Starcrasher (Shades Space Opera Book 1)

by Rock Forsberg

  INTERLUDE

  FIVE YEARS AGO AT THE DAWN CENTRAL

  The appearance of the cliff that Tredd fell from had been unexpected. He had served the navy as a trooper, gunner, navigator, first officer and finally, ten years after his initial deployment, a young captain in command of a battleship.

  As a captain, he was a free man, as he had been for years. There was no need to fight for survival, not anymore, but he continued the habit, unaware of why. It was the only thing he knew. He had no friends but the war. Since his first battle, he had systematically blasted all of his feelings to the background, buried them so deep they could not be excavated.

  Instead of brooding over his past, Tredd was feeling giddy. Being a top 0.05% high performer had earned him a spot at the Dawn Alliance Navy Leadership Development Conference at the Dawn Central. The first day was done, and he was enjoying the mood brought out the Kikuchian springberry mixer and his rowdy fellow officers. His career was on a vertical trajectory and life was good. He had come a long way.

  The cream of the navy had gathered in the Commemoration Hall in the Dawn Central. The first evening of the Development Conference was to acknowledge the achievements of the participants and provide an opportunity to have a good time with the fellow high performers – the Best of the Navy, as they said. Earlier that day the Best had sat through an intensive day of presentations in the Grand Hall, opened by the Head of Defence, Minister Bunlier, and followed by a number of keynote speakers and in-depth workshops on various tracks.

  Tredd was chatting with a group of young male officers. The talk had quickly diverted from the day’s agenda.

  ‘Did you guys watch the game last night?’ Cobhan said. He was a sturdy young captain with a thick accent and a never-ending interest for the galactic speed-ball league.

  ‘Yeah,’ Taro said, shaking his bald head. ‘Steelers, what the hell? They were sure to win.’

  Cobhan smiled, and pointed at Taro with two fingers. ‘Guess what? I got thirty against one for the score.’

  Taro raised an eyebrow. ‘You bet on Naboons winning the game ten–nil?’

  ‘I did.’ Cobhan shrugged.

  Taro held the back of his head and said, ‘That’s crazy, man.’

  Cobhan chuckled. ‘To be honest, I fumbled the bet. I was going to put it on Steelers, but was distracted by…’ A grin appeared on his face. ‘Yeah, let’s just say she was sweet.’

  Everyone burst out laughing, and raised their drinks up high. ‘Cheers!’

  A tall, blue-skinned Baar woman gave them a black look down her crinkled nose as she walked past. She had an Admiral’s insignia. That made the guys quiet down.

  ‘My glass is empty,’ Tredd said, and started heading up to the bar to pick up a drink.

  That night the pompous Commemoration Hall had transformed with a celebration of colourful pixels dancing to exotic tunes above the crowd. Scents of foreign spices and chatter in various languages filled the air. As Tredd squeezed himself through the mass towards the bar, he bumped into a stocky, dark-skinned Andron captain whose face was familiar, but whose name unfortunately slipped Tredd’s mind.

  ‘Captain Tredd Bounty,’ the Andron man said with a slight nod. ‘I was just looking for you.’

  ‘You were?’ Tredd asked, trying to remember the man’s name without luck.

  The man put on a wide smile. ‘You don’t remember. Well, I don’t blame you – it’s always new people around you on every gig, isn’t it? The name’s Juda Prett, from Special Ops. We flew together in the Dinkelhaus operation, remember?’

  Tredd remembered the Dinkelhaus operation, but not the man. Still, he nodded and smiled as though he did. Tredd had come across thousands of people on his tour of duty, but remembered only dozens. With death a frequent visitor in the suicide missions, perhaps forgetting had become a survival mechanism to remove the pain of attachment.

  ‘Anyway,’ the Andron officer continued, ‘I wanted to introduce you to someone.’ He gestured behind him.

  Why not? Tredd thought. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘You’ll see in a sec. Just follow me.’ The Andron started leading him through the crowds.

  They came to a stop in a sudden empty space among the crowd, created by a circle of solemn officers from special ops. It almost felt as if the crowd around Tredd had vanished, even the music went down and the pixels lost their saturation. In front of him stood the man to whom he was being introduced.

  Tredd knew who he was – everyone did – because he was a star, celebrated for pushing back the ODD in a crucial battle that had helped end the Red War. Commander Vorlar Block was a superstar celebrity of the navy, a proud Dresnean, who, according to the rumours, had at a young age lost his big brother in a human extremist terrorist attack and purportedly joined the navy to avenge him. He towered a head above Tredd with his long chiselled face and grey skin. White strands streaked his black hair, as was typical for half-blooded Dresnean-humans.

  ‘Commodore Block, sir,’ Tredd saluted.

  He acknowledged the salute with a slight nod. ‘At ease.’

  ‘It is an honour to meet you, sir.’ While Commodore Block reported to the same vice admiral as Tredd’s superior, Commodore Jett, Tredd had never spoken with him, so this was a great opportunity.

  ‘I saw you in the audience at my keynote presentation,’ the commodore said. ‘What did you think?’

  He could not say it, but he had thought the presentation itself had felt flat, perhaps because stories of Commodore Block fighting the ODD had become legendary, known and retold by everyone, and perhaps also exaggerated. ‘I was really impressed how you took on the ODD fleet in Tien system.’

  The commodore looked down at Tredd and smirked. ‘Were you?’

  Tredd coughed. The commodore had seen through him. To compensate, he put on a fake smile, and nodded in agreement while clearing his throat. ‘The face-to-face encounter you had with the ODD on board your vessel, in close quarters, armed with just a Hotblade… that was amazing. I’m sorry to hear about Virius, it was so weird—’

  The commodore took a step closer, and peered down at Tredd with an intimidating gaze. ‘My ship’s name was Virilis.’

  Mistaking the name did no favours to Tredd. Being introduced to a hero such as Vorlar Block was an honour, but at this rate he was going to blow it. He looked around – Juda Prett was nowhere to be seen – and turned back to the commodore. ‘I’m really sorry, sir.’

  ‘I would have imagined you knew better,’ the commodore said with a frown. He took a sip from his smoking white drink, and continued, ‘But the thing I left out was that it weren’t the ODD who destroyed Virilis.’

  ‘It wasn’t?’ The commodore’s presentation indicated it had been the ODD, but now that Tredd thought of it, he couldn’t recall him explicitly stating it.

  The commodore shook his head. ‘It was an inside job.’

  ‘Inside job?’ Tredd was surprised, but understood why the commodore had left it out. ‘Someone within the navy?’

  ‘That’s right, and they will be brought to justice in due time – very soon.’ The Commodore leered and took another sip of his drink. The tall glass looked like a thimble in his huge hands. ‘All that aside, I have heard that you too have experienced some interesting close encounters.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I consider myself to be lucky to be alive,’ he said, wondering at the sudden change of topic.

  The commodore smiled. At last. Tredd had thought he wasn’t going to connect with him at all. Tredd took a sip from his glass, tasting the cold burn of the alcohol.

  ‘You should,’ the commodore said, with a sudden change in the tone of his voice. He was not smiling anymore as he bent down closer to Tredd and whispered, ‘Because I know what you are.’

  Tredd had always felt uneasy networking with his superiors, but never had he felt intimidated – this casual conversation had turned cold. ‘What I am, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘Do not play ignorant with me, Captain.’ The commodore spoke with a ster
n tone, but on low volume, so that just Tredd could hear him. ‘You do realise I run the internal compliance investigations in this area?’

  ‘Yes, sir, I can ensure my compliance is to the highest standards,’ Tredd said. It was true. Because of his entry to the navy as a criminal, he had been under a strict compliance review regime, and had always ensured his actions, from engaging the enemy to claiming expenses, were aligned with the current policies.

  ‘Perhaps it is, perhaps it is not,’ the commodore said while twirling his drink. More white smoke rose up from it. ‘The enemy does not wait, so let me cut to the chase, Captain. I want you to come clean. My unit has gathered all the data, and it is plainly obvious that you do… something.’

  Tredd gulped. ‘Sir, I don’t understand,’ he said, while at the same time, inside, a bad feeling was growing.

  ‘Tell me now, what is it?’ The commodore’s voice was hard and demanding.

  Tredd could not say anything. It felt as if the room had just gotten colder, and the officers in the circle around them darker. Could the commodore really have found out about time-lapse? Tredd could only stare the commodore with a blank gaze.

  The commodore pulled his lips to a line. His grey eyes peered into Tredd’s. ‘All right then,’ he said. ‘I give two options: either you come clean about what it is that you do, or you resign from the navy. You have until the morning to decide.’

  ‘Why, sir, I don’t understand…’ Tredd trailed off. No words came to help him. It felt like the officers around them had also turned to him, all towering above his head, scowling. When he looked away from the commodore, everyone around was perfectly normal. Perhaps the alcohol was playing tricks on him.

  The commodore lowered his face in front of Tredd’s, much too close to be comfortable, and whispered, ‘I know about your kind. You don’t belong among us. You should be dead.’

  The commodore knew. Tredd swallowed.

  ‘I have given you two options, now you must act on one,’ the commodore said, speaking between his grey Dresnean teeth. ‘If you do anything else – ignore me, or contact Commodore Jett or the administration – there will be consequences. Is that clear, Captain?’

  It was not clear, but the only thing Tredd was able to do in his confusion was to mutter, ‘Sir…’

  The commodore turned around and started off into the crowd while the solemn special ops officers scattered, breaking the circle around Tredd.

  Even with them all gone, Tredd felt a number of dark eyes focusing on him again, but when he looked around the crowd, nobody met his eyes.

  Tredd felt baffled. This was the first time he had met with Commodore Vorlar Block, and the first time any officer ranking above him had openly threatened him. The policy was strictly against that kind of behaviour, but what was Tredd to do? Two things were certain: the commodore knew about his secret, and Tredd was not going to give it away.

  He was not going to resign either. Perhaps the commodore was just bullying him. But he did know something… As the head of compliance, Commodore Block had access to all of Tredd’s data. Tredd knew he had always abided by the policies, but doubt still crawled into his mind.

  Tredd’s immediate superior, Commodore Jett, was light years away, and Tredd was not going to contact him about this while drunk. What would he even say? That Commodore Vorlar Block knew his secret and had threatened him? He would get no help from his superior tonight. The same went for the administration, they were just a rubber stamp. He was on his own.

  Tredd was shaken, his good mood gone. He looked over at the busy bar, then turned around, shaking his head. He had to clear his head.

  He snuck out of the Celebration Hall without a word to his fellow officers, and back to his room. There he lay on the bed, thinking, his mind twisting things over and over again, until everything was dark and the only escape was a nightmare.

  That was how Tredd was pushed off the cliff.

  The next morning was a fall from grace just like the day of his deportation from Eura had been so many years ago.

  This time he woke up, feeling groggy, to the sound of someone knocking at his door. The automatic lighting put out a dim orange ambience based on the default setting from his navy network account. Normally it would not let anyone disturb him unless there was an emergency, but now it did, and the speakers pounded out the standard sound of three knocks.

  Tredd sat up. ‘Who’s there?’

  The wall in front of him flashed on with a moving image of a group of soldiers waiting in the corridor, dressed in black operations uniforms, with Dawn Alliance Military Police insignia on their shoulders.

  ‘Computer,’ Tredd yawned, ‘what do they want?’

  ‘They have a permit,’ the computer said. ‘K55093B, to arrest you on charges relating to code 000321, policy violations.’ The text of the order came up on the screen on top of the live image of the waiting soldiers.

  Tredd rubbed his eyes. Still half asleep, his first thought was that it was part of the training programme, but then he recalled last night’s events and felt a chill. Was this something that Commodore Block had arranged?

  The knock turned to an annoying beep and the wall started flashing with a red signal. A counter appeared on the screen, going down from five, indicating when the door would automatically open.

  Tredd let out a sharp breath, inhaled, and pushed himself up from the bed. He picked up his pants from the chair and pulled them up. Just as he was zipping his fly, the counter dropped down to zero, the lights took on full daylight brightness, and the door swooshed open.

  Instead of storming in, the military police entered the room in a civilised manner. However, they had guns and determined faces – except for the square-jawed leader, who was grinning.

  ‘What’s this about?’ Tredd asked as he buckled his belt.

  ‘You have literally been caught with your pants down,’ the officer said, looking down and making his team grin as well. ‘On the authority of permit K55—’

  ‘Yeah, I know, it says policy violations, but my record is clean.’

  ‘Don’t know about that,’ the leader said. ‘We have been informed that you have violated multiple policies, and are charged with serious crimes. I’m sorry, sir, but you must come with us.’

  Tredd pulled on a grey shirt and a black leisure jacket. ‘All right, let’s go then.’

  Those were his last moments as a navy officer, and his last moments as a free citizen of the Dawn Alliance.

  He was taken to a holding chamber for half a day. Then he was given a difficult trial in front of a judge and a jury. The charges were presented: fraud and treason. Tredd pleaded not guilty. Then started the prosecution’s flood of evidence. They showed things he could not have dreamed of doing. The main accusations concerned misuse of navy funds, and the completely outrageous charge that he had planned and executed the destruction of the battleship Virilis. There was no way he could have done it, but as the hours passed, and he saw the evidence on his accounts – presence-calls, network logs, and accident investigation reports, all played on the video-wall – he started to think it really might have been him. It was all there; it could not have been made up. If it all was real, then what have I been doing these past years? It all felt like a blur to him now.

  The judge found him guilty. When she announced the decision, Tredd’s ears were ringing and his heart thumping. He was sentenced to exile.

  It was like going back to the start, but this time, instead of facing death as a soldier, he was set to live his life as an outcast. His citizenship was revoked, which meant he could not use any services provided by the Dawn Alliance, including welfare, pension and medical services, and getting a job as a non-citizen was close to impossible. He was dumped in a dormitory at the bottom of Spit City.

  Tredd Bounty lay crippled at the bottom of the cliff.

  PART IV

  ‘In time, entropy will kill the order – just wait and see. You and I, too, will scatter in dust. Our buildings will crumble, our planets w
ill die, and our stars will scorch until there’s nothing more to burn, nothing more to scatter off in the emptiness. Your life is not in vain, my little one, for there is a force which pulls back what once was lost, a force that picks up the pieces and sets up the game, again and again for all of eternity. Love.’

  – Inanna Dengo, by her son’s bedside

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  TREDD PULLED in a deep breath of fresh air, closing his eyes and taking the time to feel it fill his lungs. As he exhaled, he let his shoulders relax. His body had missed this air. Natural air felt better than any of the vita-mineralised ‘health air’ they served on stations. Real plants converting carbon dioxide to oxygen made this air. He opened his eyes.

  The atmosphere of Eura made the sky radiant blue, and with only a few white clouds hovering far on the horizon, there was nothing to block the warm afternoon rays of Dom, the medium-sized star that Eura orbited. His feet felt good on the solid ground, with real gravity and unnoticeable natural 10 Hz vibrations.

  The compound was located in the middle of the largest continent, Racia. Initia, his childhood home, was only a few thousand kilometres west, and the border of Dandelia only a few hundred kilometres away: so close, but so far. Still, this place was enough to stir up feelings of vague nostalgia Tredd could not place.

  He stood there with Aino, marvelling at the building in front of them. Eddie and Evie were just catching up behind them, but Berossus had insisted on staying on the Rutger in orbit. Tredd didn’t mind, and while the Rutger didn’t really need a nanny, it was good to have him there, ready take care of any unforeseen circumstances – and to prepare for a quick exit if need be.

  Avalon air control had directed them to land on the ground outside the walls of the premises. It was quite unusual, especially given that the compound did have a landing port. Aino had said that the port was very small, and they were perhaps somewhat wary of too many outsiders coming in. Tredd did not mind, because walking on the ground of Eura was one of the best things he had experienced for a long time.