Shards of Eternity (Stars in Shadow Book 2)

by John Triptych

  “If he tries something, I’ll be ready for him,” Fytti said. “This kind of information you’ve given me can be deduced by anyone.”

  “I’ve got more,” Strand said. “But since this is a trade, how about you update me on the goings on with the ruling family.”

  “Plenty of rumors, though I can confirm the old archon isn’t happy, and he had to announce his daughter’s impending wedding to Vega because he had no choice.”

  “Tell me,” Strand said. “If Vega was to be killed, would it be in everyone’s best interests?”

  Fytti’s large eyes grew even wider. “I … see now. Apparently, Vega’s former allies are here for revenge, yes?”

  “Call it what you will. I’m actually doing a favor for the archon since he doesn’t like Vega either.”

  “The rulers care not for him, but they care deeply for the shards, because the people do,” Fytti said. “As long as Vega possesses those relics, the archon will not raise a hand against him.”

  “So you’re saying I’ll have to take those crystals from him first, and then I could kill him?”

  Fytti nodded. “Do you plan on marrying the Lady Ava yourself?”

  Strand tilted his head back and laughed. “Oh, heck no. Not my style. Settling down here would be fun for a few days, but it would get old real fast.”

  “Since Vega has been designated sub-archon, he will be untouchable here,” Fytti said. “You would need a fleet of warships to get to him.”

  “There’s no way I could just sneak into the palace and kill him there?”

  “Too heavily guarded,” Fytti said. “The droogs they have there are more ferocious than my pet. The place is also filled with bio-warriors. You’ll never make it out alive.”

  Strand leaned back on his chair and sighed. “I need to find a way to get to him.”

  “There may be an opportunity for you,” Fytti said. “Vega is currently finishing repairs on his ship, and he will mount an expedition to recover the archon’s lost crystal shard.”

  Strand narrowed his concentration. “So the rumor about a missing shard belonging to the archon’s son is true?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does Vega have any idea where to find it?”

  Fytti nodded once more. “It seems Vega is very well informed. More than my own sources now.”

  Strand rubbed his chin as he put two and two together. “He has a very powerful sponsor, that’s why.”

  “What do you—”

  Their conversation was interrupted by Snoopy’s ferocious barking. Fytti immediately stood up, her ashen gray face turning even paler.

  Strand got to his feet as well. “What is it?”

  The unmistakable sound of weapons fire was suddenly heard coming from downstairs. A multitude of screams and explosions were followed by Snoopy’s war howls as the noise of battle seemed to come closer to the upper floors.

  “Vega’s people are here,” Strand said. “You got another way out?”

  Fytti turned and faced the far side of the wall. As she ran her hand against the smooth surface, the room shuddered as a hidden divider opened up, revealing a small elevator. She stepped into the lift. “Follow me.”

  Once Strand jumped inside, Fytti immediately closed the door and they began a quick descent, past the ground floor and deep into the city’s ancient sewer system. In less than a minute, the elevator doors opened, revealing a shadowy corridor in front of them.

  Fytti grimaced while stepping out. “My people and my pet are either dead or soon will be. Someone will pay for this.”

  Strand breathed deeply to try and acclimate his lungs to the thin air as he got out of the elevator. “That’s a pretty fast escape outlet you got here.”

  Fytti glared at him while pulling out a laser pistol from beneath her blouse. She aimed it at his face. “You led them to me!”

  Strand raised his hands. “I just arrived on this world less than an hour ago. My guess is that Vega had already planned to get rid of you, and I merely got here just before it started.”

  Fytti cursed as she holstered the weapon. “I’ll have to start from scratch once again.”

  “You’ll be wanted as long as Vega is in power,” Strand said. “Help me get rid of him.”

  Fytti looked down at the dirt-strewn platform beside the rotting sewage. “Information merchants like me are supposed to be sacrosanct. We’re not supposed to be hunted because we don’t take sides!”

  “That fate has already been chosen for you—by Vega,” Strand said. “Now you have to take a side.”

  She stared at him, her dismayed face compressing into an angry one. “This sponsor of his. Who is it?”

  “The xtid.”

  Fytti was shocked. “What? This is far from their administrative territories. Why would they concern themselves with what’s happening here?”

  “I’m still trying to figure that part out,” Strand said. “We had Vega in our sights, until an xtid ship came along and rescued him.”

  “So you must be from the Nepenthe!”

  “No comment.”

  She pointed an accusing finger at him. “You’re a pirate, just like Vega is.”

  “Look, we can talk about labels all night down here, but it won’t make you safe,” Strand said. “If you can help me take down Vega, then things might return to the way they were.”

  Fytti pondered silently for a few seconds before answering him. “Do you have a ship?”

  “Duh,” Strand said, rolling his eyes. “How do you think I got here?”

  “I don’t know where the lost shard is,” Fytti said. “But I know someone who might. I can’t stay here so I’m going with you.”

  22 Furies

  Chief Engineer Viniimn floated in the confines of one of the Nepenthe’s lower laboratory rooms. Although his webbed hands were too thick to use a human-compatible console, his cyber harness had a com-link interface, and he used mental commands to run through the neuron diagnostics of his sleeping subject.

  Karana’s unconscious form had been placed on the side of the wall facing him, and a number of neural jacks had been attached to the back of her head.

  The door at the side of the room opened, and Captain Lucien Dangard drifted inside.

  Viniimn acknowledged him with a brief nod before returning his attention to the readouts on the holographic monitor. “Captain.”

  Dangard glided in closer until he floated in the null gravity beside the nytini engineer. “I thought we agreed to unplug and recycle her since we got the info we wanted already.”

  “I merely wanted to run some more tests and analysis of her cybernetic systems,” Viniimn said.

  Dangard glanced at him but betrayed no emotion. “Even though she tried her best to kill us, you seem to admire her.”

  “I am actually fond of her hardware,” Viniimn said. “By all accounts, she should not have been functioning properly, and it’s a phenomenon I would like to study further. Is it alright if we keep her alive? Just a few more days?”

  “Creull’s not going to like it,” Dangard said. “I don’t think the spacers will either.”

  “I know what some of them are thinking, and it isn’t possible,” Viniimn said.

  “A few of the spacers believe that Karana will do a reverse hack of Sappho and take over the ship if we don’t kill her right away,” Dangard said.

  Sappho’s voice was heard over the entire room. “Some of the crew believe the incident with Zeno might happen again, but it’s no longer possible.”

  Dangard crossed his arms. “Why not?”

  “The network in this lab room is completely separate,” Sappho said. “Every neural interface done here will go nowhere since I have physically disconnected all the link jacks.”

  “Okay,” the captain said. “But you know humans, they’ll never believe it’s impossible, so that’s why they’re suspicious.”

  “There is a probability for everything,” Viniimn said. “But plausibility is another matter entirely.”

&
nbsp; “Enlighten me,” Dangard said to the nytini engineer. “What do you hope to gain by keeping her alive?”

  “I’ve studied the transcripts of her interrogation,” Viniimn said. “It looks like her loyalty to Vega wasn’t purely based on the doses of neurizim she received from him.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes,” Viniimn said. “Someone of Karana’s abilities could surely have gotten hold of her own drug supply through independent means. She’s also physically more formidable than he is.”

  “And what does that tell you?”

  “There’s an ancient human psychological theory called attachment,” Viniimn said. “Your scientists concluded that people have a need for companionship and dependability to form bonds of loyalty.”

  “I’d like to know where this is leading, please.”

  “My conclusion is that she formed an allegiance to Vega based on a number of factors,” Viniimn said. “Her psychological profile is incomplete, but based on what was gathered and analyzed about her, it seems that Karana is socially and emotionally inept.”

  “Someone like her doesn’t need those skills,” Dangard said.

  “True, not in an operational sense,” Viniimn said. “But based on her snippets of memory from the neural scans, she seems to regress to a childlike state during her downtime, with Vega acting as a surrogate parent or guardian.”

  Dangard tilted his head up slightly. “A child in need of a protector?”

  “Yes,” Viniimn said. “This guardian may have been abusive, but she nevertheless stayed loyal to him, even to the point of facing death.”

  “It’s pretty similar to the esprit de corps we set up with the spacers,” Dangard said.

  “Correct.”

  “I’m beginning to understand your way of thinking,” Dangard said. “You’re telling me we ought to break down her attachment bond with Vega and get her on our side?”

  “She could be a highly effective weapon against him,” Viniimn said. “We could gather more information out of her if it’s voluntary rather than based on deception.”

  “But how do we know we could ultimately trust her? What if she returns to Vega’s fold if they should meet once again?”

  “There is no guarantee, but it is an option we have,” Viniimn said. “Right now, we are alone in this sector. I think we need every advantage we can get.”

  “How do you propose to deal with her?”

  One of Viniimn’s six hands pointed to the console. “Via direct neural link. We have virtual simulators, and due to her brain implants we can run the program directly into her mind.”

  “Didn’t we do that already?”

  “We did, and that’s how we were able to find a hidden route into Concordance-controlled space,” Viniimn said. “Yet we did it through trickery, by creating a virtual simulacrum of Vega and making it look like she was speaking with him.”

  “And this time you want us to present ourselves as who we really are?”

  “Yes,” Viniimn said. “Karana already discovered our ruse based on the last report Sappho gave us. She knows she’s a prisoner now, and the previous technique is less effective since her mental defenses are up.”

  “Why not just get her addicted to neurizim once more?”

  “And take over Vega’s position in an abusive relationship? It may work, but based on my analysis, this other approach might yield better long-term results.”

  Dangard ran a hand across his close-cropped gray hair. “You want her as part of the crew, don’t you?”

  “I must confess I would love to put her back together again and see what she could do,” Viniimn said. “Imagine her capabilities, but as an ally rather than an enemy.”

  “You know the spacers will never accept her even if this succeeds,” Dangard said. “If Strand was here, he’d have shot her in the head by now.”

  “He’s not here,” Viniimn said.

  “Are you sure you can work this out?”

  “Trust me,” Viniimn said. “If it doesn’t work out then we recycle her.”

  Dangard nodded. “Give it a shot, since the ship repairs are pretty much done. But I want a failsafe put in place just in case she decides to go rogue on us.”

  “Very well, Captain.”

  When Karana opened her eyes, she found herself sitting down on a plain white chair in a featureless room. It took her mind a few seconds to realize she was in a virtual simulation instead of the afterlife.

  Seconds later, Captain Dangard materialized and stood in front of her. “A good day to you, Commander.”

  Karana remembered. “I’m surprised you didn’t kill me yet.”

  “The thought had crossed my mind, but I was curious,” he said.

  “About what?”

  “The loyalty to your captain,” Dangard said. “Vega always treated you as expendable, yet you were willing to move planets for him.”

  “It’s none of your business,” she said tersely. “If you want me dead, then get it over with.”

  Dangard began pacing around the room, as if thinking out loud. “You’ve been a buccaneer for a long time, and you know the code—never betray your own kind—yet you did it and got many of my friends killed.”

  “You already know the reason why.”

  “I know Vega’s reason—he wants to live the good life as a Concordance noble, the ones they call archons,” he said. “But you, on the other hand, I don’t know yours.”

  “It was a job I had to do.”

  “Was it? There can only be one archon, and we know it will be him. What did he promise you?”

  Karana turned her head away from his gaze. “I would be his right hand.”

  “You’re a warrior,” Dangard said. “You believe you could ever settle down just like that?”

  She stayed silent.

  Dangard stood closer and loomed over her. “You never think about what’s going to come next, do you? You just live for the moment.”

  She kept trying to look away, but Dangard twisted her head with one hand and forced her to look up at him. Karana tried to fight back, yet she was unable to move her limbs.

  “You placed your loyalty in a man who was just using you,” Dangard said. “Janice was an old friend who placed her trust in you, and now she’s dead.”

  The moment he mentioned Janice Gwynplaine’s name to her, a flood of wondrous sensations began to stream into her body, only to be replaced by the intense, painful withdrawal symptoms she experienced due to a lack of neurizim doses the moment Dangard mentioned the betrayal.

  Karana found herself hunched over her knees, the bitter taste of bile seeping down her throat. She wanted to throw up, yet her short breaths were continuously interrupted by the involuntary gag reflex. The hollow pain from a lack of air in her lungs, compounded by the primordial need to expel the literal demons inside her body, had now overwhelmed her senses, and all she could do was lie on the floor, gasping and convulsing like a goldfish drowning in air.

  Dangard crouched down so that she could see his eyes. “Painful, isn’t it?”

  Her palpitating eyes stared back at him. “M-make … i-it stop.”

  “I can’t help you there,” Dangard said. “It’s your own body going through neurizim withdrawal.”

  Karana’s voice became a suffocated croak. “P-please.”

  “Open up your mind, and maybe the pain will go away,” he said. “Delve into your inner self.”

  Images of her childhood flooded her memories. The constant teasing at the orphanage. The one time the other children forced her to crawl through the darkened ventilator shaft, and the horrible monsters she imagined were in there with her. The headmistress punishing her by beating Karana’s back with a stick until the blood flowed.

  The searing discomfort was suddenly replaced by a brief sensation of pride when her test scores meant she was chosen to go to another institution. And then the pain started once more when she realized what the new dormitory’s true purpose was. The bruises and broken bones she suffered, al
l while under the tutelage of her ruthless instructors.

  They wanted to make her into a living weapon, and by the antecessors they would succeed, or she would die in the process. The few friends she made among her batch were either transferred out or died during the countless grueling tests for survival.

  In the end, Karana put her feelings aside and became an instrument of death. In time, her ruthlessness surprised even her trainers, and she was soon tested in actual battle conditions. She refused to form bonds with any of her teammates, lest she experience heartache should any of them die in the line of duty, and many did.

  The Union owned her, along with the corporate sponsors. Karana’s life was a virtual contract, filled with clauses and legal minutiae to show she was employed, yet these anonymously signed agreements meant they could do anything they wanted with her, and there would be no liabilities.

  Despite the odds, she continued to survive. Each serious injury meant her body would undergo a transformation from flesh to mechanical. Karana stoically endured, for she felt it best to prove them all wrong by staying alive. In time, the extensive modifications began to take their toll.

  The perceived end was supposed to be unceremonious, just an eventual statistic in the universal law of averages. Her team was caught out in the open and everyone was slaughtered. Karana was supposed to die in a forgotten mission on an unknown world. Yet somehow, she continued to breathe, her mind still intact despite the punishment it took.

  Her body was supposed to be salvaged for spare parts after they found her, but one of the workers said no. All she could remember at their first meeting was his smiling, comforting face in front of her.

  The others tried anyway, but Toto Vega wouldn’t be denied. He killed the others one by one the moment they put their guard down. Then he took her for himself. Repaired her cybernetic systems over the years. In time, they became an effective team; his brains, her skills. In due time, they became too big for that little sliver of a star system, and they were ready for the next level.

  Within a year, they were able to steal and outfit a small ship, and soon Vega’s reputation grew. With Karana by his side, they made a formidable pair. The pirate’s life came naturally to them, and they soon gained notoriety even amongst their own kind. Despite the soreness of her distant past, the recent memories gave her some comfort.