In A Universe Without Stars 1: Skyeater

by J Alex McCarthy

Behind him in the wall is a giant curved window. They’re flying through the still blue sky, away from the battle. The sky is the most beautiful shade of sapphire he’s ever seen. Whatever those aliens did to the sky has turned night into day. These guys have some serious technology.

  The room looks like it’s a perfect circle, the drab gray walls seem to absorb light. The wall and window merge seamlessly at the half way point.

  Cole stays on his knees, he needs time to recollect what happened, to calm the rage he felt. What was he thinking, how can he be so stupid?

  “To rip god from his heaven?” He lets out a pitiful laugh. It was stupid of him to think he could stop them. Not like this, he’s done. He’s done caring about everything.

  He stands when the door opens sideways with a hiss. The alien that took Thora walks in.

  “Hello, Cole,” he says. Cole moves fast, he swings and shoots a projectile at him. The alien lifts his hand and the projectile stops in midair.

  “Stop, Cole,” the alien closes his fist.

  The projectile collapses in itself, letting out a small blue poof.

  ”We’re on your side,” he says slowly approaching.

  His stilt-like legs somehow move with the grace of a swan. Cole hesitates, he wants to attack but he actually believes this thing. He must be the one who gave Cole his power. How easily he stopped the attack. He also has Thora.

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Jahum and I’m the leader of the Astrons and I’m the one who gave you your powers.”

  His mouth doesn’t move when he talks. It’s as if the air around them speaks, it must be telepathy.

  “Cole!” Julio runs in and bear hugs Cole.

  “Holy crap, you’re alive!” Cole mutters. Julio lets go.

  “How in the hell did you get here?!”

  “This thing saved me, so I just went with it when he said he was on our side.”

  That’s just like Julio, to just go with it. Oddly enough, he doesn’t have a mark on him.

  Julio pulls back and looks at Cole. “Why in the hell are you covered in blood?”

  “Where is everybody?” Julio asks when Cole doesn’t answer. Cole’s face loses its color. Julio wasn’t there when it happened, he doesn’t know.

  “Erin is dead and Arnold is missing.” Cole looks at the ground.

  Their deaths were his mistakes.

  It won’t happen again.

  Julio’s smile disappears.

  “No,” Julio mutters. “God dammit!” He steps back and slams his fist into the wall. “I’ve should’ve been with you guys, I was so fucking stupid to run the other way.”

  Julio looks down at his feet. Cole places his hand on Julio’s shoulder.

  “It’s not your fault, you couldn’t have stopped what happened.”

  Julio calms down. “You’re right. Here I am just mourning when we have bigger things to worry about.” Julio looks at Jahum. “And I don’t mean that in a sarcastic manner. We can hold a funeral and mourn after this war is over.” Julio straightens back up.

  He recovers quickly. It surprises Cole, but other than comment on it he decides to just nod, he really doesn’t want that to bring him down now.

  There is always later.

  “I’m guessing Thora is fine?” Julio asks in a whisper. Jahum just observes them with his lustrous eyes.

  “Where is she?” Cole states.

  “In a safe place.”

  “Where!?” Cole yells. Cole’s tone doesn’t falter Jahum.

  “In the District of Columbia. Your companions Arnold and Neil are with her.”

  Cole wavers.

  Thousands of miles away all the way across the country? How? Cole knew they were thousands of years ahead of them but how advanced are they really?

  “Washington, D.C.? How?” Julio asks.

  “By teleportation. The same way we brought you two here.”

  Cole almost forgot, he takes a good hard look at Julio, does he have the power too? Why else would Jahum save him? Julio’s body is just a little dirty, a few marks of dirt here and there but there’s no bruises on his body.

  “You said you’re going to give me some answers when Cole gets here so I want them now,” Julio demands. Jahum approaches them a little closer.

  “I’m the leader of the Astrons, The Starmakers. We are an ancient race. Some of us have been in existence since the earliest manifestations of this universe and have gained knowledge and powers no human being has ever seen.”

  He spoke with an incredibly strong air and authority. His voice carries throughout the room. Cole and Julio would’ve cowered back if it wasn’t for their new found powers.

  “Damn man, you kind of scare me but I wanna see this power you speak of,” Julio says.

  “Powers such as flight, telepathy, incredible strength and at the peak of our power, the ability to surpass a physical form and some of us—“, Jahum puts out his hand and opens it. A small ball of light appears and expands. “Have the ability to create energy.”

  The blue orb spins like a miniature sun. Cole and Julio stare in awe, squinting from the brightness. Julio more than Cole, as he hasn’t seen anything like this before. Their shadows dance on the wall as the light fills the room.

  Jahum slams his hands shut, cutting off the astonishment.

  “I gave you all our power, but I hope we we’re not too late.” Jahum moves his hands over Julio and Coles faces. “Remember.”

  Cole remembers, the road, the accident, the night Thora said she was going to leave him.

  …

  The world is frozen, a stop in time. Jahum stands in front of Cole’s car, on the same dark forest road where Cole had his accident. A force field projects from Jahum, he stands blocking the road. Everything starts to speed up, Cole’s and Thora’s faces start to light up, arms slowly swing up to brace themselves as they crash.

  …

  The trees block the light from the stars above. The road is only a few meters up a slight dirt hill with skid marks etched into it. Cole’s mangled car is flipped upside down in the ditch. It’s a twisted mangled mess. It’s somehow in one piece despite the small metal shards and glass scattered around the ditch.

  Thora’s bloodied body hangs out the car window. A huge gash bleeds from her head, the blood coating the ground. Cole is knocked out in the driver’s seat still buckled up, only a little worse for wear.

  Jahum walks through the wreckage. He stops in the middle of it all. Everything starts to float, lifting off the ground. The car, the glass, every single piece of debris float up until it’s shoulder height to Jahum. The debris wavers a little, fighting with the gravity of the Earth but it stays in place.

  Jahum walks to the driver side of the car. Cole’s watch unwraps itself from his arm and floats toward Jahum through the window. Jahum grabs it, his hand lights up and the watch beeps. He lets go and it floats into Cole’s pocket.

  Jahum turns to walk but stops. He turns and looks at Thora. Blood drips from a wound in her chest. With her head and chest injured she’s going to bleed out. A device appears in his hand, it looks like a remote but has no buttons and only a small screen.

  It beeps as he moves it over her. A small image of her womb appears on the screen. A small fetus shows up. She’s pregnant.

  The door explodes off and Thora is ripped out the seat by an invisible force. A sleeping beauty, she doesn’t wake as she flies through the air. Dead. She stops in front of him.

  Jahum turns her upright and his hands light up. He moves them over her chest, a large piece of shrapnel ejects from it and the wound heals, leaving not a single mark.

  He then moves his hand over to her head, crunching is heard as her skull bones snap back in place. A siren is heard closing in. Jahum looks content.

  Everything gently floats back to the ground. Jahum looks at Cole one last time. He turns and leaves as Thora’s eyelids fly open.

  …

  Jahum removes his hand from Cole’s and Julio’s head. They both stumbl
e back. He saved her, he saved Thora. Julio pants and messes with the ring on his left index finger. Cole wonders what he saw.

  “She’s pregnant?...Why did she…I’m a father…Thank you…” Cole doesn’t know what to say.

  It’s because of this being that Thora and he are alive.

  “So I’m getting my powers from my watch?” Cole asks.

  “You won’t always need it, think of it as a link. Your powers are in their infancy and in due time you will be able to do what no man has done before.”

  But at what risk? What does he want Cole to do with it? Cole doesn’t like where this is going but he has to repay him somehow.

  Cole and Julio glance at each other.

  “Don’t worry, I will brief you more on your situation with the others.”

  “Others?” Julio asks.

  “You’re not the only ones,” Jahum claims. He walks toward the window.

  “We’re here.”

  Outside the window, a monstrous ship appears. It’s has two giant appendages with a small middle section connecting them both, like a giant H.

  Its dull magenta color seems to take away from the size of it. It has no markings, it’s like it’s one solid piece, except for a small sliver that opens on its unmarked hull.

  They head toward the sliver. Cole suddenly steps back. The window starts to expand through the entire room, the walls pulling back like a linear tide until the ends meet, collapsing into nothing. They stand as if the floor had never left. The sky and clouds pass under them.

  “Wow,” Julio mutters. They fly through the sliver and land gracefully in a docking bay.

  …

  Jahum, Cole, and Julio walk through a hallway of the ship. It’s less grand than Cole would’ve thought. The walls and ceiling are a dark, dirty-looking gray, as though they are made out of concrete, its color sucking the life out of the dimly lit hall. If Cole didn’t know any better he would say he’s in a prison. It isn’t building his confidence in Jahum. Not after what he saw in Los Angeles.

  “No offense, but I expected this to look a little more…I don’t know, epic,” Julio says.

  “As our need for a physical form rose so did our means of transportation.”

  They turn down another bland hallway, it’s empty except for them.

  “Just a few millennia ago our ships where majestic and emotion inducing; when we arrived to lesser planets our ships brought the inhabitants to tears and they worshiped us as gods.”

  There’s nobody here in the halls. Not a single spec of dirt or dust ether. It’s haunting.

  “But as we now strive to survive, we go for a more practical means instead of trying to show off our power through architecture, not unlike the pharaohs of ancient Egypt.”

  Jahum speaks with such assurance that Julio doesn’t answer back. It is too literal for him, the aura and might that Jahum gives off.

  “Where is everybody?” Cole asks.

  “We are a dying race, they’re only a few of us left.”

  They walk to a long window in the hallway that overlooks a giant auditorium. There’s training equipment littered throughout and the other chosen humans. Ninety-eight of them to be exact, dressed in navy blue jumpsuits. They’re training, lifting, sparring, team building, preparing for war.

  Six brown beings that look like Jahum watch over them: the remaining Astrons.

  “We’ve chosen two hundred people to lead the human race to salvation. These are the ones we manage to save.”

  Jahum’s face seems to show a hint of regret.

  “Each of them have a device, like your watch and ring. Something close and personal that they hold dear to this world that feeds them their powers.”

  Julio unconsciously messes with his ring again.

  “It’s syncs our genome with yours to create what you would call a super human,” Jahum says.

  What made Jahum chose him? Cole wants to ask him why. Why give this power to somebody who doesn’t want it? Someone who wants to die with the rest? But Cole doesn’t want to interrupt Jahum. He couldn’t if he wanted to. The intimidating tone that Jahum gives off.

  “It takes time, which is why I fear I’ve come too late, you have to have your device on your person until it fully syncs.” He turns and looks at Cole. “Only second to the rate you’re syncing, Cole. You’ve advanced faster than the others, syncing at thrice the speed than normal. The only other way to gain quick mastery of your powers is through experience.”

  Cole and Julio look at each other. He wonders if anybody else had to fight off the invaders. The invaders he still doesn’t know the name of.

  “When the time comes, can you lead the human race to salvation?” Jahum finally asks.

  “I can’t really say no to that,” Julio replies. Cole doesn’t answer immediately. They both look at him. Jahum wants him to save the world.

  Fuck that.

  Cole doesn’t know what to think anymore, definitely not after tonight. He doesn’t care what he has to do, what people expect for him to do or if he dies, he just wants to hold Thora again.

  “I want to see my wife first.” Cole wants her.

  “It’s too late for that but I can link you both so you can find her when the time comes,” Jahum states.

  That’s not the answer Cole wanted.

  He doesn’t know why but he needs her. Is this sudden want from knowing that she is carrying his child or is it from another excuse he’s giving himself to live?

  The gym’s empty.

  “Come. The briefing will begin soon.” Jahum walks off and Julio follows. Cole stands there, staring at nothing.

  How can he deny me after taking her from me? Cole can’t take it. He can’t take the responsibility of going into a one sided war to try and win. He can’t get through this without Thora.

  She’s the only one who really understands him. He needs her to tell him it’s going to be all right. He wants to say he was sorry for what’s he’s done. He needs somebody to help him through the end of the world.

  But he knows it’s pointless to want anything in this world though. So he just follows Jahum.

  7 – The Galactic Council

  Jahum walks into the briefing room, Cole and Julio follow. It’s a medium size conference room filled with chairs and a podium in front. There’s two hundred chairs but only half are taken.

  Cole and Julio take some seats at the end. Jahum keeps walking to the front, five Astrons stand on the podium.

  Jahum makes it to the front and lifts his hand, he isn’t one for introductions, at least not anymore, so he just begins.

  Everybody’s vision blurs out; he takes control, projecting sights and sounds into the chosens heads, and then we are in his mind. We zoom through the expands of outer space, the sparkling galaxies, multiple star systems, gas odysseys, it’s a sensory overload.

  Space is darker and emptier than most would expect and yet galaxies still churn with wonderment, gas clouds twist and swirl in a theatrical fashion, stars still sparkle in careless easements off in the distance.

  But that isn’t what he wanted them to see. They zoom toward a star system, speeding past planets and stars until they close into a giant crystallized space station. It hovers over a giant Earth-like planet the size of Jupiter. There’s life on it, habitable but once thought impossible by human scientists.

  The crystal structure is made by complex glass patterns, its jagged points curve inwards toward the planet.

  We were once leaders of a galactic council called the Sovereign Empire, SE6 for the six ruling races in the council.

  Jahum’s voice projects overhead.

  The most awe inspiring council in the galaxy and some think even the greatest in the universe.

  They zoom into the station, its layout is in a more logical form but blue jagged glass covers the walls and ceilings. Hundreds of different aliens roam the halls, in many shapes, colors, and sizes.

  All were safe here.

  They zoom into a giant cathedral. There’s six pod
iums in front of hundreds of seats filled with species of all kinds, a giant circular window shows the planet they hover over, like the glass window of a clock tower, slowly watching the planet tick its life away.

  In the main podium is an Astron, Jahum. He’s at the peak of his power. His skin is translucent, blue veins pulse through him and he emits a blue glow. He has two arms and two legs, hundreds of small six inch wings cover his body. Two large wings spout from his back. He floats gently off the ground.

  Beside him in the second podium is a Serephin.

  One of the largest group were the Serephins.

  In the crowd, Leif exchanges aggressive glances with the Serephin in the podium.

  Split between two factions, the Eliite led by Leif and the Lucifers led by his brother.

  His brother was a member of the council. Leif gets up and leaves.

  Leif and his group didn’t believe in our peace keeping ways.

  They follow Leif to a room, where he sits, simply staring out a window into the vastness of space where only a single star sparkles.

  They wanted war and destruction, to show their power, to get a meaning from it. So they waited, waiting centuries.

  They zoom to the Astrons floating at the podiums as the world in the window behind him spins faster and faster.

  While our powers slowly diminished with our age. Until we descended from our celestialisty.

  Their glow fades, their skin becomes cold and hard, wings and feathers fall off and vanish. They slowly descend to the ground until their feet finally touch it. The Astrons third and fourth legs are their old wings. They attacked, wiping out our once great empire.

  The window cracks behind them, the planet slowly turns into ruin, the vast green and blue seen from space turns dark and black from the death and destruction.

  They’re back in the briefing room. Cole lets out a belated breath. That was amazing, not what happened to the Astrons but the experience. Will he be able to do that eventually?

  Jahum continues:

  “Now they go from planet to planet looking for a race worthy enough to stand against them and if they cannot, then they simply destroy them.” Jahum looks at Cole.