A Star Reborn: A Space Opera Adventure (Seven Stars Saga Book 2)

by AJ Super

  The Queensman’s message from Phoebe resounded through her entire body, sending an electrical charge through her fingertips. It was La Terre. It was her chance. Her only chance, according to Phoebe. She had to save her sisters.

  Nyx tapped the comm still behind her ear. “Malcam,” she whispered. “Are you still with Berto?”

  “Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “Something happening.”

  “Get him and his crew on a shuttle. They’re going in hot. Red? Isabeau? Yoon?”

  “We’re all in the mess,” Red said quietly.

  “La Terre is here. We’re going on an infiltrate and rescue while she’s distracted with the Medusa. Get a second shuttle running just for us. We’re going to get my sisters.”

  “Yes, sir,” Red whispered tersely.

  “George, you’re still my pilot?”

  Paladichuk nodded. “It’s either that or you kill me, right?”

  “Quick learner.” Nyx smiled. “I need you to pilot this thing right next to the Medusa and La Terre. Shields full port. Stay for as long as you can. Then jump to the debris field where the Andraste is hidden. As soon as we get out of here, we’re taking the Battle Station, too. Once you off-load the miners, take this ship, take your family, and hope I never see you again.”

  “Aye, captain.” He began accelerating towards the Medusa.

  Nyx keyed up her console’s view screen, and Kai’s face resolved in front of her. “We’re coming in fast. You can take advantage of the cover, or you can keep shooting, your choice. But once we get people on that warship, get out. Go to the Andraste and take her while La Terre is distracted.”

  “Isn’t this a little quick?” Kai’s hair flipped into his eyes as a volley from the palace-ship rocked the gravity generators of the Medusa. “Can’t we just retreat?”

  “And give whoever is pulling the strings time to figure out what we needed warships for?”

  Kai tensed as the lights of the Medusa flickered, his fiery energy searing through the dark, but providing no illumination. He shook his head. “I don’t like it.”

  “Like it or not, it’s what I’ve got. Either we trust each other, or I let La Terre disintegrate you.”

  Kai huffed. “Fine. I’ll see you on the Andraste.”

  Nyx shook her head. “I’m going to get Erebus and Phoebe.”

  “Alone? You can’t. Every time you go somewhere alone…”

  “She won’t be alone,” Malcam grumbled behind Nyx. “You about ready? As soon as Georgie parks this thing, we need to be gone.”

  Nyx nodded. “It’ll be fine. We’ll be in and out. It’ll take some time to get back to the Andraste without a jump drive, so you’ll probably take the ship before we get there. Just make sure you take it and don’t damage the clones.”

  Paladichuk snapped his fingers and pointed to the bow window. The Medusa and La Terre loomed ahead. “You have about ninety seconds before I scoot by cette merde.”

  Nyx stood and Malcam grabbed her hand. “Kai, get out of here as fast as you can. Get me the Andraste. I want that Battle Station.”

  Malcam yanked her off the flight deck and down the corridor at a half-run, taking a right through a hatch nearly at the end of the passage. He slid the hatch closed behind them, and then closed a secondary hatch as well. Nyx strode up a ramp and tapped her comm, “Who’s my pilot?”

  “Raphael,” Red snipped over the comm. “Gave instructions to his Junior Nav Spec to jump out with the Medusa and take orders from Kai.”

  Nyx paused. “I thought Raphael was with the Thanatos.”

  Yoon poked his head out of the passenger bay as she walked up to the door. “He’s been preaching with Matthews. He’s quite the acolyte.”

  Nyx’s lips thinned. She didn’t want her best pilot to be doing frivolous things like preaching. Or hiding from her amidst the miners. She needed him on the Thanatos. She needed him piloting her ship, keeping her crew safe. He was the best pilot they had. Even if Paladichuk George could easily catch up to him once he tried, if he hadn’t gone and double-crossed her. Oh well, it couldn’t be helped now.

  She strode through the passenger bay to the co-pilot’s seat where Red lounged next to Raphael, who was finishing his flight check. Nyx put a hand on the LACF pilot’s shoulder and shook her head. “We’ll have words about you abandoning your post on the Thanatos. Later. For now, I’m glad you’re with us.”

  She keyed the view screen, and Kai appeared again.

  “I assume you need a way through the shields?” he smirked. “You’re thinking too slowly, Nyx.”

  “I’m thinking just fine. I’m just addressing my problems as they arise.”

  He raised a brow. “A couple of torpedoes should make a hole big enough to fly through for a short while. Think you can make it?”

  “Raphael will tell you when. I’m just here to save my sisters.” She shrugged. “I’ll leave the hard stuff to you men.”

  “I know you’re poking fun.” Kai’s face went stony and the crimson energy flamed around him. “But fine. We’ll handle this part.”

  Nyx raised an eyebrow. Kai cut the feed.

  She turned back to the passenger bay where Yoon, Isabeau, and Malcam had seated themselves and strapped in. Sitting next to Malcam, she pulled a seat harness over her head. The table in front of her had a round chessboard printed on it, something interesting to keep the time on leisurely side-trips in the little grey industrial shuttle.

  Malcam reached down and twined his fingers with hers. Nyx blinked and looked at him. He smiled and squeezed her hand. Her white tendrils wrapped easily in his cerulean waves. She wanted to lean on him, but with Yoon and Isabeau across from them…

  She was a God and God’s didn’t lean on others. Literally or figuratively. It was barely acceptable that they were holding hands. She breathed in, holding back the blush that threatened to creep across her cheeks. She stared into his impossibly blue eyes, his dirty-blond widow’s peak slicked back and nasal piercings sparkling. When did things change between them? When did she stop seeing him as a brute and a monster?

  He looked forward and then leaned back his head and closed his eyes. Even he knew that there were appearances to be kept. Nyx exhaled, not realizing she had held her last breath, and looked forward, too.

  She was safe with Malcam. Despite this last-minute plan, she could protect the rest of them with her power. They’d blow in and blow out, and travel to her burgeoning armada. If one could call a single war-cruiser, two pirate ships, and a Battle Station an armada.

  Then it dawned on her.

  She wouldn’t need the armada if she got her family out. She could go back to pirating on the Thanatos as soon as she saved her sisters. Her heart swelled, and she smiled. She could just be Nyx. She glanced at Malcam. Nothing more would stand in their way.

  If Phoebe wanted the army and the beginnings of an armada to take back her Protectorate, she could take them.

  But for Nyx, this was going to be over very soon. She could be herself again. Maybe there was something special she could do for him after all this was over…

  28

  Kai did his job, and the docks were wide open. It was like someone expected them to come. A chill clutched Nyx’s spine. She hated this part. The moment when she knew she was walking into a trap, yet she was still unable to do anything but continue forward. It was apparent even looking at everyone’s grim faces. Nyx felt for the knife at her thigh, thankful for the silence.

  She hoped Erebus was still entwined with La Terre’s code. She would have enormous amounts of power over the ship if that was the case. The fact that she couldn’t sense, or see, Erebus’ emerald whorls amidst the signals transmitting between the shuttle and the city-ship made her frown. There’s no way she could have been pulled from all of the tech she inhabited, could there?

  Nyx unlocked the harness and flipped it over her head. She turned to Malcam, but he untwined his fingers from hers and stood in silence.

  Even if he thought this was a bad idea, he woul
d never say it. He would go with her to the ends of the universe.

  She looked down at her hands and flexed her fingers, white tendrils dancing off the tips. She glanced up at Malcam’s blue waves of light and let her tendrils pirouette among the crests. His back relaxed, and he turned to her over his shoulder, sad smile on his face. She smiled back and opened her mouth.

  He shook his head imperceptibly and pivoted back to Yoon and Isabeau. “The Hall of Stars. Only Nyx and Kai have ever been that high in the palace levels. But we’re gonna have to stick together the best we can. It’ll be a fight.” He scratched his head. “Woulda been better off exploring the detention levels.”

  Yoon looked at him sideways. “How would you know that?”

  Malcam screwed his face around. “It’s a long story from when Kai and I were really young…” He glanced at Nyx. “Before the Medusa.”

  She knew that he and Kai signed on the Medusa at the same time, but she didn’t know that they had been together off of her father’s ship for any length of time… or had been friendly enough to be put in detention on La Terre together. And they couldn’t have been more than six when it happened? So, they were both delinquents before they got on the Medusa. Nyx snickered. She’d have him tell her that story some time.

  Malcam glared at Nyx, and she covered her smile. “Use the buddy-system.” He looked back at Yoon and Isabeau. “You two watch each other’s back.” He nodded behind him at Nyx. “We’ll do the same. If we get separated, we meet back at the shuttle in an hour. No matter what.”

  Yoon and Isabeau nodded.

  Nyx bit her cheek and nodded. It wasn’t a very long time to get through what would be a massive amount of guards and find the right door in the Hall of Stars, but this was supposed to be in and out. As quick as possible.

  “Hernandez. Keep it hot,” Malcam growled.

  “Yes, sir!” Raphael saluted, hand to his head, a normal salute. Nyx craved the days when people saluted her normally, when they didn’t praise her as a god or salute the Star of Nyx instead of their captain.

  Malcam stared at Yoon. “What are you waiting for? Vas-y!”

  Yoon held up his hands. “We’re going. We’re going.” They tromped out of the passenger bay and down the back ramp. The clanking of the hatch muffled through the back of the shuttle.

  “They’d be safer away from you, I think,” Malcam whispered.

  Nyx nodded. He had noticed, too. It was too easy to get their shuttle onto La Terre. “It’s a trap.”

  “Enemy’s thinking on their feet. Whoever they are…” Malcam turned to her and crossed his arms. “What I don’t understand is why they haven’t come straight here to take you. The new Protectorate has made it clear that they want the Star of Nyx.”

  Nyx leaned toward him. “They may have a Star of Nyx. Coeus said there’s another me, remember? Why look for an unpredictable one, when you have a cooperative one? No… there’s something else. If there is another Star, I have something that this other Star doesn’t.”

  Nyx could only imagine the trap was set by someone after her powers to create immortals—after them for the Protectorate, which was no longer in Queen Phoebe’s control. Even if the queen controlled it, Nyx couldn’t let anyone have her powers. Armies would rise and never fall. People in power would never die and oppress the weak. Then there was the added ability she had yet to master…

  The power to control gods.

  The Seven Stars—her ancient AI family. If that was what this invisible hand was after, Nyx would die first. She smiled. Besides, this trap was more like an introduction. “Someone wants to say hi before they take us captive.”

  Malcam tugged his gauge plug in his ear as he thought. “You sound a lot like Phoebe right now… or at least how I imagine her…”

  Nyx shook her head. Why didn’t she think of it earlier? The closer she got to Phoebe, the easier it would be to manipulate her powers of prediction and deduction, the easier it would be for Nyx to take them as her own. She’d be able to accurately guess where Erebus and Phoebe were being kept in the Hall of Stars. She’d be able to predict fight moves. She’d be able to see the future, such as it was.

  Nyx smiled. “I don’t think we have to worry.”

  Malcam started walking down the ramp after Yoon and Isabeau. “Who said I was worried?”

  Nyx followed.

  They strode to the docking bay doors, where the two others waited for them. Yoon pressed his hand into the door pad, and the doors cracked open onto a shining black corridor lit with white lights.

  Nyx stepped into the passageway and looked around. No one was there. Not even a Sia. She clenched her hands, leaving small crescents in her palms from her fingernails.

  Yoon walked out with a furrowed brow. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

  Isabeau set her jaw and stepped forward. She grabbed Yoon’s hand and gripped it tight. “Bad feeling or not, mon chéri, we must go on.”

  Malcam traipsed past the three and grumbled, “No use standing around. We need to get to the main lift.”

  Nyx snorted. “I’ll probably have to bypass the bioprint pad again. What fun!”

  They all walked down the black hallway on the docking level to the lifts. Malcam palmed the pad and the lift doors opened.

  The eerie quiet made Nyx shudder as the lift rose. And continued to rise. Last time, it had halted and demanded a certified bioprint to go any farther than the lower Queen’s docking level, then another to get on the Hall of Stars directly. She had to erase the local bios and use the ship-wide system bios to command the door to open. It wasn’t an easy matter of rewiring but changing the system via hardware to recognize the mother-system as a daughter-system. Nyx took a deep breath and pulled her knife out to pry the pad off the wall and start the process.

  A spark of emerald in the pad caught her eye. It danced around in geometrically floral patterns, winking in and out. Nyx put her knife back in its sheath at her thigh and leaned in to watch the zipping light in the door pad.

  Erebus. Relief flooded through Nyx like a wave.

  She smashed her hand down on it, and a small buzz thwipped through her fingertips. Suddenly, she was racing through the systems of La Terre and zooming up the shaft in the lift, as the lift. Round, cold metal, with living beings inside her stomach. She knew she wouldn’t stop until the Hall of Stars. Where she became a single eye—a cold clear lens. Seeing a woman in white and gold standing at the head of four dozen armored Queensmen with another dozen caped Queensmen behind them.

  The emerald light zip-zapped through the semi-mechanized armor, jumping excitedly in whorls and graphic vines.

  Nyx pulled her hand off the pad slowly, a grin playing across her face. Erebus was still ingrained in the systems. Either Phoebe never completely got rid of her code, or the coup never finished. Either way, Erebus still had access to some of the systems and was helping out. And Nyx would be able to control that code in the armor and even four dozen armed soldiers would be no hinderance to their progress.

  She turned to Yoon and Isabeau. “They’ll be in the Alpha Centari room. Go in, get them out. We’ll meet you back at the shuttle.”

  Isabeau gaped. “I know that you’re AI, but you’re not the God of War. How do you know?”

  Yoon put a hand on the golden-haired woman’s shoulder.

  “The same way I know that they’ll be down forty-eight soldiers the minute I step out of this lift. The same way that I know Malcam and I can take the last dozen hiding in the Queen’s Hall, and whoever is leading them. I am the Star of Nyx. Erebus and Phoebe are a part of me. Just like you are.”

  “At least let Yoon help you with the fighting. I know I’m not that great, but I can get your sisters out on my own,” Isabeau whispered.

  Nyx nodded at Isabeau. “I would, but there are a few guards in the room with them who will need taken care of, and we agreed on the buddy-system. You two watch each other’s backs. Promise me.”

  Isabeau looked down. “It’s a trap. You’re walkin
g right into it.”

  “I know. Whoever their leader is wants to see me face-to-face. I think it’s time we introduce ourselves and have it out. Now promise me you’ll follow orders.” The lift slowed. Nyx’s heart clutched. She needed the woman’s word. Isabeau would be true to her word, even if she wasn’t a heart-tapping acolyte.

  Isabeau nodded.

  Yoon gripped her shoulder reassuringly. “Always. I’ll always look out for her.”

  Nyx bit her cheek. “Good. Now stay in here for thirty seconds.”

  The lift doors opened, and Nyx stomped out.

  29

  Nyx looked past the black cloud of energy in the middle of the hall and concentrated on the emerald code flowing through the soldiers’ armor as they turned to face her with energy weapons raised. There were just too many of them, and too few of her and her friends to help her sisters. Even if she could reason with them, it would take too long. They needed to get in and out. Too clearly this was a set-up to trap her. Get her to show her powers. She breathed in a shaky breath and closed her eyes. Flicking a finger down by her side, the armor tightened and the air turned off. Each soldier froze, unable to breathe. They deserved to have quick deaths at least. Nyx picked up their feet and each line faced one another, weapons still up. Strangled protests, breathless with confusion, squeaked out of the helmets as the code-driven suits took over the soldiers’ movements. She tightened her grip on each of the triggers. Forty-eight white-armored soldiers collapsed in a splash of blue weapons’ fire. A firing line that was meant for her.

  The white and gold caped Queensmen standing behind the safety of the tall black doors to the court poured out. At the sight of the fallen armored soldiers, they shuffled backward. Each glanced at one another in consternation.

  The low rumble of laughter erupted from the black cloud of energy at the front of the heap of dead soldiers.