Star Warrior

by Isaac Hooke

  “I’m doing my best to keep the thermal signature of the Red Grizzly between you and the enemy,” Nebb said over the comm. “The dweller ships seem to be a bit preoccupied at the moment anyway, however: the TSN vessels are really hammering them in their latest flybys. You know, I’m not sure who to actually root for here. If the aliens win, we’re screwed. If the TSN wins, we’re screwed, too.”

  “Let’s just hope they both blow themselves to smithereens,” Sinive said.

  She shared her external video feed from the Grizzly Cub’s nose camera with Tane, and he watched the vessel descend. When it reached the atmosphere, the display filled with orange from the flames. Then a moment later they were through.

  Tane saw the rocky surface come up fast below. Though there were no clouds, the light levels were similar to a typical overcast day on his homeworld. He picked out a black, east-west trending mountain range in the distance, one that they were quickly flying over. The craft headed toward a series of metallic buildings that stood out from the rock below, set amid a valley surrounded by mountains.

  Grizzly Cub circled the site.

  “It seems safe down there,” Cub said. “I’m choosing a flat landing area and taking us in.”

  A moment later the craft set down. Tane retrieved the Essence Energy Sword from his belt and waited patiently.

  “Positron, Jed, get out there and secure the landing site,” Lyra said. “Cub, lower the ramp.”

  The ramp lowered. Positron left the aisle between the seats and led the way. Jed stood up behind him, drawing his pistol in one hand. As the Bander descended the ramp, every single rune on his power armor glowed, and the surface swirled with all the colors of the rainbow. When he had room, Jed drew his sword and abruptly vanished from view.

  “I gotta get me one of those,” Sinive said.

  “The sword, or the armor?” Tane asked.

  “Both,” Sinive replied. “By the way, nice blade.” She nodded toward the hilt of the energy sword he held.

  “I’m surprised you know what it is,” Tane said.

  “Military chip upgrade, remember?” she said.

  Tane glanced at his overhead map. Jed’s blue dot was present, but not Positron’s. He already had Sinive and Lyra on his map, so he issued a location sharing request to Positron. The robot didn’t answer it.

  Ah well, don’t need the robot anyway.

  He watched Jed’s dot circle the Grizzly Cub.

  “Clear out here,” Jed said.

  The Bander winked into view near the base of the ramp, his armor swirling with colors.

  Lyra held out a hand toward Tane and Sinive. “After you.”

  The restraints receded and Tane stood. Before stepping onto the ramp, Tane retrieved his D18 from the pouch and slid it over his shoulder. Continuing to grip the inactive Essence sword, he proceeded down the ramp. When he had the necessary clearance from the seats, he activated his energy shield.

  He joined Jed at the base of the ramp. Lyra and Sinive followed behind him. Sinive had her pistol in hand, leaving the S4 rifle to hang from her shoulder. Lyra currently held no weapon at all.

  Jed led the way in his swirling power armor, while Positron bought up the rear.

  They reached the edge of an environmental dome. The glass panes in the dome were broken in several places. The bottom was made of a metal rim that towered over them, reaching well over their heads. A rectangular metal passageway provided an entrance into that rim. Scattered outside of it were four large mechs. The toppled battle units were all badly damaged, some missing arms and legs. The cockpit of one was blown right open, revealing the armored suit of the human pilot. His faceplate was broken, and a skull stared back.

  “Are you receiving any signals?” Lyra asked.

  “No,” Jed said. “The place is completely dead.”

  “Nebb, you’re our eye in the sky,” Lyra said. “How does the base look from up there?”

  “I’m not spotting anything else in the area other than your party,” Nebb said. “I’ll keep you posted if that changes.”

  The landing party entered the passageway in the rim, where the pieces of three fallen combat robots lay strewn about, weapons and bodies broken. On the far side, the doors had been blown open.

  “Why go through the trouble of opening the doors when they had already breached the dome?” Sinive said.

  “They breached the dome from orbit in an initial assault meant to weaken them,” Jed said. “After that, it was simply easier to enter from the main entrance. Especially considering there were likely survivors inside, ready and eager to shoot down anyone who tried to penetrate from the air.”

  Tane stepped through the doors and into the base proper. Spread out in front of him were different outbuildings, several showing signs of blast damage, likely from the initial orbital attack. Everywhere he looked, the ground was covered in a spindly, black substance. It looked almost like hair or fur.

  “What’s this black stuff on the ground?” Tane asked.

  “Used to be grass,” Lyra answered. “Before it was exposed to the corrosive atmosphere. Nebb, are you still reading us?”

  “I am,” Nebb replied over the comm. His voice distorted slightly, probably because of the distance between the landing party and the shuttle. “By the way, we just got two of our dragons back online. Ready to provide air support as needed.”

  “Thank you,” Lyra said. “I’ll keep you updated.”

  There were more fallen combat robots, most of them lurking behind the rectangular metal buildings, where they had attempted to take cover. There were also more mechs, many of them with imploded torsos, as if a giant hand had crushed the cockpits where the human pilots resided. Most of the missiles on the mechs remained intact—the operators apparently never even had the chance to fire.

  “I don’t like the looks of this,” Jed said.

  “Neither do I,” Lyra said.

  Some of the buildings had partially imploded as well, as if crushed by that giant hand, too.

  “What could do this?” Tane asked.

  Lyra didn’t answer.

  33

  As they moved deeper into the base, Tane spotted the occasional corpse lying about on the blackened grass. The bodies could only be Volur, judging from the rune-decorated robes and dresses. They lay flat on the ground, blackened skeletons emerging from underneath clothing. On the hands and arms of some of them were silver rings and bracelets, probably Chrysalium. Tane felt no urge to loot those items from the bodies, no matter how valuable they might be.

  Tane sensed the artifact they were looking for before he saw it. It was like a dark presence in his mind, calling out to him from beyond the outbuildings ahead. When he looked closely, he could see the black shadows limning the rectangular metal structures.

  “The artifact is just beyond here,” Lyra said.

  “I know,” Tane told her.

  She gave him a curious look from behind her faceplate but said nothing more.

  Jed led the way around the buildings into a clearing near the center of the dome.

  There, thrusting from the black grass was a towering, oval-shaped lens strikingly similar to the one he had seen in the Umbra, except it was far larger, and wasn’t floating. Like that lens, it ate all of the light, and seemed more of a tear in the fabric of reality than anything substantial.

  Instinctively Tane glanced at his spacesuit, half expecting to see dark threads leading from his body to the artifact. To his relief, there were none.

  “Jed, Positron, secure the perimeter,” Lyra said.

  Jed and Positron immediately fanned out, moving along the outskirts of the clearing, scanning the alleys between the bordering buildings.

  “It’s clear,” Jed said when he had looped back to Lyra’s location. Positron remained in position on the far side.

  “I’m moving to a better vantage point,” Positron announced over the comm. The combat robot leaped onto a nearby building, proceeded to the far edge, and crouched down on one knee t
o keep watch.

  “Eye in the sky,” Lyra said. “Have you spotted anything?”

  “That’s a negative,” Nebb said over the comm. “Ain’t nothing but you guys down there, far as I can tell. No aberrant heat signatures, no nothing.”

  “Then why does it feel like someone is watching us?” Sinive said.

  Lyra remained motionless near the clearing edge. “Does this look anything like the black lens you told me you saw in the Umbra?”

  “It’s the same,” Tane said. “Except bigger. And not floating. It’s a reservoir of Dark Essence?” A reservoir of evil?

  “That and more,” Lyra said. She glanced over her shoulder to look back at Tane; she wore an expectant expression.

  Tane broke away from the party and slowly approached the black lens, which continued to call out to him.

  “Be careful,” Sinive said.

  As Tane approached, he realized the calling was different somehow compared to the iris he had encountered in the Umbra. He couldn’t quite place it, but there was something definitely changed. He also noticed that he didn’t feel the same crazy urge to touch the object. Instead of experiencing a sense of peace when he gazed into that infinite darkness, he felt... curiosity. Not his own, but rather, it was as if the iris itself was curious about him.

  In moment’s Tane was standing beside the artifact. The oval towered over him at roughly five meters at its tallest, and two at its widest. And although he couldn’t see the dark threads running from his body to the artifact, he could almost sense his connection to the thing.

  He deactivated his energy shield and secured the sword hilt to his belt. Then he hesitantly reached a gloved hand toward the blackness.

  “Wait, should he really touch it?” Sinive said over the comm. “You remember what happened last time, Tane?”

  Tane froze. “Something is different about this one. In the Umbra, it was almost like the iris wanted me to touch it. Badly. But here, this artifact seems more... curious, than anything else. It will be all right. Trust me.”

  He continued reaching toward the artifact. As he got close, his fingers didn’t distort and elongate this time. A good sign, he thought.

  And then his gloved finger touched the device. It definitely felt solid. He waited a few seconds, but the blackness didn’t crawl up his hand and envelope him like it had in the Umbra. Growing more confident, he rested his gloved palm fully flat on the surface. Still nothing.

  He began to feel something lingering beyond the edge of perception. Something lurking inside the artifact. It felt similar to the raging power of the Essence, but different in some way. Not evil, as he imagined, but... warm. While the Essence was smooth, orderly, and above all cold, what he felt here was chaotic and hot, more a conflagration than a river. A forest set aflame.

  “I think I can feel the Dark Essence calling to me from inside the artifact,” Tane said. “There’s some kind of Essence stored inside, I know that much for sure. It’s almost like I can reach into the artifact with my mind and touch it…”

  He tried to, but there was an invisible barrier preventing him. He attempted to clear his thoughts like he would when Siphoning the ordinary White Essence, and when he did, his consciousness expanded. He reached through the artifact but once again couldn’t touch what lurked inside. However when he tried to Siphon the normal Essence, it came to him easily. The Dark Essence was still there, lurking just beyond reach.

  He released the White Essence and slumped against the artifact slightly.

  “I can’t get to it,” Tane said.

  “Fill your mind with every chaotic thought you can muster,” someone said. Each word composing the sentence seemed sourced from a different speaker.

  Tane glanced around himself in shock. He was no longer standing in front of the artifact. Nor wearing a spacesuit. Instead, he lurked at the edge of a forest of strange trees, their branches hanging bulbs, their leaves small green and purple needles. Beside him stood a dweller in an environmental suit. It was a different suit than he had seen before. It seemed more primitive, somehow, possibly because of the pistons that moved slowly up and down near the rear of the suit, as if imbuing motion to the internal liquid atmosphere. Beyond the translucent dome on the carapace, he could see that sideways oriented maw staring down upon him.

  But Tane felt no fear. He knew this dweller. It was his teacher: P’lotholemus.

  “Only through chaos can you reach the Dark,” his teacher said. A synthesizer embedded in the carapace section emitted those words, which were not only sourced from different speakers, but were in a strange language Tane had never heard before. But for some reason he understood it. “Embrace the chaos and try again.”

  Tane allowed images, thoughts, music, a cacophony of anything he could possibly imagine, into his mind. He once more felt the Dark Essence lurking beyond the edge of reality, a consuming fire raging across a forest and leaving ashes in its wake. He reached out and touched it.

  The conflagration exploded inside of him, burning him to the core,

  “It’s... molten!” Tane said.

  His first instinct was to fight the raging flames, but because of his training with the White Essence, he nearly gave in, nearly allowed those flames to burn him to the core.

  “Fight it!” P’lotholemus said. “You must never surrender to the Arcanum. Never! You must fight it with all of your being. To surrender means to give yourself over to oblivion: the Dark Essence will tear you apart!”

  Instantly Tane slammed down with his being, dousing some of those flames, but that only caused more to spring up elsewhere. He kept smothering them, and they continually returned. It was a relentless, endless struggle that manifested in translucent, dark flames appearing to sprout from the ground all around him, none of which seemed to actually interact with any of the strange trees.

  “Good!” P’lotholemus said. “What you are experiencing is the Siphoning, the endless fight against the Dark. For as long as you hold onto the Arcanum, you must fight like this. Each of those flames you see before you can be shaped. And when shaped all at once, they will form a design, an Essencework of the Dark, that can be used to influence this reality.”

  Another voice rudely interrupted that of his teacher.

  “The TSN ships are gone,” the voice said. The words were sourced from a single male speaker. “They’ve all been obliterated.”

  At first Tane didn’t recognize the chain of words as forming something even intelligible, but then the meaning clicked. He realized the speaker was Nebb, and that the smuggler’s voice was coming over the comm.

  “One of the alien pincer ships has been disabled,” Nebb continued. “The other destroyed, but the hook ship is still coming on strong. It’s headed for my position. Ain’t sure how long I can maintain geostationary orbit.”

  “Understood,” Lyra said over the comm. “Keep me updated.”

  Their voices seemed distant, faraway. Tane still resided upon the edge of the odd forest, his alien teacher standing beside him, the dark flames from the ground licking the air all around him. He was still quenching those flames as fast as he was able, with more fires sparking into existence all the time.

  “Tane, are you all right?” Lyra asked.

  “I think it’s… imprinting me with some sort of memory,” Tane replied. “Or memories. There was a man who lived among the Terael many millennia ago. He had no access to the White Essence, like ordinary humans with the Ability. But he could wield the Dark Essence. He trained with the dwellers, or a dweller, and put all of his knowledge into this artifact. I don’t think it’s an Essence reservoir at all, at least not in the true sense of the word. Because you see, there’s no actual Dark Essence here. Instead, I think this artifact is more like the Dark equivalent of Chrysalium, allowing for the magnification of Dark Essence. With this, I can Siphon far more Arcanum than any dweller can naturally. Orders of magnitude more. And the artifact is teaching me exactly how to do it.”

  He saw a notification on his HUD, the
words overlaying the needle-bulb backdrop of the odd forest.

  New skill received.

  Dark Siphoning. Level 1.

  “Kay,” Nebb’s voice came over the comm. It was distorting badly. “Air support is off the menu: the hook ship is forcing me out of geostationary orbit. Looks like I’m going to have to loop over to the opposite hemisphere... I still have a couple of dragons intact, and I’ll do my best to draw the ship away. But I’ll be out of contact for a little while. Sorry kids. Hang tight. ”

  Nebb cut out entirely.

  The surroundings fell away, replaced by a new scene. Tane was seated on the edge of a rocky outcrop overlooking the forest. There was a village of strange metal huts in the distance—spherical structures forming clusters amid the needle-bulb trees. Tane was with his teacher once more, learning how to shape the dark flames fanning out from the open air in front of him.

  But before Tane could create anything, the outcrop and his alien teacher were abruptly ripped away, and Tane found himself lying flat on his back on the dead grass, about two meters from the base of the artifact. His head throbbed painfully. Rolling to one side, he saw that Lyra, Jed, and Sinive had also been knocked down behind him.

  Tane scrambled to his feet and instinctively activated his energy shield.

  “What happened?” Tane said over the comm.

  Jed was already on his feet, and he helped Lyra rise. Sinive slowly pulled herself upright beside them.

  “I don’t know,” Lyra said. “Are you sure you didn’t do something?”

  “No, I’m not sure,” Tane said.

  “Positron is gone!” Jed said.

  “Get to Tane!” Lyra said.

  Jed dashed forward, sword in hand. In moments the Bander, Lyra and Sinive surrounded him. They scanned the surrounding buildings.

  “It’s okay,” Tane said. “I’m sure Positron just—“

  “We knew you would come,” a voice interrupted. “We knew you couldn’t resist the knowledge.”