Shadow Stars (Universe on Fire Book 2)

by Ivan Kal

“We are in a better position now than we were just five years ago,” Mr. Grimm said as he took a seat in a chair in front of her desk.

  Isabella sighed and sat down in her chair. “I know, but we fought to free ourselves. Instead, we only changed the form in which we are oppressed.”

  Isabella looked at the man for a moment. He was Intelligence Service’s Chief of Operations, and had been placed in charge of most of UTS’s secret projects—at least those happening on this side of the portal.

  “Tell me.” Isabella turned her attention toward the man.

  “The worm is in place. Emissary Smith had done well.”

  “What are the chances that they find out?” Isabella asked. She wasn’t completely sure about attempting to pull one over the Zhal and the Qash’vo’tar, but they had little choice.

  Grimm grimaced. “Humanity built the Trinity station. Yes, the Qash’vo’tar and the Zhal oversaw much of the construction, but it was done mostly by us. We have put in place contingencies that not even you were made aware of… There is still a chance, if a slim one.”

  Isabella nodded. She was the current speaker for the council, and with that came a lot of secrets. But the IS had been given a lot of free reign to ensure humanity survived, including secrets kept even from her. “What kind of a reaction can we expect if they find out that we are trying to pull one over them?”

  “So far the two are too busy making sure that the other one doesn’t get access to our technology, and afraid of the Val’ayash. If they found out that we are going against their rules… We project a significant chance that they will come to an agreement and occupy Earth jointly.”

  “As if we aren’t already occupied,” Isabella shot back.

  “A total occupation,” Grimm clarified.

  “We can’t keep doing this. We pushed the Qash’vo’tar out of Earth only to have them and the Zhal set up shop on the nearest planet. The people are not happy—do you have any idea how many angry emails the council gets every day? All calling for military action against the Qash’vo’tar. Bah! They think that we went too easy on them, that we forgave their crimes, as if we have the power to punish them.”

  Grimm released a long breath. “The blood remembers,” he said.

  Isabella nodded grimly. “Yes. They are growing, aren’t they?”

  The intelligence agent inclined his head. “We have acquired intel on several organizations under that banner, and we’ve been able to stop the most…problematic ones before they could execute their plans. But…it is only a matter of time before the more radical ones pull something off.”

  Isabella covered her eyes with her palm. The blood remembers was a motto, a call to action. It was what had spurred the council to act and liberate Earth. It had taken root in the people, a belief, a desire to take up arms against their oppressors. They had done that, and still they were not satisfied. The movement was growing; protests were a daily occurrence around the globe.

  She spoke through her hand. “Their resentment is growing. People thought that getting out of under Qash’vo’tar’s thumb meant that we could finally expand out there, colonize other planets. People had been waiting for decades, and now we are being held back. We have two colonies outside of Sol, and both are barely outposts! We could’ve already had hundreds of thousands of people living there if they hadn’t been slowing us down!”

  Finally she sighed, moved her hand off her face and turned to look at the man again. “I need you to do something for me.”

  Grimm didn’t respond, but only raised an eyebrow in question.

  “I need you to go to Senka.”

  Grimm looked surprised at that. “Bella… I don’t think that is wise.”

  “I have no choice. I need to know how ready they are.”

  “We have the schedule. It isn’t worth risking revealing them,” Grimm said.

  “The schedule was conservative and I understand why that is, but we have no choice. If the Zhal and Qash’vo’tar find out about what we are trying to do behind their backs, or if they simply grow tired of us stalling and try to get our tech by force… We need to know if we can rely on Senka,” Isabella pleaded with the man.

  “It’s too soon, they couldn’t have gotten anywhere close to operational.”

  “I know that the Dragons won’t be ready, but the Fury might be operational soon. If the need for secrecy wasn’t so high I would’ve had a way for us to send messages back and forth, but you know why we can’t do that,” Isabella told him.

  Grimm winced as he heard the codename Dragon. He had been one of the people responsible for that project getting the green light—he had made it happen. And he was still losing sleep over it. “Sending me would be a risk.”

  “I need someone there who understands all the moving pieces, someone who can evaluate the risks and decide what to do without the input of the council. I have drafted permission for you to act and issue orders on our authority to the personnel at Senka.”

  “Issue orders? You’re not thinking on moving the schedule up? That’s insane, we should wait for the Prometheus to act on the intel. We might recover tech that would give us an edge.”

  Isabella shook her head. “You know that we don’t have the time! Prometheus might get us something worthwhile, but we can’t wait. We have an edge now, in our magi-tech. I told you that we will not keep the peace on Earth for much longer, and if the blood movement explodes… We might lose everything. We need the Fury here, we need to make it clear to the Zhal and the Qash’vo’tar that we will not stand for them keeping us down.”

  “Even with the Fury, we are not their match. They can roll over us without even breaking a sweat,” Grimm said.

  “They are afraid of the Val’ayash. If we show them that taking us on will be a hard fight, that we can hurt them, it might be enough to force them to accept our terms. They cannot risk losing even one of their ships, not now when they know that their ancient enemy is back.”

  “Perhaps…” Grimm looked uncertain, but he did somewhat agree with the councilor. He had been trying to balance a hundred little things on a tight schedule, but he had been fooling himself. He knew that Earth was a ticking bomb waiting to explode, and it would remain so until the people saw themselves in control of their own destinies. He sighed, relenting. “Fine, I’ll go and see what their status is.”

  ***

  Several days later Grimm sat in a cramped cockpit waiting. On his board he could see the mining ship that was carrying his shuttle get near Jupiter, and then do the planned gravity-assist maneuver around it. Grimm prepared to execute the next part of the plan, as the mining ship slowly disappeared behind the planet. The plan was risky, Grimm knew, but they didn’t have a choice.

  Getting to Senka wasn’t the problem; the problem was doing it without the Zhal and the Qash’vo’tar seeing. The Qash’vo’tar and Zhal presence in Sol was currently contained to Mars and the Trinity station—two large battleships, one from each of the two star nations, and two heavy cruiser escorts for each battleship were the only foreign forces in Sol. But they could see the entire system, at least most of it. Even just one of the massive battleships was enough to fight off the entire UTS fleet, which currently consisted of five carriers, each in about the same weight class as the Qash’vo’tar and Zhal heavy cruisers. Their fighters and magi-tech might give them a slight edge, but the two foreign formations were enough to completely overwhelm the human defense force, even with the defense network that Prometheus had purchased at Jar Allera.

  Grimm got the signal from the captain of the mining ship as the cargo hold of the ship opened. He took his shuttle out of the mining ship and started on a course away from it. His shuttle was hidden from everyone’s eyes, and the mining ship continued on its course toward the Trojan asteroids. The Qash’vo’tar and Zhal would soon see it come out from behind the gas giant and continue on its course.

  What they wouldn’t see was Grimm and his shuttle.

  Opening a wormhole was a relatively simple business; although
it did required precise math and power. And as far as every alien star nation was concerned, it was impossible to achieve next to the gravity well of a planet. And it was impossible—for everyone but humans.

  Earth had done a lot of research into wormhole technology within a gravity well. It was that research and their tests which had opened up a breach in spacetime and connected their universe with another. Earth, when occupied by the Qash’vo’tar, had yearned for a way out, enough that they had done something incredibly stupid like attempt to open a wormhole deep within the planet. Grimm was very aware of the fact that they just nearly avoided disaster. Their test could’ve ripped the entire planet apart. Somehow they had survived their stupidity, however, and had even come out of it with further knowledge.

  Opening a wormhole inside a gravity well was still inadvisable, but human techs had found a way to make it possible very close to a planet—closer than anyone else could do it. Grimm waited only for the mining ship to get to a safe distance before he began the sequence. A few moments later, a small wormhole blossomed in front of his shuttle, large enough just for it to pass through.

  Grimm let the auto-pilot do most of the work, as he wasn’t the best pilot around. The shuttle went through and the wormhole closed behind him, hopefully without anyone in Sol noticing. It was a risk, as they were pretty sure that at least the Zhal had technology that allowed them to read wormhole signatures and tell where they were going. But the council had decided that the risk was worth it.

  Grimm settled into his chair. The trip to the Senka system would take only two days for him, but just a bit over a week would pass in real space.

  He just hoped that his trip wouldn’t be wasted.

  ***

  Two days later Grimm’s shuttle exited the wormhole into a new system. Almost immediately, his board started screaming with warnings, and before Grimm could even orient himself he received an incoming transmission directed at his shuttle.

  “Identify yourself or you will be destroyed,” a voice thundered through the speakers.

  His heart beating quickly, Grimm tapped at his board and sent the access codes he had been given. He waited for a long second, his heart pounding as he realized what the warnings on his board meant. Then he got a response.

  “Welcome to Senka. We are sending you a course, follow it. Any deviation will result in lethal force.”

  Grimm released a sigh of relief, and did as he was asked. On his board he saw more than a hundred fighters burning toward him, and two Atlas-class carriers in position near a large station in the orbit of the planet Senka—the shadow. The system’s sun was a red dwarf, providing barely any light to the planet. It gave the rocky world a spooky look, at least from beyond its atmosphere.

  Grimm took a look at the massive construct in orbit, the shipyard and the thing settled next to it. Too large to fit inside the single berth yard, the thing was being built in pieces. The Fury looked terrifying, but he couldn’t tell how close to completion it was.

  Grimm turned his eyes from his board and collected himself as he began the descent to the planet.

  This was where his job really started.

  ***

  “You gave us quite a scare there, mister…Grimm. We were told that we would be operating in the dark for a long time… But I must admit that we are glad that you are here, as we haven’t had any news from Earth since we left. How goes the war?” The Admiral in charge of Senka was a stout man, short and wide, with that stocky dependable look about him. Grimm knew everything about the man, of course. Admiral Shane Eliot was a good man, a good officer—but also a person who was willing to do anything for the greater good. Willing to compromise his morals and do terrible things in order to protect humanity. It was why he was chosen.

  “The war was over almost as soon as it began,” Grimm started as he settled into the chair across from the Admiral. They were in his office on a base buried deep into the mountains of Senka’s northern continent.

  “Over? We won?” Admiral Eliot asked.

  “In a way,” Grimm said. The Admiral and his people had been sent here as soon as Earth had liberated itself from the Qash’vo’tar, just after Prometheus had left Sol. At the time, Earth didn’t know what to expect from the future; they had known too little. So Senka was established as a dark colony, a way for humanity to survive should the worst come to pass. There was to be no contact between the two.

  But Senka was also a place where they had put their darkest and most experimental projects. Foremost, there were two: the Dragons and the Fury.

  Grimm took a deep breath, and then he started speaking, explaining to the Admiral all that had happened in the years they’d had no contact with Earth.

  Because afterward, he would need to see just how much Earth’s gambit had paid off.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Prometheus exited the wormhole and dropped into real space. Immediately, their scanners started detecting a lot of traffic in-system. That was the usual for the system, and the Prometheus joined into that controlled chaos as Aiko ordered her crew to set a course for the heart of all that traffic: the alien station Jar Allera. Their home.

  Aiko didn’t really know how to feel about that; no matter how much she longed to get back to Earth, she knew that she had a job to do here, no matter how much she resented it. Her ship’s scanners detected a few human ships, UTS trading and cargo ships on their annual visit to Jar Allera station.

  Earth had begun trading with only a few partners out here among the stars. Most of their trade came through the Zhal and the Qash’vo’tar, but Earth had established a relationship with Jar Allera as well. The neutral system and the trading hub station were a great place to find almost anything, from goods to information. It was why Prometheus was based here.

  Still, she couldn’t help but feel resentful toward those traders and the single Atlas-class carrier that escorted them. They got to go home, to Earth; they were part of UTS Fleet. Prometheus was not, at least not openly. To everyone they were a private ship, aside from the Zhal and the Qash’vo’tar, who knew the truth. It was a farce for the other star nations, Aiko knew that, and she could even see the advantage of that. Earth didn’t want the other star nations knowing just how weak Earth truly was, not when most believed them to be a great power from beyond their explored space. The Zhal and the Qash’vo’tar wouldn’t reveal the truth—they couldn’t, because that would mean revealing that they had broken the Compact. And that would bring more trouble than they were willing to deal with.

  And so Aiko, her crew, and her ship were at least outwardly outcasts. It was not something that she felt comfortable with. Still, she had spent her whole life in service, and she would continue to do so no matter what. Their job was a valuable one, even though they might not always see it.

  “Captain.”

  A voice brought Aiko out of her thoughts, and she turned to look at her comms officer. “Report.”

  “We’ve just received a priority-one message from Mars, Captain. It’s heavily encrypted and marked for your and Captain Reinhart’s eyes only.”

  Aiko raised an eyebrow as she looked on her board. Mars was the carrier which was escorting the UTS convoy. A quick look to the message told her that she would need to look at it in private.

  “Comm Captain Reinhart and tell him to join me in my ready room,” Aiko said and then stood up and walked off the bridge.

  Once in her ready room, she took a seat at her table and ran the message through her decryption software. After it was done she was surprised to see that the message was written in code, which meant that it was very important and sensitive indeed. She stood up and walked to her safe, opened it, and retrieved a small paper book containing a series of keys. She looked for the one that matched the secret mark at the start of the message and then applied it.

  A few moments later the software translated the message. As Aiko read through it, she couldn’t help but smile.

  ***

  “We got a mission?” Kane asked. He couldn�
�t really believe what he had just read in the message from Earth.

  “It looks like it,” Aiko said with an eagerness to her voice that Kane hadn’t heard in a while.

  “Well, at least now we know that they haven’t forgotten us.” Kane grinned at her.

  Aiko rolled her eyes, but then her expression turned more serious. “This is important. We need to get on it immediately.”

  “The Zhal are watching us,” Kane said.

  “Yes, but it won’t matter—we will be setting a course to Earth. They won’t follow us then, and the Fleet has set things up so that it will look like we have arrived in Sol.”

  Kane nodded. The Zhal could read wormhole signatures. After they saw that Prometheus was headed to Sol, they wouldn’t send a ship to follow as they did most of the time. Traffic to and from Sol was restricted even for their own ships. What the Zhal and Qash’vo’tar didn’t know was that humans had better wormhole technology than they did. Prometheus could force open the wormhole tunnel and exit early—and then it was only a matter of opening a new wormhole to their real destination.

  “But going into the neutral zone…” Kane started. “This system is on the Zhal side of the zone, right?”

  “It is, and we don’t know where their patrols are. But if the cache in this system isn’t discovered yet, we can assume that it has been missed by the Zhal,” Aiko said.

  “Unless it has been discovered and kept secret,” Kane added.

  Aiko nodded agreeing. The Zhal were at least outwardly enforcing their rule about ancient tech, but it was known that both they and the Qash’vo’tar had scoured the neutral zone for anything that had survived the great war. “We should get going as soon as possible.”

  ***

  It took them about four weeks inside the wormhole from the moment they maneuvered to exit early. After they had dropped out of the wormhole they opened out of Jar Allera to confuse the Zhal agents watching them, they had immediately opened another to their real destination. Most of the travel time was because they had been forced to retrace their steps a bit, as their target system was in a completely different direction from Sol. Of course four months had passed in real time; travel inside the wormhole screwed with spacetime, and so time passed slower inside than it did on the outside.