Right at the very moment when Karana finally felt she could burst forth into a serene rebirth of who she was, the demons returned, more fearsome than ever. The once merry recollections of her time as Vega’s executive officer rapidly devolved into a puddle of protoplasmic torment.
She remembered being slapped about in front of the entire crew, the heel of Vega’s boot connecting with her stomach, thrusting her into the ship’s bulkhead.
“You’re nobody,” Vega hissed. “Remember that.”
She begged him to stop. “Please, don’t.”
Vega had an antique cattle prod, and he would sometimes use it on her just for fun. “Come on, moo! Just like an old Earth cow,” he would say. “Moo!”
Karana would be crawling on all fours like a domesticated beast. She tried her best to bellow, but he would shock her anyway. If she wasn’t too cooperative, he’d use the cattle prod as a stick instead, just like her old headmistress, and she feared it more than anything.
“Without me, you’re just a worm,” he said in her ear. “Say it!”
“I-I’m a worm,” Karana whispered.
She felt his knee connect with the side of her head, which sent her down to the ground once more. Looking up at him, she saw the always present devilish grin he wore whenever he thought of a new, insidious plan.
Vega grabbed her by the neck so she could stare deeply into his brown-black eyes. “I made you, so your loyalty is mine. Now you’ll die at my command.”
Tears ran down her cheeks as the vise around her neck tightened. He was going to kill her. Karana felt powerless, like a trapped fly writhing in a spider’s web. All she could hope for now was his mercy.
Another man’s voice came from behind her. “He’s wrong, you know.”
Karana tried to focus on the other speaker, but the pain of Vega’s hold was proving too much, and she was ready to pass out. Her vision began to blur.
“Fight him.”
She tried to scream, but all she could muster was a slight cough.
“Come on, you can do it.”
The agony was unbearable. All she wanted to do was sleep. Maybe it would be enough for her to find peace. To just give up wasn’t so bad.
“Take back your life. Fight him!”
And then she knew. Karana could feel her cybernetic limbs, the power coursing through them, giving her enough strength to bend solid metal. Pushing past the suffocating anguish of her throat, she concentrated on the tiny little spark that gave her hope. Like a snap of the fingers, the pain was gone.
“Do it now!”
She grabbed him in turn. Vega had a surprised look as he let go of her neck, and now she was suddenly standing over him, her metal hands on his throat.
“Renew yourself,” the voice said. “Be born again.”
Karana increased her grip with enough force to crush flesh and bone. Vega’s terrified face disappeared into nothingness, leaving her by herself once more.
Looking at her own hands, possessing raw physical power few could dream of, she stood up and turned to face Dangard, who once again revealed himself as he stood a few paces away.
“Stop being an instrument of others,” he said. “Live for yourself now.”
She nodded. Past the crucible, a new world was waiting for her. No longer the servant but her own master. “Yes.”
23 Winter Planet
After detaching herself from the Clint V, the Concordance-built shuttlecraft began her descent towards an ice-covered world located a few light years away from Scythia’s capital system. The multipurpose craft was equipped with tilt-fusion engines that allowed her to land on her belly if needed.
Inside the vessel’s cockpit, Duncan Hauk struggled with the controls while using the pilot’s console. The entire aerospace craft shuddered slightly as he made another adjustment to their trajectory. “Sorry, LT. It’s just that all the controls are kinda backwards compared with the readouts I’m used to.”
Garrett Strand sat in the co-pilot’s chair and gave the boy a playful smile. “I’m beginning to regret bringing you along, kid. Maybe I should have left you behind with the Clint V and taken the two other spacers with me instead.”
Hauk clenched his jaw. Every ounce of criticism always made him angry, no matter how constructive. “I’m still better than either Jia-Hao or Paulina at piloting. Everyone’s ratings can be accessed through Sappho’s database.”
“I’m hoping that’s true,” Strand said. “Those two are chafing since we left them to mind the Clint V for us while we take a trip down to this here snow world.”
Fytti pulled herself in through the hatch and began strapping into one of the gravity chairs. “It’s called Pirindra.”
Hauk glanced back at her briefly before returning his attention to the controls. “Don’t you have an autopilot when it comes to entering a planet’s atmosphere?”
Fytti shook her head. “We in the Concordance use manual controls, and it makes us superior pilots since we don’t have to depend on thinking machines. You’re a professional pilot, yes?”
“It would have been better if we used the shuttle we brought with the Clint V instead of this vehicle,” Hauk said. “This one handles like a flying brick.”
“Count yourselves lucky I was able to convince Kurgan customs to let us bring this small craft along,” Fytti said. “If you took anything but a Concordance shuttle down to Pirindra, the orbital defenses would have reacted against you by now.”
“Sorry, you’re right,” Hauk said. “I forgot to thank you for getting us out of that mess at the spaceport too. That’s two we owe you, ma’am.”
“We’re even,” Fytti said. “I used up a favor at the spaceport to get us a permit to come here but hopping aboard your trader ship saved my life as well. It seems I’m viewed as a threat by Toto Vega, so I must do all I can to make sure he never gets to succeed Archon Hrothgar Maladore.”
Strand began reading up on the base characteristics of Pirindra on his console. “Surface is mostly solid ice and rocky material. Gravity is half a gee. Atmospheric composition is mostly nitrogen, with trace amounts of methane, though air pressure is similar to Earth’s. This is supposed to be a colony world?”
Fytti nodded. “It is the most hospitable planet in this system. According to Concordance traditions, Scythia can only lay claim to this cluster if there is a colony of their people present.”
Hauk checked the readouts on his console. “Sensors are detecting very sparse settlements on the surface. I doubt if there are more than a few thousand settlers out here.”
“Most of the colonists live beneath the ice,” Fytti said.
“Makes sense, I guess,” Strand said. “Is there a breathable atmosphere underground?”
“In some areas,” Fytti said. “But the cold wiped out most of the oxygen-producing algae, so most of the bored tunnels have been abandoned.”
“We’ll begin atmospheric entry in a few minutes,” Strand said. “Anything else we should know about?”
“The Scythians out here are even more wary of outsiders than on Kurgan,” Fytti said. “Be prepared for some hostility and let me do the talking.”
Hauk kept a steady hand on the control stick. “Can we wear the a-suits when we get down there?”
“No,” Fytti said. “The moment you walk around in powered battle armor, the people down there will start shooting. Only wear standard cold-resistant clothing and breathing masks. Bring concealed hand weapons and nothing more.”
“Maybe I would have been better off if I did stay on the Clint V instead,” the boy grumbled softly.
Pirindra’s main settlement was called Snjor, and Hauk performed a textbook belly landing using the inverted fusion thrusters, landing on top of one of the empty nanocarbon pads. The three of them walked off the shuttle’s open loading ramp and onto a billowing, freezing landscape of glaciers and eternal ice.
Even with a parka wrapped tightly around his torso, Hauk could barely keep his teeth from chattering as he checked the remaining ai
r in his breathing mask: about four hours worth. He never liked cold environments, yet he kept his feelings bottled up. They were on a mission, and he needed to stay focused.
Fytti’s clothing was a thick wraparound cloak, and she seemed more comfortable than the other two. She pointed towards what looked like a crack in the nearby hillside and spoke over their com-link headsets. “Over there.”
Strand nodded silently and gestured at Hauk to accompany them.
The trudge strained their leg muscles because of the loose snow, and it took them a while to make it towards the opening. By the time they got in front of a large doorway, even Fytti was panting with exhaustion, despite the light gravity. Fytti pushed a button on an ice-covered yet still functional control panel, and her action was greeted with a loud grinding noise as a barely used airlock door opened up.
Hauk could only stare up in wonderment at what looked like giant spores growing on the cavernous ceiling. These strange growths began to billow breathable air at them the moment the chamber was resealed.
Strand took off his breathing mask the moment his wrist smartcom told him the air was human compatible. He could smell a slight musty odor, like old rotten fruit and compost.
Upon seeing his superior without his breathing mask, Hauk did likewise and almost regretted it. The boy coughed for a short while as he tried to get accustomed to the stench around him. “What … are those things?”
Fytti lifted the goggles from her large eyes. “You ordinary humans are such weaklings. Those gas bags up there in the ceiling absorb the excess nitrogen and pump in enough oxygen to make the air livable.”
Hauk had a disgusted look. “But that smell.”
“Like I said, weaklings.”
The boy scoffed. “Whatever.”
The doorway at the opposite end of the chamber opened up, revealing a tube-like passageway made of solid ice.
Fytti headed towards the exit. “Follow me.”
The floor was solid but somewhat slippery as the three moved down the corridor. Hauk nearly tripped over and fell twice, but he was able to right his balance enough and followed closely behind the other two while being somewhat more conservative in his strides.
The whole place seemed largely deserted until they reached one of the intersections. With the tunnel terminating at the mouth of an enormous ice cavern, they came upon a vast chamber honeycombed with multiple shafts leading to and from every direction. Solid black nanocarbon structures had been erected like smallish buildings beneath a vast dome of ice, and glow crystals provided much-needed illumination, erected like streetlamps in just about every corner.
Crowds of Scythians wandered about the central area, some just passing through, while others were busy selling their wares behind makeshift kiosks. Hauk and Strand kept their heads covered by their parka hoods while Fytti led the way. The boy was nearly exposed a few times when a number of Scythians loitering in the street called out to him when their droogs began barking an alert, but Hauk stayed close to Fytti’s side and ignored their whistling as he kept on moving.
By the time they got to a distant side passage, the foot traffic had begun to lessen considerably until just an occasional traveler passed by, and they could now freely converse without fear of suspicion. Both Strand and Hauk knew they were getting closer to the abandoned areas of the colony, and they made sure their oxygen packs had replenished automatically by absorbing the surrounding air.
Hauk was a mere half a step from the other two, as his distaste for the colony was overcome by a sense of curiosity. “Did the Concordance use machines to bore through all these tunnels?”
“No,” Fytti said. “My ancestors used ice wyrms to do it.”
Hauk was more confused than ever. “What are they?”
“Biological machines,” Strand said. “You ought to know by now that the Concordance would rather use genetically modified slaves than robots to do their heavy lifting for them.”
Fytti glanced at Strand disdainfully. “Why must you deride our practices? You Union people have your tools, and we have equivalent ones.”
“We’re technically not Union,” Strand said. “Closer to League if you really want to pigeonhole us.”
Hauk figured he could stop them from fighting if he kept up the questions. “Could someone tell me what an ice wyrm looks like?”
“Think of a flat-headed giant worm with a length of close to a hundred meters,” Strand said. “They have an extremely acidic circulatory system and they burn through solid ice just like that.” He snapped his fingers.
Hauk’s eyebrows shot up. “Those things must be monsters!”
“They aren’t monsters,” Fytti snapped. “Many of these ice wyrms served as ready tools which helped us build this colony. These tunnels would not have been possible without them burning through the ice.”
“What about the smaller tunnels?” Hauk asked.
“Ice wyrms are prolific, and they breed rapidly,” Fytti said. “At their juvenile stage of only two weeks, they are already big enough to create crawlspace tunnels. At two months, their proportion is suitable to bore through the same sized tunnel we’re walking in right now.”
The boy could hardly imagine what he was being told. “Could they just keep on growing?”
“They could,” Fytti said. “But the Breeders normally assign a maximum lifespan, depending upon which world they are brought to and what kind of building task is required. In the case of Pirindra, they were supposed to have a lifespan of one year.”
It was Strand’s turn to be curious. “What do you mean ‘supposed to’?”
Fytti sighed while admitting the truth. “There were … problems. Not long after the ice wyrms were introduced into the planet, they began to exhibit … strange behavior.”
“You couldn’t control them, I bet,” Strand said. “Did they go wild and trash the colony?”
Fytti was annoyed at his pointed comments, but she felt it best if they knew everything. “Ice wyrms are usually docile beasts. They do not view humans as threats, and in fact many of their handlers are sad when they die. The problem was, it seemed these wyrms went on past their time and continued to grow until their sheer size became unmanageable.”
“What caused them to do that?” Hauk asked.
“To this day, we don’t know,” Fytti said. “Even the Breeders were at a loss to comprehend it, since ice wyrms on the other planets never had the same problem. Some have said Pirindra is cursed, while others proclaim it was the doing of the antecessors.”
“Please go on,” Strand said. “I’m beginning to wonder if this has anything to do with the rebellion.”
“It does,” Fytti said. “When the beasts got too big, they started to compromise the colonial infrastructure. Specialized mercenaries had to be hired to hunt them all down before they overwhelmed the entire planet. In time, the wyrms were killed, but the damage had already been done.”
Hauk kept walking just behind them, only this time he was cowed into silence by what he just heard.
Fytti continued. “After it was all over, the colony was in shambles. Large pockets beneath the ice had been exposed to the outside atmosphere, and a lot of people died. Many Pirindrans cried out to the archon for help, but very little support came. Resentment of House Maladore grew. In due time, a growing independence movement came about, dedicated to overthrowing Scythian rule over this planet.”
“Makes sense,” Strand said. “I wanted to ask you a personal question. Do you sympathize with these rebels?”
“In some ways I do,” Fytti said. “But I have mostly kept out of politics. The ruling archon isn’t a bad man but is sometimes forced to do bad things to stay in power.”
“Well, looks like you have to make a choice now,” Strand said. “I wonder, how come we weren’t greeted by the authorities when we touched down here?”
Fytti scowled. “Because of my special pass, the one I showed to the authorities at Kurgan to release your ship, remember? We have clearance at one of their diplomati
c landing pads, and that’s how we got into a private airlock and into Snjor without any scrutiny by the Scythian military.”
“Alright,” Strand said. “You said you know someone who might give us a lead on where this lost shard is.”
Fytti pointed towards a large opening just ahead. “The one we are supposed to meet should be in the next chamber.”
The three of them entered what seemed like an underground cyst with a moderately high ceiling. Unlike the passageway they had just come out of, this place had only a few glow crystals along its walls, bathing the entire area in a stale, twilit gloom.
Hauk pulled out his flashlight and turned it on as he looked around. “This whole place looks deserted.”
Strand nodded while turning on his own light. Glancing up above, he could see more recent traces of new ice walls having been placed around a number of once massive holes. “I’m guessing this was one of the places these giant ice wyrms ravaged all those years ago.”
Fytti’s eyes were more adaptive in the near dark, and she never bothered to carry a flashlight. “It seems so. The one who we were suppose—”
Her statement was interrupted when a number of hooded beings got out of hiding and leveled their weapons at the three of them.
“Don’t move, outworlders,” a voice said.
24 The Superior
A few light years beyond the borders of the Scythian cluster, the now fully repaired Tiburon made a steady, one-gee docking maneuver with the Wondrous Beacon in the confines of an uninhabited star system. Though his own vessel was dwarfed by the size of the xtid battlecruiser, Captain Toto Vega’s ship was more maneuverable, and the Tiburon quickly got close enough to deploy attachment cables to connect between both spacecraft.
Vega and his executive officer wore simple skinsuits as they got to the xtid ship’s airlock using the sliding cables. Just before they suited up, Baz Wilkerson suggested they wear battle armor, but his captain said otherwise. Vega knew they were helpless either way, so he felt no reason to take precautions.
Shards of Eternity (Stars in Shadow Book 2) Page 21