Cast of Nova
S. J. McLaughlin
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
© 2018 S. J. McLaughlin
All Rights Reserved.
Chapter 1
A kinetic blast struck the back of Avani’s house. The structure splintered inwards and folded onto itself in a mess of rubble that stacked against the front half of the building. Avani’s room was the furthest from the back and the only one spared from being completely demolished. Yet, the shockwave had broken in the back wall and hurled every loose object across the room.
Avani had been asleep at the start of the attack and she hadn’t awoken until her bed flipped over and pinned her to the floor. Wayward shrapnel rained down, sticking into the underside of her bed and the floor around it.
A wooden spike landed inches from her chest, sticking deep into the hardwood floor. She turned her head and stared at the spike, thinking of how close she’d come to being impaled.
How close she’d come to dying and leaving her daughter to fend for herself.
Once the room settled, she crawled out from the under the bed, pushing past the balled-up blankets and sheets, and pulled herself across the floor until she was free. Her hair had soaked with blood from cuts on her head, making her bangs stick to her face and obstruct her sight.
She brushed the stay hairs away, tucking them behind her ear and wiping the blood from her forehead.
Her walk had a limp. She was bruised and scraped all over, but wasn’t seriously injured. She could fight through the mild pain.
She looked around the room, squinting through the dim light and wondering why the room wasn’t in complete darkness. Not perfectly lit, but enough of a glow to make out blurry silhouettes.
Nau Cedik, the planet she’d been forced to live on, had no moons. When the suns were behind them, the planet was cast in total darkness. At night, she shouldn’t have been able to see at all, and yet she could see the far corners with relative ease.
She was careful to step over the debris scattered across the floor as she limped across the room, stopping next to the torn hole in the wall. She looked out onto the dark mist of Benith Station. The cold night air brushed against her bare legs as she looked out onto the familiar forest that wrapped the town. Gunfire popped like coals and she heard the rushing of ships above her.
The Union had attacked. Avani never truly thought they would, yet she was seeing it with her own eyes.
Benith Station was one of the more remote stations set up by Dek-Norman and it stood as more of a reserve than it ever did a target.
Avani swallowed and felt a tremble as she gazed outwards into the cold night. The orange glow came from the flames that burned the trees in the distance, across at the end of the forest next to the endless marsh of Nau Cedik.
They set the forest on fire, Avani thought, unable to look away from the flames. Even if Dek-Norman holds the Union off, the fire will burn down most of the buildings.
She was paralyzed with fear. Her legs were shaking and eyes spread wide.
As much as her body fought against her, she knew she had to move. The gunfire was loudening and the flames spread quickly. She ran back into the room, taking a moment to dress herself in the only clothes she could find in such a mess.
“Mira?” Avani yelled, trying to get her daughter’s attention through all the noise.
She zipped up her jacket and tied her hair back with one of the elastics from her wrist.
“Mira?” Avani squinted through the dim light, trying to see where she was. It was getting easier to see with each passing moment. Either her eyes were adjusting to the dark, or the flames were nearing. She couldn’t tell which, but wasn’t about to waste time checking.
She put on her shoes and called for her daughter once more. No answer.
Avani must have spun herself around, because Mira’s bed wasn’t where it usually was. Instead, it’d been thrown across the room, toppled over and propped against the wall with shrapnel stuck into the under-frame.
Her blood ran hot couldn’t and she couldn’t catch her own breath. Avani hadn’t thought of Mira being caught up in the explosion as well. She wasn’t sure if it was the tiredness, the fight, or her own metal safeguards that kept her from imagining her daughter in peril.
Mira’s bed was resting against the wall like a ramp, underside upwards, mattress bent over, and wireframe snapped out of place.
Avani grabbed the frame and pulled it off the wall, letting the heavy mass fall aside to shake the room on impact. She pulled off the box-spring and the mattress to find her daughter on the ground, curled up and shaking with her hair a fuzzy mess.
Mira was only ten. Her small size had kept her from being crushed by the bed-frame. Aside from a few bumps she was fine.
Avani helped Mira to her feet and helped brush the dirt and splinters off her night gown.
“What’s going on?” Mira asked.
“We need to leave,” Avani said, pulling on her daughter’s arm to get her to the doorway, which thankfully wasn’t on the side of the building that had collapsed. She tossed Mira her boots and told her to put them on as quick as possible.
The gunfire worsened. The sounds of kinetic explosions were constant, and Avani knew they were running out of time. The room was glowing orange and she could hear the whip and flicker of flames just outside.
She had to practically yank on Mira’s arm to get her out the door and away from the house. Mira kept asking what was happening, and why they had to leave, and if the girl in the other room was alright, and others questions Avani didn’t have the time or the patience to answer. They had to get to the safehouses at the end of town, but if the Union was already in the base, they’d never get there without a way to way to defend themselves.
The street was damp from the midnight rain. The ground turned to a muddy gravel that stuck to the bottoms of their boots and made it hard to run. The wind blew cold and wet. It never stopped raining on Nau Cedik, but it often calmed to a mist-like haze. Mira kept brushing her hair out from her face as the whipped it around in the breeze. Avani could already hear her daughter’s teeth chattering and felt her hand shaking against hers. Mira was only in her night-gown, legs exposed under a dress that went down to her ankles.
They stopped. Avani took off her jacket and put it on Mira, zipping it up and pulling her hands through the sleeves. It was a size too big for her, and hung like a dress, but it’d keep her warm.
“We’re going to die this time, aren't we?” Mira asked, wiggling into the coat and letting it move into place.
“Not if you keep quiet, sweetie,” Avani said. She looked down both ends of the street, trying to see through the night that was only illuminated by the roar of the fire that had now spread onto the wooden houses. She knew where the safehouses were. At the end of town, near the entrance where they’d pack the civilians into a bunker like cattle until
the battle was over. If they were going to make it through the night, it would be in a safehouse.
She tugged on Mira’s arm. “This way.”
There was a munitions locker across the street. A quaint building. Four walls, a doorway, and a flat roof barely an inch thick. It would never protect them, a bullet could get through those walls, but weapons were stored there and that’s all Avani cared about.
She kicked in the door and pushed Mira inside. Avani flicked the light switch and the room lit up one bulb at a time. Ceiling high metal lockers wrapped the four walls, the only gap being for the door. In the middle of the room were rows of wooden benches, arranged in a strange maze-like pattern.
The Dek-Norman troops had been here not too long ago. Uniforms, armor, and weapons were taken in a blitz once they knew the Union had attacked. Clothing and weapon packages were torn and scattered across the floor. The scent of sweat still lingered in the air along with the stale smell of artificially heated air.
“Mom?”
Avani hurried over and tore through the lockers. She searched each shelf, ripping through uniforms trying to find an EG-pack. The troops had already taken most. There weren’t weapons, armor, or radios to be found.
She kept searching, tearing through each one at a frantic pace. Opening and closing doors quick enough to keep knocking her knuckles on the shelves.
By the twentieth locker, she was getting desperate.
“That’s the Union attacking us, isn’t it?” Mira said. She sat on one of the benches, pushing aside discarded shirts and socks to clear a spot. “You said that they all fight in space. Why are they here?”
“Dek-Norman must have done something,” Avani mumbled, half hearing her. She stopped for a second. A locker packed with unopened EG-packs. This made her smile for the first time that night. She took two of the plastic-wrapped kits over to Mira and showed them to her. “You remember how to put these together, right? Like your father showed you?”
An explosion rumbled nearby, the shockwave intense enough to feel it in the ground. Avani’s heart raced. The gunfire was louder than before, and she could smell smoke faint in the air. She calmed herself long enough to tear open the plastic packaging and pour the two unbuilt EG-packs onto the floor.
“Gotta put them together,” Avani said. “Don’t need to make ‘em from scratch, just put ‘em together real simple.”
Mira sat on the floor and looked the two kits over. An EG-pack came in four parts. The battery, the cord, the converter, and the barrel. These packs came with instructions, but Mira didn’t need them. She was smart like that and assembled the packs in four minutes. One was for her mother and the other was her own.
Avani put hers on first. Hooked to her belt, with the battery on her left hip and the gun on her right, the two held together by an unstable copper cord that hung across her front.
Mira stood as patient as she could while Avani put the EG-pack’s battery in her daughter’s jacket pocket, and put the gun in the hand, holding it soft and looking her in the eye. Such a cute kid. Avani saw herself in Mira. She was only ten, but already looking like her mother. Avani put on her best “it’s going to be okay” smile and said, “Remember what I told you?”
“Don’t think, just shoot.” Mira sighed. She put the gun in her other pocket and crossed her arms. “I remember, Mom."
Avani grabbed her daughter’s hands, not letting her pull them away, and stared her in the eye. “Listen to me.”
“I am.”
“No,” Avani said. “Listen to me. You’re not going to die here.”
“I know.”
“Say it.”
“Mom…”
“Say it!”
“I’m not going to die here,” Mira said.
Avani gave her daughter a kiss before bringing her back to the door. She peeked out, looking down the street and trying to see through the smoke.
“We run for the end of town,” Avani said. “Get to the safehouses and hope they’ll let us in and hope the Union hasn’t got to them yet.”
“But there’s people out there shooting,” Mira said. “I can hear guns.”
“We have to,” Avani said. She tugged on Mira’s arm to try to pull her out the door, but she wouldn’t budge. “There’s too many people here who would kill us. Dek-Norman can keep us safe.”
“I wanna stay here.”
“You don’t,” Avani said. “We’re trapped in the middle of a battle with half the system on each side.”
“But why would they look in here? I don’t wanna go out.”
“If we stay, we’re gonna die,” Avani said. “Ain’t no way ‘round that.”
“But…”
She yanked on Mira’s arm. “Do what your mother tells you!”
Mira almost fell over on the way out. She kept her footing and trailed behind her mother, who was running slower than she could for Mira’s sake.
The streets weren’t as clear as Avani had hoped. The flames had taken most of the forest, surrounding the town in a net of fire. Smoke had taken the streets and sunken into fog. She couldn’t see farther than a few feet around her, meaning they had to run blind, not sure if they were going in a straight direction or not. Avani tried to kept away from where the gunfire was the loudest, but it was hard to tell where they were shooting from.
Through the smoke she saw a wall. Avani skidded to a stop, her daughter almost bumping into her. They looked up at the tall metal structure in front of them. A building with no visible doorways that extended far to both sides of them. It was meant for safe transport from one station to the next, but now served as a barrier between them and safety.
Avani thought she’d been running straight the whole time, but now she knew she was lost. This wasn’t supposed to be here, she thought, looking around for any kind of landmark that count orient her. She ran down the length of the wall, trying to find a doorway, but all she found was a small window that was locked shut.
That’s when she heard the footsteps. The sloshing and skidding of mud, and the rattling of armor and weapons. She spun around and saw a group of silhouettes approaching from the fog. Five dark blurs through the gray cloud of smoke.
“They can’t,” Avani whispered.
“What is it?” Mira asked, tugging on Avani’s shirt.
The window will have to do.
Avani took off her coat and rolled it around her hand, tightening it into fist. She punched the window, only to bounce off harmlessly. She cursed under her breath and drew her EG-pack. She flicked on the power and shot the glass with enough heat to warp it, then smashed the window and broke off as much of the glass around the frame as she could.
She grabbed the window-frame and hoisted herself up. Her head fit through, but her shoulders knocked against the frame and stopped her. Shit. Avani twisted herself, trying to find a way through, but she was a few inches too wide to fit.
The only escape was through the window, but she was too broad to fit through. She was aboard ready boil over, until she looked at her daughter, eyes wide and looking back up with a passive-terror that made Avani’s throat swell up. The window might have been too small for Avani, but it was big enough for a child.
Time seemed to slow down, if only for a moment. She never wanted Mira. Her husband had given her to Avani a few years before his death, and she had resented him for it. But now, Avani knew why she’d been given Mira. If Avani never saw a day past twenty-five, Mira would live far longer than that. It was a way to letting Avani have some sort of impact on the system. Some kind of legacy beyond dying in a muddy swamp.
“Get in the building,” Avani said.
Mira looked at the small window, glass shards still sticking from the frame, and shook her head. “It’s too small.”
“I don’t give a shit,” Avani said. She lifted her daughter up and pushed her through the window feet first. The glass cut her, and the fall hit harder than Avani would have liked, but she’d be safe in there. A Dek-Norman building that wouldn’t catch fire. Eve
n if the Union got in, Mira was smart enough to hide.
Avani heard a click. She spun around, her back now facing the wall. The soldiers were no longer blurs, but defined figures close enough to see the guns pointed at her. The smoke was thick and the night was too dim to tell if they were Dek-Norman or Union.
“Which side are you on?” the center soldier said. The voice was male and gentler than Avani would have expected.
Avani looked back at the window. The night was too dark to see inside, but against the reflection of the glass shards she saw a pupil. A tiny black dot letting her know Mira was safe. Keep quiet and they won’t find you, Avani thought, hoping that her daughter somehow heard.
She couldn’t tell which uniforms the soldiers were wearing. Her bad eyes, and the smoke, and the blur from the heat, made it impossible to know.
Tell us!” the center solider said. “Where is your allegiance?”
Tears welled up in her eyes. She didn’t know. Any wrong answer would end her life. She reached for her EG-pack. Not to grab it, but an instinctive lean for safety. That was all it took for them to spray her with bullets.
Chapter 2
His visit to the bridge of the Morana felt long despite only being a few minutes.
Kendal hated everything about the bridge. Aside from the bleak gray floors and the lights that were too dim to erase all shadows, the gravity was wrong and the air too cold for his liking. The only sounds were the shuffling of seats and the faint presses of buttons on keyboards, and it was a strangely distant and impersonal place. No one talked and only quick glances were exchanged instead of actual eye contact.
They had called him during his lunch break. The communicator on his belt lit up and beeped while he was halfway through eating. He scoffed down the bite in his mouth and looked at what was so important they needed to interrupt him during his time off.
You’re needed on the bridge as soon as possible—Officer Vernan.
Kendal knew that as soon as possible meant he’d be in shit if he didn’t pack up and get moving.
With a stomach half-full, he raced to the bridge in a heightened stride.
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