Darkspace Calamity
Text © 2017 Soda Pop Miniatures LLC
Cover illustration © 2017 Soda Pop Miniatures LLC
Published by Future House Publishing LLC under license from Soda Pop Miniatures LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of Future House Publishing at [email protected].
Relic Knights created by Chris Birkenhagen, John Cadice, and Dietrich Stella.
Based on an original story and characters written by Dietrich Stella.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-1-944452-90-2 (paperback)
Developmental editing by Emma Hoggan
Copy editing by CreelaBelle Howard
Proofreading by Kayla Echols
Interior Design by Emma Hoggan
For my father, who always said, “Do what makes you happy.” And to J, who always said, “Write me stories.”
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Contents
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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
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About the Author
Chapter 1
Tranquil Wind starliner, outbound from Daeveron
The stars are going out.
Malya blinked and refocused her eyes. She found herself staring up through the transparent roof of the United Stars boarding gallery. The thought had risen unbidden in her mind and pulled her from the pleasant enjoyment of the swirl and rumble of the busy spaceport all around her. Hundreds of people from dozens of species clustered in small knots or formed loose, hopeful lines at passenger gates and boarding ramps. The milling traffic was directed by brisk and efficient staff in the uniforms of various starlines. Her friend Betty stood just behind her, checking ID and itinerary documents. Malya soaked in the wonderful, banal normality of it all.
Their light has gone. The esper that gave them form and motion is gone.
She frowned. Someone had said that to her, once, and she couldn’t remember who or understand why she remembered it now. She glanced around at the crowd, as if a stranger might volunteer the answer, and saw only Betty and the boarding queue for the Tranquil Wind forming swiftly in front of her. She looked back up through the transparent roof at the gathering clouds and the rose-tinted blue sky. Out there, somewhere beyond her sight and Daeveron’s double rings, she thought, the stars still shone.
Except they didn’t, not all of them. Not anymore.
Mr. Tomn had pointed out the wide, brilliant carpet of shining stars from the view ports of dozens of starships. Her cypher always pointed to the vast, black swaths of sky next. “They used to be full of stars, of galaxies, of so many people,” he had said more than once. She shook her head. Not now. Not on her vacation.
But she couldn’t stop. Her mind flashed to the esper crystals growing so thickly that they choked the life from whole worlds, of Darkspace creeping closer and eating the stars one by one. She closed her eyes and pushed the thoughts down, but she knew that she could not forget, not really, not for long.
She ground her teeth and fought back to the present. She smiled humorlessly and scrubbed her face with firm fingers. “I definitely need this time off,” she muttered. “I’m tripping over my own mind.” She adjusted her cape so that its hood fell a bit further down over her face. The whole point was to avoid getting recognized.
She nearly jumped to the roof when Betty tapped her on the shoulder. “Whoa. Easy there,” the small mechanic said. “You okay? You looked like you wandered off for a minute.”
“Yeah. Yeah,” Malya said. “I’m good. Just—tired.”
“Well, pay attention.” Betty smiled and pointed past Malya’s shoulder.
Malya turned and saw that the line had firmed up in front of them, and she trotted to close the gap. She glanced around a bit sheepishly and then looked down. Just ahead of her stood a tonnerian family. The large matriarch’s feline features twisted in annoyed concentration as she tried to juggle luggage and boarding passes and identity papers and four children. They seemed almost completely focused on each other, except for one young girl at the back. She had turned to watch Malya hurry toward them.
The girl had adorable dark stripes running down the fur around her eyes and over her muzzle. Her perked ears twitched around curiously, waving their red-dusted tufts. She had huge brown eyes—tonnerians often did at that age—and they opened as wide as they could to stare at Malya.
Malya stared back for a moment and then smiled and winked. The girl blinked and her mouth dropped open. Malya’s smile widened. The girl glanced over her shoulder at the distracted woman.
When the girl turned back to Malya, she shuffled closer. “Are you Princess Malya?” she asked in a low voice. Her tail twined and loosened unconsciously at the small of her back.
Malya almost couldn’t hear the girl over the chatter of the crowd and crew. She leaned down. “Maybe.”
The girl sniffed. “I saw you race once, on holovid. You didn’t win.”
Malya heard a muffled snort. She glanced back to see Betty covering her smirk and tactfully looking away.
Malya shrugged at the little girl. “Sometimes you don’t win, sometimes you do. That’s why you run the race, to find out.”
The girl scratched at the fur around her right ear. “My dad says you almost always win. I like that.”
Malya chuckled. “So do I, but it doesn’t mean as much if you don’t lose sometimes. What’s really important is that you come out ahead in the end and have a good time doing it.” She tapped the girl’s shoulder. “Are you going all the way to Catermane?”
“No,” the girl said, looking around. “We’re going to Fornor to see my aunt.” She looked back before Malya could answer. “Are you going to Catermane?”
<
br /> “Yes.”
“Mom says that Catermane is full of witches and troublemakers.”
Malya laughed softly. “Well, then, it sounds like I’ll like it there. We’re going for a festival.”
“Are you—” The girl stopped as her mother turned around and noticed her.
“Kollia, what are you doing? I’m so sorry, miss. She’s sometimes a, little, um, too, ah, friendly . . .” The woman’s voice stumbled and broke off.
Malya stood and saw recognition dawn on the other woman. Malya smiled, put her finger over her lips, and winked. Then she pulled her hood back up so that it fell over her face and covered her distinctive sky-blue and blonde hair. “No problem,” she said as warmly as she could. The line had started to move when the woman turned for her daughter, and Malya pointed at the gap opening up. “We better get going.”
“I—um, yes.” She fumbled a bit, and Malya picked up the handle of some of the family’s loose luggage and started forward. “Um, thank you. I—I hope she wasn’t bothering you.”
“Not a bit,” Malya said brightly. “Have fun on Fornor.”
“We will. I—How did . . . ?” The crew whisked her aboard before she could finish.
Malya smiled and waved.
Betty stepped up to hand off her own luggage. “Well that was uncommonly kind of you.” She swatted Malya’s shoulder.
“You know me. Always happy to meet a fan.”
Betty eyed her. “Especially if they’re not demanding that you sign everything they shove in your face. Still, you’re in a funny mood.”
“Am I?” Malya asked, trying to sound amused but not quite getting there.
Betty nodded, less amused than the princess had hoped for.
Malya sighed and tried to ignore the knot forming gently in her stomach. “Well, maybe. I just want to get this whole thing started.” Her smile turned wry. “Which seems strange, I guess. Hurry up and relax.” She strode up the ramp and handed her boarding pass to the attendant at the top. “Where’s Rin?”
Betty shrugged. “Last I saw, she was arguing with the cargo crew about something.”
“Of course she is.” Malya sighed and looked up. She saw a small, fur-covered face glancing over a rail down at her. Malya waved and smiled. “I didn’t think I’d be recognized quite so soon.”
“You’re hopeless,” Betty replied, turning over her own papers. “You’re one of the most famous racers in a generation on the most famous racing circuit in the galaxy. Nobody else has her face plastered over as many billboards, brochures, or holodisplays.” She shook her head. “This just makes me extra glad that we booked private cabins for this trip.”
Malya sighed and followed the steward down the corridor. “Me too, I guess. I really need some quiet time.”
“Clearly.” Some quality in Betty’s voice turned Malya’s head, and she saw her friend stepping aside and flagging down another steward. “That just makes me think of something,” Betty said. “You go get settled. I’m going to check on the pit crew.”
“They’re fine,” Malya called as the small woman trotted away. “They’re—Oh, forget it.” She shrugged and shook her head before turning back to the steward. “After you, good sir.”
The man nodded and started off smartly. Malya strolled after him, mostly gazing out the long armor glass viewing port beside her. The occasional reflections from holodisplays caught her eye, but she resolutely ignored them. She snagged a drink from a tray as they breezed past and then spent an awkward few moments trying to find a place to leave the empty glass. It felt like they had walked through half the ship before the steward finally tapped a wall control and gestured her inside the sliding door.
Malya gasped at the luxurious interior of the first-class cabin. It put her in mind—in the most pleasant way—of the better guest rooms in her parents’ palace on Ulyxis, the ones made up to impress visitors without seeming ostentatious or garish. She almost bounced through the door into the long, luxurious room. Bright, textured pelex wall panels slowly shifted colors like waves flowing over her. A faint scent of crisp air and salt water settled over her, and heat came from a warm, flickering light on a floor panel at the far end, suggesting a fire.
After a quick glance at the open door, Malya unhooked her cape and freed her hair, so long bound with pins that it felt like straw. With no one watching, she felt free to finally relax her control a bit. Flashes of blue, green, and pink energy appeared almost instantly, drifting around her head and fingers like dust motes dancing in sunlight. Before she started winning anything like decent money, she had spent cycles poking her nose into the seedier parts of the galaxy or the low-rent sections of Cerci. She ran her fingers lightly over the cool flexisteel and patterned garowood bar. This wasn’t half bad. For all the purses she had won and endorsements she had earned, she had never thought to spend her money on furnishings. She wondered briefly if she should.
The esper that floated past her eyes started moving to a space over the bar. The motes swirled and flowed together, and her cypher materialized from the air with an almost audible pop. He regarded the room with a mixture of pleasure and anticipation that she suspected matched her own. Mr. Tomn barely topped two feet high, and his off-white fur and pink markings combined with his bright eyes made him look like nothing so much as an animate stuffed animal. She knew better, of course. She could feel the esper, the raw power of creation, flowing from him along their connection. Flesh, blood, and fur he might be, but he was a creature formed directly from the raw building block of creation and bonded to her as closely as her lungs or limbs. She scratched behind his long, floppy ears.
He also, she knew, had his own ideas and agenda. She stepped back and turned a dubious expression on him. “Have you been talking in my head?”
He raised an eyebrow. “If you have to ask . . .”
She rolled her eyes. “Fine. Okay.”
“Not that you couldn’t use a talking-to.”
Malya frowned. “Not now. I hear enough doom and gloom without you piling on.”
“Most people can only watch the doom and gloom, princess. You can actually do something about it.” He wiggled his nose, which detracted somewhat from the gravity of his words.
“Don’t start.” It came out more sharply than she intended, but she let it stand.
“Such is the life of a Knight.”
“A life I didn’t choose, thank you very much.”
“But a life you have, nevertheless,” Mr. Tomn said matter-of-factly. His voice turned more serious, more imploring. “The universe grows dark. A century ago, you could look at the sky and see the light still traveling from stars that died a billion cycles before. That light should have shone for a billion cycles more, but it’s gone now. The esper that powered that light has been drained from the universe. You’ve seen this.”
“Yes,” she nearly shouted. “Yes. I’ve seen it. And I’ve seen that there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“That’s not true,” he shot back. “And you know that too.” He crossed his arms and turned away, pouting.
“So you always say. But you know what else you say?” She glared at him. “Not yet. For all the questing we’ve done, for all the firefights and fistfights, you still say not yet. Why?”
He looked a little embarrassed. “The Source hasn’t appeared, but I’m afraid that when it does, there won’t be much time. Something is interfering.”
“And that sort of vague nonsense—” Malya cut off her own words and simply fumed. “Look. If and when there’s something I can actually do to help, I’ll try. You know that.”
Mr. Tomn nodded diffidently, but Malya held his gaze until he acknowledged her more firmly.
“But for now, I need some rest. We’ve been running nonstop for cycles. Between racing, whatever cockamamie scheme you cook up on any given day, and the gaggle of goons we seem to attract, I haven’t had a moment’s peace in a long time.” She arched her eyebrow and lightened her tone as an olive branch. “You’re a trouble magnet,
you know. All cyphers are.”
Mr. Tomn snorted. “You don’t need the help, princess.”
“So,” she said after a beat, her eyes half-lidded, “are you going to give me a hard time for kicking back a bit?”
Mr. Tomn made a show of gravely considering the question but could not hold back his grin. He took a running leap from the bar and landed on the padded bench seat beneath the armor glass viewport. He flopped over onto his back. “Nope. You’re right. We’ve earned it.” He glanced at her. “But only for a little while. Something tells me we need to take this trip anyway.”
Malya decided that was the best she was going to get from him and nodded firmly. “Good.”
She knelt on the deep upholstery beside him and stared out the windows at the dock crews loading the last of the luggage and cargo into the ship. She could not stop smiling. The journey stretched out before her like a clear road on a bright day. She heard people almost arguing in the hall, approaching, and she cocked her head to listen.
She recognized Betty almost at once and then giggled lightly when she identified Rin’s firm, rich voice complaining.
“No, I don’t see why they had to take it.”
“You don’t see why a civilian passenger ship wants you to stow a high-powered sniper rifle in the secure cargo hold?” Betty asked. Malya could almost hear the small mechanic rolling her eyes.
“It’s my carry-on,” Rin said sourly.
“No, it’s not,” Malya called without turning. “We told you that.” She watched the dock crews below them, searching.
“It fits and everything,” Rin replied, exasperated. “I measured it.”
“I don’t even know why you brought that thing.” Betty’s voice had gotten a little shrill, but the tightness around her eyes looked more anxious than angry.
“First,” Rin replied, “that ‘thing’ is called Rudy, and you know it. Second, you brought that huge wrench of yours. When did you think you might need that?”
“The princess is performing, right? I thought I might, you know, need to do my job.”
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