Starcrasher (Shades Space Opera Book 1)

by Rock Forsberg

  Someone yelped in the corner. Jill turned her head as much as she could, and saw a hand terminal fall to the floor. Henning was down on his knee, the doctor in his arms. He turned her around and balanced a rifle on her shoulders. What is he doing?

  ‘Vorlar!’ Henning shouted out.

  Vorlar turned, squinting.

  Henning had the doctor’s hand on the rifle grip, one finger on the trigger and his own hand on top. A blue light appeared on the rifle. ‘This is for my girl,’ he said, and squeezed.

  The doctor gasped as if she had just realized what was happening. A stream of blue bolts shot out from the barrel and hit Vorlar in the face, bursting in a sequence of plasma explosions. With only charred remains left of his head, Vorlar stumbled sideways for a few steps and fell flat on the floor beside Tristram.

  Tristram and Vorlar lay still, side by side, blood flowing between them to form a crimson red pool on the floor. She tried to blink away the tears. Then she saw him move. Tristram pushed himself up to sit on the floor. He looked shaken, and was spitting blood on the floor, but he was alive.

  ‘You killed him!’ the doctor shouted, and pushed Henning away. With a painful expression, she held her hand where Henning had hit her, and staggered up. She teetered towards Vorlar and looked down at him in horror. ‘You have killed the vice admiral!’

  Henning and Eddie helped Tristram stand up. He stumbled on his steps, and held his chest. In a coarse voice he said, ‘Why did you take so long…?’

  ‘You were doing so well, I didn’t want to steal your glory,’ Henning said with a wink.

  ‘Thanks, buddy,’ Tristram said. He crouched down to pick up his gun from the floor, and brushed away Henning’s attempt to help him. He pushed the gun into a holster on his hip.

  The doctor swirled around, panicked, and said, ‘Do you realise what you have done?’ Then she turned to Eddie. ‘Mr Parkes, I command you to seize these renegades.’

  Eddie shrugged and shook his head, then glanced at the Jindalar girl beside him.

  The doctor furrowed her brows, and spun around, staggering on her feet, scanning the desks.

  ‘Looking for this?’ the Jindalar girl said, waving the doctor’s terminal in her hands.

  The doctor scowled. The scars did no favours to her face: half of it looked like an angry ODD newborn.

  ‘This terminal has the software to control those two,’ the girl said, waving the terminal at Jill and Eddie. ‘I’ve already adjusted a few settings, and after I’m done, they’ll be completely natural again.’

  ‘Natural? They’ve never been natural, those freaks,’ the doctor hissed. ‘What does “natural” even mean? Give me that!’

  The doctor lunged towards the girl.

  Quickly, though to Jill’s eyes it seemed like slow motion, Tristram drew his gun, raised it with two straight arms, and aimed like he had all the time in the world. Then he fired.

  The doctor fell.

  ‘I’ve wanted to stun her for some time,’ Tristram said as he pushed the gun away. ‘She was really getting on my nerves.’

  A smile crept across Jill’s face and tears filled her eyes as Tristram approached her. Finally seeing him, she knew everything was going to be all right. Whatever might happen next didn’t matter. He was with her.

  Tristram came up to her and said, ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t come earlier.’

  Jill blinked and felt a tear falling down her cheek. She wanted to say she had waited for this moment for so long, and had almost lost hope. She wanted to tell him she was a cripple. She wanted to tell him she was electric. She wanted to say she loved him. There was so much to say. ‘Tristram…’

  ‘Hush… It’s all right, this ship is ours. It’s all right, everything will be all right.’

  The tattooed girl ambled up to them, making a few strokes on the doctor’s terminal as she went. She raised her head from it and smiled.

  ‘He used this to control Eddie and Jill,’ she said. ‘You’ve had nanobots or something similar put into your body – lucky I found the electrical power inhibition setting first. I’m pretty sure I can restore your ability to move too.’

  With a determined face, she made a few more strokes on the screen of the terminal. She raised her head. ‘How’s that?’

  Jill felt an unfamiliar jolt across her body, then something of a tingle, spreading back from the tips of her fingers and toes. She was able to move them, then wrists and ankles, arms and legs. She was able to move her body, and as the tingle passed through, she regained feeling. Rubbing her thumb and index finger together had never felt so good. She looked up to the girl. ‘Thank you. I’m Jill.’

  ‘I know. Evie.’

  ‘Can you control if I’m electric or not?’

  ‘Sure, the power inhibitor setting’s right here.’

  Jill felt overly joyous, and – she couldn’t help it – started laughing out loud.

  Evie smiled. ‘The stuff is still inside you, though. Same with Eddie. As long as it remains, you can be controlled.’

  ‘Good on you, Evie,’ Tristram said. ‘How did you know about all of this?’

  ‘Woman-hacker intuition,’ she said with a nonchalant wave of her hand. ‘They’re good for now, but ideally it would be good to get the bots inside them removed.’

  Tristram nodded. ‘Thanks, Evie.’ He turned to Jill. ‘We need to make sure you visit a medical practitioner.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Jill said. She felt good with Tristram by her side – all her hidden weirdness had come out in the daylight and it was all right. She wanted to avoid doctors – if the nanobots could be used to turn her electricity on and off, she wanted to keep them. It could come in handy; she only had to understand their workings better.

  ‘We should get moving,’ Tristram said, and pressed the controls on the side of the robotic chair.

  The clasps unfastened around Jill’s neck, body, arms and legs. She raised her arms, and brought her hands to her cheeks. They felt cool and stiff after being still for so long, but they were hers. She felt relieved, and pushed herself up from the chair. Her legs felt stiff too, but they carried her. She had never thought it could feel so good to stand up.

  She took a step forward, and was about to throw her arms around Tristram, but paused, taking a doubtful step back.

  He raised an eyebrow.

  ‘The electricity, is it still on?’ Jill asked.

  ‘Yep,’ Evie said without raising her head from the terminal. ‘Not inhibited.’

  ‘Could you please turn it off?’

  ‘Too easy,’ Evie said, and tapped the terminal a few times. ‘Done.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Jill said, and turned to Tristram and winked. Then she threw herself on him, and he caught her with a surprised, but joyful, expression.

  Tristram felt bigger than she remembered, and warm under her caress. She felt the roughness of his cheek on the side of her forehead and smelled his manly fragrance. Why had she ever let him go? Never in her adult life had she been able to experience closeness like this. She was finally able to fully enjoy his embrace, like a normal person, without electrocuting him. How liberating it feels! Instinctively, she pressed herself tight against him, completely present in the short moment, which felt like a perfect lifetime, somewhere far away.

  The sound of an incoming call brought her back to reality.

  ‘They’re on to us,’ Eddie said, looking at the screen. ‘Multiple ships incoming.’

  ‘Get us out of here,’ Tristram said, staring at an unconscious navy officer leaning against the desk. ‘Thought I’d got them all…’

  ‘These here,’ Henning said, gesturing with his bandaged arm towards the stunned soldiers around them, ‘and the four you downed on your way, sum up the crew of this little ship. They’ll be out for the next few hours. However, there’s someone else; check the infirmary.’

  Jill knew it was the big guy. He had told the truth all along. He had turned into a monster right before her eyes.

  ‘Berossus!’ Evie shouted out.
‘I’ll go check up on him.’

  Tristram nodded, but Evie had already darted out the room.

  Eddie pushed the unconscious officer from his chair and made a few gestures on the panel in front of him. The ship trembled and shook. ‘We can’t escape them with this one, because they will always know where we are.’

  ‘I know a way – a shortcut,’ Henning said.

  ‘A shortcut?’ Tristram asked.

  ‘To where?’ Jill said.

  ‘Tell me,’ Eddie said.

  Henning came to stand by Eddie at the controls. ‘Can I?’

  Eddie moved aside and let Henning take over. He took control with his left hand, and then stopped, staring at the bandage wrapped around his right hand, pondering. It must be difficult for a right-handed person to lose those fingers.

  ‘I can help you, if you tell me the coordinates,’ Eddie said.

  ‘No… might as well…’ Henning raised his wrapped hand in front of him. Then he grabbed the fastener with his left hand and pulled.

  The bandage tore apart to reveal a bloodied mess.

  Aino gasped, and took a step back. Jill swallowed.

  Henning did not even flinch.

  His hand was stained with blood, but to Jill’s surprise, it was complete. Vorlar’s Hotblade had cut his fingers, but now – in a matter of minutes – they were completely intact.

  Aino ran up to Henning, a smile widening on her face as she stared at her father’s hand.

  ‘What happened?’ Jill said, as she handed Henning a towel.

  He wiped his hand clean of blood and loose bits of flesh, revealing perfect fingers. ‘I regenerate…’

  So he’s one too, Jill thought. Her whole life she had thought she was alone with her freak ability, and now, people with extraordinary abilities surrounded her. Even Tristram was one. Had he too lived his whole life hiding a secret?

  Henning wiped his hands and said, ‘I’ll take us to a place where everything will be explained.’ Then he entered the coordinates on the navigation system. He did it with aplomb, like a professional. ‘That’s it, it’s not far.’

  Eddie peered into the console. ‘It’s just outside the atmosphere? What is it?’

  ‘You’ll see. Trust me,’ Henning said.

  Jill purred as Tristram held her close. Aino watched the map on the screen. Eddie adjusted the ship’s energy levels, and Henning stood, arms crossed, watching the map as the navy ships gained on them. Everyone waited in silent anticipation.

  On the screen, the image of their ship closed in on the target. They moved closer and closer to the empty space on Henning’s coordinates. The navy ships were catching up. In a matter of seconds, they would be in range to disable and board them.

  She held on tight to Tristram.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  EVERY PARTICLE in the universe is on the move. Unless they are shooting away from the Big Bang, they are drawn to each other. The ultimate question remains: How is it going to end? If the energy of all matter fails against the separating force of the Big Bang, the universe will rip apart. If on the other hand, the matter wins, every particle will come together in a big crunch and collapse to an enormous, timeless black hole. The one with more energy will eventually win, but what if their powers are exactly the same? Will they zero each other out, infinitely perpetuating the game of separation and coming together? No energy is ever lost; it only changes its state of being. Even today, when science has harnessed stars and strings, the nature of existence remains a debate. To add to that, the scientists say there are infinite number of parallel universes, which too diverted in the beginning, and then slowly started to converge. Infinite possibilities, infinite outcomes – is there a perfect universe, a heaven, as spoken of in myths? With no way to cross, you can never really know what it is like in another universe, like you can never really know what it is like to be another person.

  Tredd thought of these things as he stood on the bridge of a Dawn Alliance Navy Command Ship. He leaned against the railing, exhausted. Vorlar’s kicks had probably broken a rib or two, and given him a nasty cut above the eye – and this was after suffering through two time-lapses. Never before had he done two in such a short sequence. His head throbbed and he felt weak, but there was no time to rest. Nor was it possible: closing his eyes even for a second brought on the evil eyes, burning hotter than ever before and pulling him down to a deep pit of agony.

  His waking pain was relieved by Jill standing by his side – a universe of her own, drawn to Tredd’s by their force of attraction. Commodore Conrad was gone; this was Jill Faith, who he had known when he was a child. He felt the invisible and immeasurable vibrations between their universes. It made his suffering extraneous.

  A small landing ship had been easy to capture, but without a quantum pinch capability, they were still incapable of escaping the navy fighters. They had a dead vice admiral on their hands, and also the stunned doctor and a crew of a dozen.

  Henning had just grown a pair of fingers. It appeared he too was a son of Eura. Now he had set their destination to where there was nothing but empty space. The navy fighters were about to close in on them.

  As Jill held on tight, Tredd had a premonition about what might happen.

  He was right: suddenly everything – Eura, its moons, the Battleship Excalibur, and the navy ships – disappeared from the screen, and were replaced by a lonely planet that looked like a piece of ice.

  Tredd found the snowball a little too familiar. ‘Is this…?’

  ‘Let me see,’ Eddie said from behind the pilot’s seat, peering at the control screen in front of Henning.

  Henning turned around theatrically in his chair. ‘Perhaps I should explain.’

  Tredd agreed. ‘It would be the time.’

  Henning stood up. ‘We are more than half a million light years outside the Dawn Alliance-controlled space. Here we are safe from the navy pursuing us—’

  ‘Half a million light years,’ Eddie said, stepping in front of Henning with a concerned expression. ‘Cassandra will never forgive me… How did you even do it?’

  Henning stepped past Eddie and down the steps in front of the main screens. Just as he was about to open his mouth, the door swooshed open, making everyone turn.

  A bare-chested Berossus leaned against Evie’s shoulder as they stepped in. His other arm was gone, replaced by a medical bandage over the stump of his shoulder, but on his face he had a relieved smile.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Long story,’ Berossus said with a sigh. Noticing both Bells and Vorlar on the floor, he snorted. ‘Looks like you did better than me.’

  ‘I’m sorry I doubted you,’ Jill said.

  ‘Don’t be,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘You were right to doubt me, it’s just… sane.’

  Evie looked up at Berossus. ‘But it’s over now, right?’

  ‘For some time – perhaps a day or a week – before the pressure builds up again,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Suppose I could go down, no issues.’

  Tredd had no idea about the details, but got the gist of it. ‘Great to have you back.’

  ‘On that note,’ Henning said, raising his voice to get everyone’s attention. ‘I’d like to take you down to that planet.’

  Eddie, who had been staring at the navigation screen for a while, raised his head up and said, ‘Hey, I know this place!’

  The screen showed a star, and a lonely planet a fair distance from it. Eddie brought the planet up on the screen: it was like one giant, dirty snowball. ‘Take a look at this, it’s the same system we visited with Aino and Tommy.’

  Aino turned and looked up at her father with a confused expression.

  ‘What?’ Evie said, her mouth wide open.

  ‘I need to sit down,’ Berossus said, and slumped down on a chair, rubbing his temples.

  Tredd didn’t say anything. It was just as he had thought, even if it didn’t make any sense.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Henning said as he stepped back up to the
helm. ‘If you don’t mind, I will take us down.’ Eddie shrugged and stood up, letting him take the controls.

  ‘How did you do it?’ Evie asked.

  ‘In a multidimensionally curved universe, faraway locations can reside side by side, and you can exploit it. My mentor has placed a few tiny pathways, like straws, in various locations, to enable easy access between faraway places. Entering one is as simple as flying in. You must know the exact coordinates, and the pathway takes care of the rest. The fighters behind us will have absolutely no idea where we went, nor a chance to follow – it’s closed now, but rest assured, we have a way back too.’ Henning now wore a self-satisfied smile.

  Tredd raised an eyebrow. This was the first time he heard about someone making wormholes.

  ‘Your mentor?’

  Henning nodded. ‘The great Aalto, one of the five.’

  ‘The five Shades?’ Evie asked.

  ‘They are called by many names. He is a Shade, a Spirit, a Demiurge, a Supreme Being, a Lord, a God…’

  Tredd had seen many religious preachers, and almost dismissed Henning’s talk as such. Nonetheless, it had become apparent that the man did not merely run a religious community – perhaps it was a cult, or perhaps it was an anti-Alliance operation. Whatever it was, it was impressive in its technology and scale, and now Henning had brought them across the galaxy through a straw placed by a Shade. Aalto, while unlikely a god – Tredd didn’t believe in gods – had to be something quite extraordinary.

  Evie leaned against the side of the control panel. ‘We followed Tommy here. Why can’t the navy follow us through?’

  ‘Good question,’ Henning said, ‘but the answer is simple: this pathway was narrow and transient, whereas the one you used earlier was wide and persistent, making it possible for you to fly through accidentally as you followed Tommy. It was done by another – Nenetl.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’ Tredd asked.

  Henning chuckled. ‘Let me show you.’

  The strange yet familiar grey planet below them grew larger on the screen, and turned to silver in the light of its star as they approached under Henning’s control. For some reason Tredd felt he could trust the man.