by Drew Seren
Skylar Mars
and the
Stolen Egg
by Drew Seren
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Except where actual places are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious; any resemblance to living persons or places is purely coincidental.
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Copyright 2018 © MysticHawker Press
http://www.mystichawker.com/
ISBN: 13: 978-1-945632-21-1
Edited by Cat Lauria
Cover design by Silver Circle Images
1
Raiders At Twilight
SKYLAR MARS stared at the upright display on his desk and ran his hand through his short brown hair. The answers to the test weren’t coming as easily as they usually did. For the most part, he wasn’t much more than an average student, but he didn’t normally struggle on tests, even if Galactic History was one of his worst subjects. Frowning, he selected his answer. A large red X appeared on the screen. He was down two points on this question and only had two more choices. If he got the next one wrong, he’d lose all the points for the question and only be at fifty percent for the test so far. Around him, other students were quickly making their selections and progressing through the test.
Since one of the images displayed was a desert world, the remaining blue-green sphere had to be the aquatic world. A green check appeared on the screen with the word Tursipia, and he let out the breath he’d been holding. Galactic History was one of his worst subjects. He’d never been off-world and had little interest in venturing out beyond Hummassa. Sure, it was a bit backwater, but he liked knowing where everything was and most of the people in his small town of Cordnisar. He left the idea of exploring the cosmos to when he played video games.
As the next question popped onto the screen, Skylar glanced around the room. As in all his other classes that day, students were missing. Most of them were children of corporate workers who didn’t really associate with him and the other world-bound kids, but it seemed odd. The corp-brats didn’t miss class, not in unusually large numbers. The only kids remaining in school were either natives or kids like him, whose parents were too poor to ever think about leaving.
Shaking his head, he looked down at the next question. Which of these beings most influenced the expansion of humans into the galaxy? Four pictures stared at him. One was an old man with white hair that curled oddly at the ends. The next one looked more modern with a sleek, synthetic black suit and perfectly-styled black hair. Skylar knew he was the current human ambassador to the Central Galactic Council, but he couldn’t remember the man’s name. The third man had a rugged frontier look with a short brown beard, and long hair that looked like it would be awkward inside the old-fashioned space helmet under his arm. The fourth was a blue woman with overly-smooth skin whose large, dark eyes made her look like she came from a water world where the darkness of the depths made light scarce.
Skylar selected the rugged frontier guy. Another green check appeared with the name Caffar O’Byrne. Skylar nodded. He’d been the founder of O’Byrne Corporation. They had made intergalactic travel possible for humans nearly a thousand years earlier. Even though things had sped up considerably when they discovered stargate technology, and then other intelligent species, O’Byrne had been the one to get humans out of the Sol system, and the O’Byrne Corp was still a prominent player in the galaxy.
Feeling better about the test, Skylar got the next few questions easily. The final question appeared as the last bell sounded. Not really looking at his screen, Skylar touched a random answer and the green check mark appeared as his terminal shut down before his score displayed. He’d get his results the next day, but he wasn’t worried. He stood and joined the flow of students heading out of school. The normal din in the hallway was even lower than it had been before the last class.
“Where is everyone?” asked Teir Puddle, Skylar’s best friend and a native of the Hummassa, as they walked through the somewhat empty, utilitarian gray corridor.
“No clue,” Skylar replied, feeling odd about not being jostled by the kids rushing to get out of school. “But if you stop and look, it’s just the corp-brats. None of the Hummassan are missing and the rest of us regs are all here.”
Teir nodded as they fell into step, heading away from school. The fresh air outside the school building was a welcome change from the overly-recycled air they were forced to endure for hours every day. “You’re right. I wonder what’s up. Maybe there’s something special going on with their folks and they had to go along.” A frown creased his dark red skin. “But I haven’t heard about anything.”
“Who knows?” It wasn’t uncommon for the big corporations like O’Byrne to hold large events which all the employees and their families were required to attend. But from what Skylar knew, the missing kids’ folks worked for several different corps. It was odd. A shiver ran through him. There was something there, but he couldn’t think of what it meant. “So, what are you doing tonight? You want to meet me in-game later and we can see about killing a few slavers?” He and Teir spent most of their nights playing Galactic Explorers with people all over the galaxy. It gave Skylar little glimpses of what existence beyond Hummassa might be like. Teaming up with Teir was the best thing he’d done in-game, friends in real life and friends in-game. He couldn’t image his life without Teir.
“Probably not.” Teir hopped on one of the large boulders that had rolled down the hill overlooking the school after the last round of spring rains a month earlier. “I’ve got to get that hologram of the Orion cluster finished for art class. It’s due tomorrow and I still don’t have everything worked out. I really want this thing to pop.”
“I can’t wait to see it.” Skylar smiled. He wasn’t in Teir’s art class. His mother didn’t like the idea of his being too artsy. There wasn’t much of a future in it. She kept him on a science path, which he didn’t mind. His brain was better with figures and facts than fantasy, but he’d learned to appreciate some of the art Teir and his family produced. The native Hummassans were very creative, and some of their textiles and artwork were prized in other parts of the galaxy. “I’ll try not to kill too many slavers without you. I’ve got to get home. Mom’ll worry if I take too long. She’s been watching me real close lately. It’s almost like she’s expecting me to grow another head or something.”
Teir cocked a black eyebrow. “Do you have anything like that in your family tree?”
Skylar shrugged. “No clue.” They reached the barely-defined path through the trees that led toward the modest adobe home he shared with his mother. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then. Good luck with the hologram.”
“Thanks.” Teir chuckled. “Have fun with the slavers. I’ll help you out with them tomorrow night.”
AFTER DINNER, Skylar sat at his desk and touched the app on his terminal to link him to his homework. As the math questions popped up, his mind went back to Teir’s question about his family tree. Over the past few years, he’d wondered about it himself.
Skylar didn’t really know much about his father. His mom only said he was a great man who died in a horrible shuttle explosion sixteen years earlier, right before Skylar was born. She said he was human, but that was it. Maybe he had genes that might cause him to grow a second head.
/> Skylar didn’t know much about his mother’s side of the family either. She told him his grandparents were killed in a terraforming mishap while she was in college. The reason she’d moved to Hummassa was that it hadn’t required terraforming, the natives were friendly, and they’d needed scientists and medical personnel to help their technology get up to the galactic standard. From the way the corp-brats complained about this world, it was still lagging behind, but Skylar didn’t care. He liked Hummassa, even if he didn’t have anything else to compare it to.
He glanced up at the large, holographic image on the wall above the head of his unmade bed. The scene he’d been told was an ancient mountain back on Sol Three, the last pure human home world, always relaxed him, despite a few glitches from the secondhand projector that sometimes let the rough wall show through the image. There was something calming in the way the colors played in the graphic. Moonlight illuminated the rough landscape, and he always thought there might be something hiding in the hologram’s many shadows.
It was just an old picture—Sol Three had been abandoned nearly seven hundred years ago, right after the stargates were discovered and humanity left for the stars. There were lots of theories about what had happened, but the truth about Sol Three was shrouded in the past.
When he glanced back at his computer screen, there was an error message stating the link with the school computer had been lost. Skylar frowned at the screen and tapped the app to re-link with the school so he could complete his homework. Connections were often flaky, but normally came back up within a few seconds.
Connection not available at this time flashed across his screen.
He tried a couple more times before rebooting his tablet in hopes it would fix things. It didn’t.
“Hey, Mom, is there a problem with the com-net?” Skylar shouted as he stood from the chair and headed for the hall.
“I don’t know, Sky.” His mom appeared in the doorway of their common room. She had already changed from her work clothes to her sleepwear. “What’s happened?”
“I was trying to do my homework, lost my connection and can’t get it back.” He stopped where he was. Outside the short windows that ran the length of the hall, the long Hummassan twilight painted the sky with brilliant oranges and purples. In the distance, dots fell from the sky followed by frequent flashes of light. He pointed toward the horizon. “Mom, what’s that?”
His mother hurried to his side. Her tanned face paled as she followed his gaze. “We’re under attack. But who would attack Hummassa?”
The small house shook.
“They’re hitting too close.” His mother grabbed his hand. “We’ve got to get out of here. The office has shelters. We’ll be safe there.” Dragging him along, she ran for the front door.
A wave of external fear, unlike anything he’d ever felt before, hit Skylar before he could object. He was suddenly terrified to go outside. Somehow, it didn’t feel like his own emotions. He was never afraid like that. Something bad was happening and he had no idea what to do. Shuddering, he didn’t resist his mother pulling him along as they cleared the house. She was shaking violently and couldn’t run in a straight line. He didn’t need any other evidence to tell him she was terrified. She’d always been strong, but now, as someone dared to attack the quiet backwater planet they lived on, a fear stronger than anything he’d ever felt engulfed her and spilled over onto him.
They had a small hover car that was barely big enough for the two of them and a few bags of groceries. It hummed to life as they approached the small plastacrete pad outside the house.
A barrage of energy blasts hit the hillside behind their house. Not far away, smoke rose from the trees. Skylar remembered a house being in that direction, but had no way of knowing if it was the home burning or the jungle.
His mother released his hand. “Get in, quickly. We’ve got to get out of here.”
“Mom, could this be why all the corp-brats left school today?” As he settled into his seat, the restraining harness clicked into place over his shoulders. He glanced at the house and wondered how much of it would still be there when they returned. His whole life was in that small house. They never had much; his mother always said it was bad to be overly attached to physical things. In that moment, he wondered if he was ever going to see any of his stuff again.
An unwanted vision of his home being the next one to burn entered his head. It was as sharp and clear as if he was standing on the hill near school looking down on it and the rest of Cordnisar. He’d heard about entire colonies being wiped out, but they were on the edge of the universe. There weren’t any wars or anything going on. They should be safe… but they definitely weren’t.
“The corp kids left school today?” A confused look crossed his mother’s face as the hover car pulled onto the narrow dirt road leading away from the close-set houses of their neighborhood. “We did have an awful lot of people requesting off-world passage. Several of the ladies in processing complained about it over lunch.”
Another round of blasts scorched the path in front of them, sending dirt and rocks flying in a large, dark wave.
“Hold on, Skylar.” Her voice cracked as his mother jerked the control stick that manipulated the car’s movement. Her fear spiked though him. They spun off the path and headed toward the thick trees. “Maybe I can lose them in the jungle.”
“Lose who, Mom?” With shaking hands, Skylar clung to the door handle as the hover car careened through the landscape. He glanced about, expecting another round of fire at any moment. Trees could fall on them, or one of the barrages might hit the hover car and kill them both.
She didn’t look at him like she normally did when she spoke. Her hand on the joystick turned white as she jerked it from side to side, moving through the trees. “These raiders. They aren’t getting you.”
Ahead of them, a tree exploded.
“What do you mean?” It didn’t make any sense. “Why would they want me? I’m nobody.” Confusion swirled around Skylar’s fear. He wasn’t anyone important. He was just a kid on a backwater world barely holding his own in school. Nobody was ever going to want anything with him.
He struggled to figure out what was happening. Leaves and limbs passed just inches from the car. Laser blasts lit up the night sky above him. Rocks and debris flew around and toward them. He couldn’t think straight.
A tree crashed directly across their path. His mom pulled the stick back and the hover car shot over it. For a second, the darkening sky dancing with bolts of energy brightening the sky above the branches. The energy bolts were so bright they blocked out the stars, although the three small moons glowed dimly behind them. Then the car shifted back toward the ground.
His mother turned the car a different direction, heading deeper into the forest. “I swear, they aren’t going to get you!” The frantic edge of her voice grew.
It sent shivers down Skylar’s spine. He’d never heard her sound so scared. A vision that reminded Skylar of Galactic Explorers and the slavers he and Teir often fought in the game flashed through his head. Except instead of his game avatar, he saw himself and Teir being forced onto a ship and taken away.
With a huge lurch, the hover car swung madly as a bright light blinded him. Smoke filled the tiny compartment. Light from the car and the blasts around them illuminated the landscape, making them flash by in a weird cascade of light and shadow.
His mother let go of the joystick and grabbed his hand. “I love you, Skylar! Everything I’ve ever done, it was all for you!”
He squeezed her hand. Strange visions filled his mind. It made as little sense to him as everything else happening that night. He wished things would slow down enough he could sort things out. A tall, elegant man he’d never seen before appeared. Then there was a space station. Finally, their little house stood empty, waiting for them. “I love you too, Mom!”
The hover car hit something hard. The collision tore his mother’s hand from his. An explosion shook them, and his seat launched throu
gh the windshield. “Mom!” He twisted in his seat, but the built-in safety features sent it flying away from the car. A force field engulfed him. He pounded against it as he and the seat tumbled through the broken night and shattered forest. Darkness engulfed him as his mother’s voice filled his head. “Skylar!”
2
Blazing Jungle
THE HARSH smell of burning wood woke Skylar. Somewhere nearby, something exploded, and sparks showered down around him. One skidded across his blue synthetic shirt. The material was designed to resist burning, but reflexively, he brushed the ember away. For a moment, he glanced around the jungle, wondering where he was. He couldn’t remember what happened.
He struggled, but the seat’s harness still held him firmly. The memory of flying through the air as the hover car exploded came back. His mother had screamed his name.
Skylar hit the button to release the harness. The protective force field dissolved. The harness clicked, but didn’t retract like it normally would. Yanking it off, he tossed it aside before he stood and looked about. The burning wreckage of the hover car still belched flames and smoke, and all around, the jungle burned.
Skylar ran back toward the hover car. A charred arm stuck out of the windshield.
“Mom!” he screamed. Everything seemed to close in on him until all he could see was her blackened limb, that hung unnaturally straight from the car like she was reaching out for him.
The fire roared up around him, pushing at him like a living thing. Skylar reached for his mom’s charred hand, even though he knew she was dead. The smoke clouded the windshield, making it impossible for him to see through, and the only light he had was the fire that danced around the inside of the car.
Another explosion rocked the hover car. It blew Skylar backward, tossing him through the air. He landed roughly amid a rain of aluminum and Plexiglas parts. Pain shot through his spine and head. Struggling to his feet, he looked to where the hover car had been. Fire roared up the shattered trees around the small crater left behind. The power core had blown. There was nothing left.