Thief of Stars (Final Dawn, Book 2)

by T W M Ashford

  “Do you see this, Jack? Without the Core, we’ll never get home. There’s no way in hell I’m giving it back to the Mansa.”

  Jack took a deep breath and glared at Everett through tired, tear-brimmed eyes.

  “You don’t have to give it to them. We will.”

  Everett’s laugh was so short and dry, it sounded almost like a dog’s bark.

  “Yeah? And you think you can take it off me?”

  “Don’t have to. I assume you haven’t looked inside yet.”

  “Why—” Everett’s eyes grew wide as he frantically twisted the two halves of the metal ball. “Why would I…?”

  There was a click and a hiss as the two halves separated. They slid apart to reveal the transparent tube within.

  It was empty.

  “No,” said Everett, his mouth quickly switching a gasp of shock for a snarl. “How did you…?”

  “Swap them? I didn’t. The active one has been back on our ship the whole time.”

  “Why?”

  “Come on, Everett. You’re a smart man. You didn’t think I’d hand the Core over to the resistance without some leverage, did you?”

  “My dad would have been so pissed,” said Klik, shaking her head. “Not as pissed as you, though…”

  “You idiot!” screamed Everett, spit flying. “You goddamn moron! Do you have any idea how—”

  The room trembled as one of the Mansa battlecruisers launched a small missile into the flank of Everett’s ship. Jack felt the whole craft rock to one side, despite it already sitting ten feet inside the earth. A piercing alarm rang out just as a second rocket hit them, caving part of the ceiling in.

  “What in the name of the galaxy are they doing?” yelled Tuner, racing to the locked doors behind them. “I told them we had Charon as a prisoner! We were supposed to make a trade!”

  A third missile hit. The window at the front of the ship started to crack. Rogan abandoned her post to help Tuner get the doors open.

  “You’ll pay for this, Jack.” With the empty Core in one hand, Everett darted to his desk and grabbed his helmet with the other. “Once all of humanity is safe, I’ll make sure each and every one of them knows who tried to stop me.”

  “You won’t get the chance,” Klik snapped. She aimed her plasma rifle at Everett just as he put his hand on a scanner planted on the wall.

  “No!”

  Jack shoved Klik’s rifle aside just as she pulled the trigger. He yanked his hand back as he felt a burst of hot energy radiate through its metal casing. The plasma bolt missed Everett’s head by no more than half a foot.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Klik screamed, raising her rifle for a second shot.

  The scanner under Everett’s hand glowed red for a moment, and then the whole segment of wall shot aside to reveal a secret, white-walled chamber beyond. Everett rushed inside and the door slammed shut behind him. Klik swore and threw her gun to the ground.

  “He’s the only other human left,” said Jack, the panic in his chest rising. “I didn’t…”

  He shrugged.

  “I didn’t want to be alone again.”

  “What did you think the Mansa were planning to do once they had him? Treat him like some foreign diplomat?” She punched him in the shoulder. “Now he’s gonna get away thanks to you!”

  Klik reached the doors just as Rogan and Tuner managed to ram them open. Everett’s ship rattled as it survived a fourth missile. If the sound of groaning metal was anything to go by, it wouldn’t survive many more.

  Jack screamed through his gritted teeth hard enough to burn his throat raw, then raced down the corridor after them.

  There’d been no fighting to escape the ship. The Rakletts were in just as big a hurry to leave as they were. They may have been stupid, but they knew when they were beat.

  Rockets continued to rupture the hull of the ship even as Jack and the crew climbed out one of the many open airlocks.

  “They’re toying with us,” said Rogan. The ship had listed onto its starboard side, and she had to help Tuner climb down. “I think they’re trying to drive Charon out. Or us. They have the artillery to blow the whole moon up with a single shot, if they wanted.”

  “Don’t be so sure they won’t.” Klik pointed a trembling finger up at the sky. “Look.”

  Half a dozen battlecruisers had been taking pot shots at Charon’s ship. Now the largest amongst them settled into position about a hundred and fifty metres above it. A spinning plasma cannon the width of an Olympic swimming pool yawned open on its underbelly and started glowing red.

  “They’re going to torch the whole rainforest,” said Rogan, hardly believing what she was seeing. “Run!”

  They sprinted into the dense jungle. Jack could barely hear his own heavy footsteps above the roar of the armada’s thrusters and the crackling of forest fire. The canopies of the trees were alight. Embers danced like fireflies in the dark dawn light.

  He tripped on a root and smacked his skull on a moss-covered rock. His head might have split open if it hadn’t been for his helmet. He jumped to his feet, ran a couple of metres, and then realised he’d dropped his rifle in the fall.

  Oh well. He carried on sprinting. No sense in going back for it now.

  Four seconds later, the forest turned the colour of autumn red.

  A storm wind rushed through the trees. Rogan grabbed Tuner to keep him from being blown away. Klik hunkered behind the shelter of a large rock. Jack almost fell for a second time – he only kept himself upright by holding onto the thin, rubbery trunk of a tree bent double from the blast.

  And yet the storm didn’t pass. Jack turned to face the ship again, and his mouth dropped open as a harsh orange light swam over the glass of his visor.

  A visceral beam of fire and plasma speared down from the underside of the battlecruiser above, gutting Charon’s alien ship and sending shards of metal hull sheering through the tree line. Even with the suit’s adaptive visor and temperature regulators, Jack found the bright, frenzied light and searing heat overwhelming.

  The ground beneath the ship ruptured as the beam continued to dig, throwing tremors through the earth and chunks of rock into the air.

  “That’s just a fraction of the power a Solar Core can provide,” Rogan screamed as Jack inched his way towards them. “Still glad you almost stole one for Charon?”

  “I was never glad about stealing it,” groaned Jack, the trunk of the tree swaying, his feet slipping in the mud. “I just thought I was doing it for the right reasons.”

  “Goddammit, Jack!” Klik shoved him back around. “I told you he would get away with everything, didn’t I?”

  A tiny escape capsule had shot out from the wreckage of the ship, streaking the sky with its thin, white jet plume. It rocketed towards the edge of the moon’s atmosphere faster than any personal spacecraft Jack had seen before.

  “He hasn’t got away with anything yet,” Jack yelled back at her. The bottom dropped out of his stomach. “Surely the Mansa will…”

  There was a flash of fire as the escape capsule broke through the upper atmosphere and then suddenly it blinked away into subspace.

  “…shoot it down.”

  “I didn’t know pods that size could even carry skip drives,” said Rogan, her words sluggish with disbelief.

  “Erm, guys?” Tuner hopped down from Rogan’s arms. The wind from the beam had lost some of its initial strength. “Perhaps we could marvel at the alien engineering another time, yes?”

  “Brackitt?” Jack yelled in his comms as they started running deeper into the jungle again. “Adeona? Either of you still there?”

  “Of course we are,” came Brackitt’s voice. It was hard to hear him; the plasma beam was kicking up a lot of microwave static. “I assume you’re seeing all this?”

  “Seeing this? We were very nearly in this. Be ready to leave, okay? We’re on our way.”

  “We’ll come and pick you up,” the Adeona announced.

  “No!�
� Rogan’s voice cut across the comms. “Stay where you are! The armada is sure to shoot you back down if they see you taking off. We’ll be fine.”

  Jack turned to Tuner as they both clambered over a fallen log.

  “You confirmed the trade, didn’t you?”

  “With Scara Li Ka himself,” replied Tuner, struggling to climb up. “Though that was back when we thought we’d have both Charon and the Core to bargain with, of course.”

  “Don’t worry about that. We’ll reach out again to confirm once we’re back on board the ship.” Jack pulled him down the other side of the log. “Honestly, buddy. I don’t know where we’d all be without you.”

  “Dead.” Tuner dusted himself off. “Almost certainly dead.”

  The fire spread quickly behind them. Terrified mice and reptiles rushed past them through the muddy undergrowth. Pushing through the growing swarm of embers and smoke, they came to the clearing with the inverted stone temple. The tremors in the earth had broken some of its base away, and the temple was listing uneasily. Sinkholes swallowed the ground around it and then erupted in giant boiling geysers of molten mantle.

  “Why are they doing this?” asked Klik, stopping to stare at the groaning, crumbling structure.

  “To erase everything that happened,” replied Jack, grabbing her arm and pulling her along. “I imagine they’ll want to erase us once they have their Core back, too.”

  Klik wouldn’t unglue her eyes from the temple, but she allowed Jack to pull her away from it just the same. She was coughing heavily by the time they caught up with Rogan inside the tree line. It was hard enough just seeing through the smoke; Jack couldn’t imagine what it was like having to breathe the stuff in as well.

  “Still got ages to go,” she wheezed, squinting through the dense forest ahead.

  “We’ll make it.” Rogan peered anxiously over their shoulders. “Where’s Tuner?”

  Jack’s face fell. “I thought he was with you.”

  “Why would you think that? You were just with him!”

  “But—”

  There came a great quake within the moon. Jack dodged to one side as a charred branch came crashing down from the burning rainforest canopy. Rogan quickly pulled Klik out of harm’s way.

  “Stay here,” said Jack, waving them back. “I’ll go get him.”

  He switched through the optic filters of his visor as he sprinted back into the clearing. It was no use. There was too much smoke – and, thanks to the massive plasma beam slowly cutting through the forest, far too much light – for night vision to have any effect. And searching for a heat signature was just as futile. As an automata, Tuner didn’t really have one – certainly nothing detectable amongst the inferno billowing around them.

  “Tuner?” He tried the comms but the static had grown so bad that shouting was his only option. “Where are you, buddy?”

  His suit was working extra hard to keep him from overheating. He passed the corpse of a small, possum-like creature. Its skin was blistering. The Mansa’s relentless glassing of the Krettelian moon was raising the local temperature far beyond survivable levels. If he didn’t find Tuner fast…

  “Jack?” came a small and confused voice from over to his right. “I tried heading back to the ship but my internal compass is going haywire, and now I’m stuck…”

  “Stay where you are,” Jack yelled. He fought against the howling, scolding winds. He heard the crash of a tree falling unnervingly close to him. Or maybe it was another geyser blowing. “Keep talking so I know where you are.”

  “Did you not hear me? I said I’m stuck!”

  “You’re stuck?” Rogan’s voice cut through the screeching fuzz. “—coming to—Jack can’t—pull free—”

  “Oh, give me a break,” he groaned.

  The winds blew away enough of the smoke for Jack to spot Tuner about half a dozen metres from his own position. One of Tuner’s little metal feet had slipped into a patch of bubbling mud and become stuck as it hardened into rock.

  The colossal statue of another ancient Krettelian warrior stood behind him. This one was intact… for now. Jack watched as another tremor from the beam caused it to sway dangerously on its decrepit stone pedestal.

  Rogan emerged from a curtain of smouldering ferns opposite. She saw Jack first, then spotted Tuner stuck in the dirt between them. They both sprinted over to him.

  “Sorry, guys,” he said, trying to wriggle free.

  “Stay still,” Rogan snapped. “Bolts. The ground can’t decide if it wants to be mud or glass. I’m going to have to dig you out…”

  Yet another earthquake rumbled beneath them. The rock around them began to crack. Jack stepped back as a neighbouring tree got uprooted by the emerging fissure. Geysers erupted like mortar rounds in the near-distance.

  Jack looked back up the way they came. What he saw made his bladder go weak.

  The battlecruiser above had changed its course. Intentionally or not, the plasma beam screaming from its belly was carving a slow path through the tropical forest towards them. The trees were engulfed by a towering wall of fire. The ancient temple that had filled Klik with such awe and wonder was caught by the blast and obliterated.

  “Rogan…”

  “I’m going as fast as I can!”

  Jack felt sweat run down his temples. The horizon behind them consisted almost entirely of fire, erasing the surface of Krett metre by metre. He turned back towards the forest ahead. He found that view only marginally less terrifying.

  They’d made such little ground. Even if they got Tuner free, they were still way too far from the ship.

  He heard a sound like a glacier breaking apart. Jack craned his neck to watch a long, dark crack snake its way up the Krettelian statue, from foot to tip of raised spear. Surely Rogan heard it too, though she was too busy trying to break open the earth around Tuner to react.

  “Rogan…"

  “Guys?” Steam was rising off Tuner’s metal body now. He desperately looked to each of them in turn. “I think I’m starting to get scared.”

  “I can’t…” No matter how much Tuner thrashed from side to side or how hard Rogan punched the diamond-hard earth trapping his foot, it was no good. “I can’t get you out!”

  Jack could barely open his eyes, the world had grown so bright. The sweat inside his helmet started to sizzle. Rogan’s metal body glowed a devilish red.

  “Just do something! Hurry!”

  “How, Jack? There’s no leverage! He’ll tear in half if I pull him!”

  “Then tear—”

  The pedestal cracked and shattered. The enormous statue swayed towards them like a felled oak.

  Jack had only a second to look at Tuner before spurring into action. It was difficult to read the poor automata’s expressions at the best of times, but he thought – he hoped – it was acceptance he saw flash across his friend’s eyes.

  Just as long as it hadn’t been fear.

  He leapt towards Rogan, activating the air thrusters in his suit almost without thinking. He managed to push her a good couple of metres before they ploughed into the dirt together.

  The statue crashed down where they’d stood, crushing Tuner beneath its fractured mass.

  “No!”

  Rogan shoved Jack off her. She sprinted back to the rubble, throwing chunks of stone aside as if they were nothing.

  Jack sat up, overcome by a numb, sickening horror. He watched Rogan tear through the earth, a black and desperate silhouette against a backdrop of nuclear flame.

  Tuner was gone.

  No. Not just gone. He was dead.

  Jack rose to his feet – a task made difficult by his weak knees and next to impossible thanks to the thundering plasma beam now only a few hundred metres away – and stumbled over to where Rogan knelt in the dirt.

  Cupped in her hands was the dented, sparking remains of Tuner’s cassette-shaped head.

  “I’m sorry,” Jack gasped. Smoke was finding a way into his helmet. The air filters were starting to fail.
“But we need to go.”

  “We should have stayed slaves,” she whispered to herself, staring at Tuner’s glassy, unseeing lenses. The cracked soil beneath her started to break apart. She didn’t appear to notice.

  Jack grabbed her by the arm. She looked up at him with miserable eyes. Jack hesitated.

  He’d seen Rogan angry, ecstatic, even afraid.

  But he’d never seen her show despair.

  “We need to go,” he repeated, softly. “Now.”

  Rogan stood up, Tuner’s head still cupped in her hands like some sort of holy relic – almost as if it carried a special reverence. Perhaps it did to Rogan. To Jack it looked more like a morbid trophy.

  Grief is a terribly personal thing, he supposed. He would mourn his friend his own way… if they survived.

  They hurried back to the tree line – or what remained of it following the rapidly spreading fires, at least – splashing through the fresh puddles of boiling mud as geysers continued to blow up from beneath the moon’s surface. New fissures tore open across its crust. Ponds evaporated in an instant. The forest moaned as trees got uprooted and screamed as its critters perished in the flames.

  “Klik? Klik!” Jack coughed and spluttered as more smoke seeped into his helmet. “Where the hell is she?”

  “Maybe she ran ahead,” Rogan sighed. She sounded distracted, far away, oblivious to the killer sun beam nipping at their heels. “Or maybe the smoke got to her.”

  “Klik!”

  Nothing. Jack frantically searched the nearby foliage, most of which had already been reduced to shrivelled roots and ash. He couldn’t find her body anywhere.

  From ahead of them came another rumbling sound, barely audible above the roar of the plasma beam behind. Jack felt the last dregs of hope drip away.

  Another Mansa super-weapon. Of course.

  He went back to Rogan and put what he hoped was a comforting arm around her. Comforting for him, at least. There was no use running anymore. All they could do was grit their teeth and wait for it to arrive.

  The beam, the mistakes of the past week, death – all of it.

  He was just about to shut his eyes when he caught a glimpse of the approaching threat through the trees. He tapped Rogan on the shoulder.