Thief of Stars (Final Dawn, Book 2)

by T W M Ashford

  He stopped and pretended to check his watch.

  “I sent Scara Li Ka a second anonymous message a few minutes ago, giving him the location of this base. I’d say you have a few minutes until his forces arrive.”

  “You monster!” snarled Sek, spit spraying from his mouth. “You’ve killed every Krettelian in here!”

  “Maybe not all of them,” said Charon, unbolting the door behind him. “Not if you’re quick.”

  “I’ll tell them what really happened. With my last dying breath, I’ll make sure they know it was you.”

  Charon paused with the door to his escape half open.

  “For what it’s worth, I wish I didn’t have to do this,” he said, turning back around. “But no, Sek. You won’t.”

  He fired his handgun for a second time. Sek’s head jerked backwards, spraying blood across the table and ceiling. He collapsed with smoke still billowing from the hole in his forehead.

  Klik screamed something incomprehensible and crawled out from under the table, clawing at the crumpled corpse that had once been her father. Jack stood impotently in the middle of the room, watching everything unfold in mounting horror.

  He could hear shouting outside in the refugee hall. The one remaining exit from the command room began to rattle on its hinges.

  Charon paused in the other doorway. He had to raise his voice to be heard above Klik’s mourning.

  “Last chance, Jack. Think of everything we’ve accomplished together already. Are you coming to Earth with me or not?”

  The was a big part of him that wanted to say yes. Despite everything he’d done, both to the automata and the Krettelians, Charon was still the only being in the whole galaxy who knew how to get Jack home. He’d been fighting for this opportunity for months. He’d risked being labelled an intergalactic terrorist, for crying out loud! But now, just when everything he wanted was finally within reach…

  Jack’s face contorted into a snarl. He shook his head.

  “Go screw yourself,” he said.

  “Suit yourself. Goodbye, Jack Bishop.”

  Charon slammed the iron door shut behind him.

  “What the absolute sheek was all that about?” screamed Rogan, marching over to Jack and grabbing him by the shoulders. “Do you have any idea of the mess you’ve gotten us all into?”

  Jack stared down at Sek’s lifeless body. Klik lay across him, pounding her fists against his chest.

  “I didn’t know,” he mumbled. “How was I supposed to know?”

  “This is not good,” said Tuner, indicating to the ruckus growing outside. “We should get moving…”

  “How were you supposed to know?” Rogan shook Jack roughly, holding him only inches from her face. “How were you supposed to know? You took on a stupid job for a desperate cause, all for your own selfish reasons, and look what’s come of it! What did you think was going to happen, Jack?”

  Jack continued to stare at Sek’s dead body. Not this, that was for sure.

  “Tuner’s right,” he said, tearing his eyes away. “We need to get out of here, now.”

  “I want to mock you for running away from your problems,” said Rogan, releasing Jack’s shoulders, “but right now that probably is the best course of action. Tuner – help me move the guard’s body.”

  “Shouldn’t we help everyone else?” said the little automata, pointing at the other door.

  “If what Charon said is true – and I’ve got no reason to think that it isn’t – they’re all going to dead in minutes. I wish we could help them, but we can’t. Not unless we want to join them.”

  Klik stood up, trembling. Krettelians didn’t cry tears, but her eyes looked sore all the same.

  “This is all your fault. You’re awful, the lot of you.”

  She stormed over towards the door that led out to the refugee hall.

  “My fault?” Jack laughed. He hadn’t meant to sound harsh but now the words were out, his rage followed in full flow. “I’m sorry, are you—”

  But she was already gone, unbolting the door and throwing it aside as if it were nothing but a beaded curtain.

  “Klik,” said Tuner, following her out. “Wait…”

  Rogan groaned and chased after him. Jack shut his eyes, counted to five to keep from screaming, and then did the same.

  13

  Dead Shoulders

  The scene was heartbreaking.

  Adult Krettelians clad in scrappy cloth woke their children and pulled them down from their bunks. The few possessions they had were hastily dumped into sacks. Everyone in the refugee hall was either shouting or crying.

  “This is a disaster,” Jack muttered to himself.

  He wandered through the chaos in a numb haze. The last time he’d been in the hall the Krettelian refugees had shrunk back from him in fear. Now they rushed past him as if he wasn’t even there.

  Jack pursed his lips. Something was off – something beyond the general aura of despair. The hall was chock full of panicked civilians. But where had all the guards gone?

  Klik was crouched beside a pair of terrified infants, trying to calm them down. She didn’t look very calm herself. Her black eyes were wide and glassy, her movements staggered and unbalanced. The children shrank back from her.

  Rogan tried to grab her by the shoulders while Tuner tugged at her cloak. She shrugged them off, angry and confused.

  The ancient sewer’s foundations shook. Plumes of dust pirouetted down from the stone ceiling. Screams from deep inside the neighbouring sewer pipes grew louder.

  They didn’t have time for this. They had to get back to the ship.

  “Rogan,” Jack shouted, his throat hoarse. She glanced up at him from across the hall. “We need to—”

  The westerly wall exploded in a cloud of bricks and rock. The blast threw Jack across the room. He landed in an ugly heap beside a busted computer system. Grit rained down on him. Jack coughed out of reflex, despite his helmet. His ears were ringing.

  Shaking his head clear, he pushed himself up onto his knees. The air was thick with dust and, on top of that, his vision had blurred from the impact. Yet he didn’t need to see clearly to know what was going on.

  The Mansa were here.

  He scrambled to his feet, clutching the broken computer terminal beside him for support. He peered through the smoke and debris, but he couldn’t make out Rogan or Tuner anywhere. Or Klik, either. What he could see were dozens of Krettelian bodies spread out across the shattered ground, their black eyes staring lifelessly at the pipes running overhead. His anger towards Klik vanished in an instant. He hoped she wasn’t amongst the dead.

  “Rogan? Tuner?” He realised he didn’t need to shout – he could contact them far more easily through his helmet’s comm channels instead. “Can either of you hear me?”

  A sharp burst of static filled his helmet. Jack switched it off before his ears started bleeding. He thought he heard one of their voices amongst the waves of white noise, but he couldn’t be sure. The Mansa must have been blocking all of their comms somehow.

  Lasers and plasma bolts peppered the crumbling brickwork down at the opposite end of the hall. Hiding behind the computer, Jack watched as a pair of Krettelian resistance fighters retreated from a connecting corridor, firing their antiquated rifles at unseen Mansa forces. There was no real battle of which to speak. The stream of lasers cut them into ribbons. The plasma bolts tore flesh from shell.

  Jack ducked back down, his hands shaking. He struggled to bring his breathing under control. He had to get out of there. But where the hell were the automata?

  He dared to poke his head out again.

  There were survivors – he could see that now the rubble had settled. Refugees and unarmed members of the resistance crouched behind the bunks and cabinets, trembling in fear, knowing full well what fate had in store for them.

  Slavery… if they were lucky.

  But if Rogan and Tuner were still alive, Jack couldn’t see them. Still, he couldn’t see their shatter
ed metal torsos anywhere. That gave him some small hope.

  He tried to reach them over comms again. He got nothing but static.

  “Goddammit.”

  He knew he should go look for them amongst the wreckage and the survivors. Hell, he wanted to. Desperately. But there was no mistaking the sound of marching footsteps approaching from beyond the grenade-blasted wall or ignoring the dozen red targeting lasers that swayed to and fro between Jack and the rest of the hall.

  The elite Mansa forces were only seconds away. He’d seen what they did to the Krettelian guards. He couldn’t imagine being treated any different if he stayed.

  He hesitated, then made up his mind.

  “Sorry, guys,” he whispered, before sprinting back into the command room and slamming the iron door shut behind him.

  He turned around, accidentally kicked Sek’s body lying on the floor, and felt a cold cocktail of pity, revulsion and horror wash over him. He hurriedly pulled his boot away.

  The idiot had brought this nightmare on himself. Responsibility for the collapse of the Krettelian resistance lay on his dead shoulders. If he hadn’t made a deal with an intergalactic criminal like Charon…

  Jack sighed and swallowed the rage down. It wasn’t helping. Like Rogan said – desperate people do desperate things. Sek may have known that Jack was being used, but he couldn’t have known that Charon would betray the resistance to such a catastrophic extent.

  Still. Perhaps he shouldn’t have been so blinded by his own ambitions.

  Jack sidestepped Sek’s body and darted to the door opposite. If he could reach the outer wall through the drainage tunnels, perhaps the Adeona could risk flying across the desert to pick him up. Jack turned the circular handle and yanked at the door, but the dead Krettelian guard’s body still blocked it from opening.

  Jack jumped as another burst of laser fire rattled off in the hall outside. He cursed. There wasn’t time to drag the guard’s body away.

  That’s when he remembered the third door – the one through which Charon had made his escape moments before.

  Jack went the long way around the table to avoid Sek’s body and gave the door a panicked rattle. He half expected Charon to have locked it behind him, or to have somehow welded it to its frame, or something, but the handle turned easily and the door swung open with a reluctant groan.

  Another explosion, another clatter of rubble in the hall outside. Jack hesitated in the doorway. What little Krettelian forces remained were putting up one hell of a fight.

  But it wasn’t a fight they had any hope of winning.

  He turned and ran down the tunnel beyond, following in Charon’s footsteps.

  If it hadn’t been for the light filters in Jack’s helmet, he never would have found his way. The tunnels were narrow, falling to bits and shrouded in suffocating darkness. Neither were they signposted – Jack had to choose which way to go at junctions through guesswork alone.

  He tried to orient himself so that he was headed back towards the subterranean aqueduct system and therefore the sewer tunnels leading out to the desert, but even with the compass on his heads-up display he soon became hopelessly turned around.

  Where in the world had Charon escaped to?

  After what must have been fifteen minutes of desperate wandering or more, Jack’s tunnel concluded at a small, circular chamber that rose through the rock above. A rusty, half-dilapidated ladder followed the chamber up towards a small but undeniable patch of light.

  Up meant out. And out meant nowhere near the Mansa forces sweeping through the resistance base.

  He grabbed the first set of rungs and started to climb.

  The ancient rungs held up better than the muscles in his arms did.

  Jack reached the end of the ladder and, with great effort, rolled onto the stone floor at the top of the chamber. He lay there for a minute with his hair plastered across his forehead, too tired to care about running anymore, willing the ache in his arms to go away.

  He hoped Rogan and Tuner had got out. He felt more guilty with every step he took away from them. But if they had escaped, if they had found a way back towards the drainage tunnels…

  …then they would reach the Adeona long before he did. They might even leave the planet without him, especially if they suspected he was dead.

  He needed to keep moving. And he needed to get hold of the ship.

  He sat up. The structure into which he’d climbed was hexagonal, classical in design, and built from a combination of sandstone and glass. None of the pillars or walls had fallen into disrepair, but it was clear from the moss growing in the cracks that nobody had tended to its interior in quite some time. Jack suspected the furry, green goop was a similar species to that which infected so much of the abandoned sewer system.

  Klik had said the pipes ran much further beneath Ankhir than just the limits of the old city. No doubt that was how the resistance used to get around. Could it be that he’d escaped to a whole other district?

  He tried reaching Rogan and Tuner through the comms again. No answer. He tried the ship instead.

  “Hey, Jack.” Brackitt sounded cheerful. “How’s it all going?”

  “Everything’s gone to…” Jack gritted his teeth. “Sek screwed us. Not intentionally, I don’t think, but he was working with Charon. He told the Mansa where the resistance base was. Rogan and Tuner, they’re… I can’t reach them. I think I’m going to need picking up.”

  Brackitt went quiet for a moment. When he did reply, his voice was calm and professional.

  “I can’t risk landing inside the city, you know.”

  “I am aware,” said Jack, nodding to himself. “I’ll find a way to get outside the city walls and then… well, just get ready and stay on comms, all right?”

  “Gotcha. Jack, about the others…?”

  Jack sighed and hung his head.

  “I don’t know. Try to get hold of them if you can, but… I don’t know.”

  “I’ll do my best. Stay safe, Jack.”

  Jack cut the comms and stood up. The entrance to the forgotten chamber was open. He now knew that the light he’d seen at the top of the ladder had been the product of yellow lamps hanging from the pillars, not the sun. He slowly approached the archway. Beyond it lay the sound of running water.

  Squinting as he passed the last of the bright lamps, he found the source of the noise. The entrance to the structure was hidden behind a wide, gushing waterfall. He tentatively stuck his hand under the torrent and tested its pressure. It was heavy, but not painful. He took a deep breath – he couldn’t shake the habit even though his helmet was waterproof – and pushed through to the other side.

  He stepped off the ledge and immediately plunged into a deep body of water.

  Froth and bubbles rushed past Jack’s visor as he scrambled to orient himself. The power of the waterfall pushed him forward and spun him in circles. But then, just as he was starting to panic, the water around him calmed. The pool was a transparent, crystal blue – made so by the dozens of marine lights lining the tiled bottom only a few metres beneath his feet.

  Embarrassed, he swam over to the pool’s edge.

  His helmet broke the surface of the water, and through the running droplets he saw that the decorative waterfall fell from a much greater height than he would have imagined – seventy, maybe eighty metres above the pool itself, running off the edge of an ornate and entirely separate plateau. The pool was far smaller than it should have been given the volume of water entering it every second, leading Jack to believe that the Mansa had developed some way of quickly pumping it back up to the source.

  The surrounding buildings told Jack little about where he was in Ankhir. Those in his most immediate vicinity were older and more classical in design, but the skyscrapers looming behind them were definitely of the golden and less gravitationally-inclined variety.

  Stars twinkled innocently in the black sky. Night had fallen again since they’d first broken into the city. Jack bobbed in the water as h
e searched for patrolling guards… but the plaza was deserted.

  He glanced back at the chamber. It was barely visible behind the waterfall. Presumably the Mansa had once needed easy sewer access for their Krettelian slaves without sacrificing the glorious aesthetics of their city. Well, they’d sure done a good job. So good that nobody had bothered to go look down there in years.

  Jack pulled himself out of the pool and dripped against the tiles and dirt. The plaza was quiet. Too quiet. He was grateful for the lack of guards, but the lack of citizens gave him the creeps. Perhaps the residents of Ankhir had been sent an order to stay indoors. The silence was a greater warning than any alarm or siren could ever be.

  Still, he couldn’t hang out there by the pool all night. He had to find a way out of the city and then get as far from this godforsaken planet as he could.

  East. The Adeona was out towards the east.

  He chose the most easterly alleyway and started to run again.

  The ancient architecture continued on for about half a mile or so – long enough that Jack began to wonder if he was back in the old city again. Despite how far their technology had progressed, many of the Mansa still chose to live in and work out of buildings made from sandstone. None of it looked poor or run-down, by any means. It was simply something they wanted to do, as a way to honour their ancient, revered culture and history.

  Jack harboured a suspicion that the interiors were far more technologically advanced than the exteriors would have him believe, but he couldn’t see inside any of them. All their shutters were down, their doors locked.

  But then he turned a corner, and finally he saw a sign of the Ankhir he knew from his first trip to the city – wide streets lined with tropical trees and bushes, and a building of white marble and gold, rising improbably high into the deserted night sky. Great banners of red cloth hung from its uppermost floors, billowing in the wind.

  This tower, at least, had the common decency to remain rooted to the ground.