.

  But if they were, they hadn't caught up with them yet. They made it through the valley without incident and entered the cave entrance at the base of the mountain. It was a crudely cut tear in the stone, the roughness of it at odds with the care and attention of the archway and the columns.

  “This must have been created by something or someone other than those who built the ruins,” Kai said.

  “Looking at the way it’s been tooled, I’d say you’re right,” Marella agreed. She scanned the edges of the entrance as thoug
h analyzing what methods might have been used. She stepped ahead of Kai into the darkness and used her flashlight to illuminate the cavern.

  The walls and domed ceiling were completely smooth like glass. A green-hued iridescence glowed behind the glossy surface.

  “This place is incredible,” Senaya said. “That light is natural—organic.”

  Kai’s throat tightened with awe and something else he couldn’t quite understand. It was as if he were standing outside of himself, an impartial observer, watching his body move and act in ways that he instinctively knew had been done by others many millennia before him.

  He walked through the cavern, not even needing Marella’s flashlight to direct him. His body just knew where to go.

  “Hey, wait up,” Senaya said from somewhere behind him.

  He led them down twisting tunnels, up and down steps carved into stone, and lastly, down a long shallow slope until they arrived at an opening deep within the mountain.

  Like the first cavern they entered, this too had glassy walls and a domed ceiling, but here, the ceiling was so high it was barely noticeable, hovering at the edge of their flashlights’ reach.

  The base of the slope continued down into a pool of glistening black water. Twenty meters into the lake stood a pedestal of crystal on top of which hovered a holographic representation of the artifact Kai held in his right hand.

  “We’re here,” Kai said. The words coming from within, from millennia ago. “My father was here.”

  Marella and Senaya joined him by his side but said nothing. Senaya’s eyes were big and round as she took in her surroundings. Marella focused on the brightly glowing hologram, its blue hue bathing the crystal plinth in light so that it appeared to be a glowing apparition in the near-total darkness of the cavern.

  “What now?” Senaya said.

  “We activate whatever this is,” Kai said, stepping forward with purpose.

  He barely got five meters into the shallow pool when a shadow beyond the pedestal caught his attention. Senaya and Marella joined him and paused.