Neron Skies: A Space Fantasy Romance (The Neron Rising Saga Book 2)

by Keary Taylor

  One of the bags falls open, revealing the crystal Neron, wrapped up in careful packaging, but still glowing brilliantly through.

  “Guess that answers things,” Zayne says, eyeing it with annoyance.

  “Find a hobby yourself,” I say, turning away from him and looking through the bag. There’s enough Neron here to arm nearly a hundred weapons. It will take me my entire life to build this many weapons.

  No more getting bored on this ship.

  “Let’s get going, Frank,” I say, zipping up the bags and giving Reena an approving nod. “Resume the course.”

  “I am detecting our load is significantly heavier than when we landed,” he reports in his calm voice.

  “Like he said, Zayne was bored,” I say, giving him a smirk.

  They knew I was getting unique supplies, and now that they know just what it was I picked up, no one is going to question our ship being heavier. No one would guess that there’s an extra hundred-and-fifty-pound biological organism aboard.

  I’m stalling. I’ve got about five minutes until I spill the secret, because then it will be too late, and no one can argue with me.

  “Please be seated,” Frank says, and I feel the engines humming to life. Each of us takes a seat, and I just hope Edan doesn’t slip in the shower while we take off.

  We rise, humming toward the take-off strip. There isn’t a line here, nothing like we had on Korpillion as everyone tried to escape. We line up and are immediately given clearance. And then we’re taking off, rising out of the atmosphere, and the Frank gets us into slip speed.

  Once we’re set on our path, I unbuckle and sit up, preparing for the fall out.

  “I have something to tell-”

  “Is the water running?” Reena questions, her brows furrowing as she looks toward the living quarters.

  Just then, it shuts off. And I can just hear the noise of Edan stepping out, cursing, like he’s in pain. I can just imagine the tumbles he must have suffered as we got up to speed.

  “Who the void is on our ship?” my father’s voice booms as he stands, grabbing his axe from the wall where it is secured.

  “Hold on, hold on, hold on,” I jump, getting to my feet and going to stand in front of the door that leads to the living quarters. I hold my hands up, because Zayne is pulling his hilt from his belt, fear and death in his eyes. “I was just about to tell you all. I…uh, found a friend down on Laziria.”

  “A friend?” Zayne demands, his eyebrows shooting toward his hairline. “You brought someone on board?”

  My eyes are tempted to look away from his, but I don’t let them. This is my ship. This is my call.

  “He saved me back there,” I say, standing tall, looking confident. “He’s got some useful skills. He needed off that planet, and I owed him one.”

  That’s a lie. I’m way ahead getting him off the planet.

  The door behind me slides open, and a surprised and wary Edan steps out beside me.

  His hair is still wet, but he’s clean and he smells twenty times better. He wears black trousers and a gray and emerald green tunic. That’s going to have to change, because they scream Laziria resident.

  “I, uh, guess she hasn’t introduced me quite yet,” he says, his eyes scanning the crowd. Zayne and my dad are still in defensive, fighting positions. But Edan doesn’t cow, doesn’t look afraid. He looks ready for a challenge. “I’m Edan.”

  Everyone looks from Edan, to me, and back to Edan.

  “You might have-”

  But my father is cut off by the sound of alarms.

  “What’s going on, Frank?” I yell. The next second, I’m nearly knocked off my feet as our ship jerks violently to the side.

  “Another ship is attempting to dock with us,” the Frank reports, his voice is calm and even as ever. “They are overriding our locking mechanisms.”

  Zayne darts to the co-pilot’s seat and his fingers dash across the holo display, trying to override their override.

  “Who the void is it?” I demand, going to the view port, but I can’t see anything considering our dock is on the side of the ship.

  “Their ship is showing a history of bounty hunting,” the Frank reports. “They left Laziria just minutes after us.”

  My eyes flick to Edan and I know it, and I can tell he knows it. It’s the man who grabbed me in the street.

  “They’re in the system!” Zayne yells. “I can’t . . . I don’t know how they’re doing this!”

  “They’re after me,” I say, taking my staff from my belt. “Dominion has a bounty on my head, Reena’s, too.”

  I dart back into the living quarters, digging through the locker beneath the beds. From my bag, I pull out two small handguns. Striding back out onto the command deck, I just slip the Neron shards into the core of the guns when I hear the air rush and a latch unlock.

  “They’re in!” Zayne yells, standing from the commands. He grabs his hilt, activating the Neron arc. The entire command deck glows Neron blue.

  Dad takes a defensive stance, activating his axe and the blade glows brilliant.

  “You ever used one of these before?” I ask Edan after I hand Reena the first gun.

  “Not specifically, but I imagine it’s a point-and-pull-the-trigger deal, right?” He turns the gun over in his hand, looking it over.

  “Pretty much,” I say.

  I turn, activating my staff, and both arcs shoot out.

  I’ve never had to use any of my weapons to defend myself. I’ve sparred with Zayne, but never anything real.

  Today is the day.

  The hatch rises, and I see four sets of boots.

  And one second later, something silver rolls into our ship.

  A curse slips over my lips just at the same time gray gas leaks from it.

  They took a page out of Edan’s book.

  Lesson learned.

  “Hold your breath!” I manage to yell as I suck in my own.

  I dart forward, my staff ready to swing.

  I see waists. I see torsos. And just as I swing my staff, as Dad and Zayne rush forward, my feet feel numb.

  I stumble.

  But I make sure to swing as I go down. I nick a foot. The scent of burned human flesh is instant.

  Someone screams.

  Dad lands beside me, and Zayne just on the other side.

  I feel like I’ve been filled with ice-cold slush. It’s making me numb and slow. It takes everything I have to lift my head, to raise my eyes up to my assailants.

  “And we even get proof of the illegal activity,” a familiar voice says. “It may be a death sentence, but they sure are pretty. The weapons, and the Neron.”

  My eyes meet the gaze of the ugly, dirty man Edan knocked out.

  Slam him for not stealing a better, longer lasting nerve agent.

  Behind a mask, the man smiles. “The price for your capture would make me a comfortable man for the rest of my life.” His eyes shift to where Reena was standing just a moment ago, but his gaze falls a little closer to the floor. “But the price on her head, well, we’ll all be enjoying life on our own private islands on Laziria with all the calypso and company of synthetic skin we could ever want, till the end of our days.”

  The man I injured swears loudly, hopping on one foot. I’m just grateful he’s so distracted by his injury that he didn’t retaliate and shoot any of us.

  I get one hand under me, pushing my upper half up, glaring death at the man. I don’t even get a view of his crew. I don’t care about them. None of them put their hands on me.

  “It says something about a man who fights his enemies when they’re on their bellies,” my father growls.

  “Oh, I’m only returning a favor,” the man sneers with a satisfied look on his face.

  I flinch when the sound of a gun goes off, and the man I injured drops to the floor. A sizzling hole burns in his chest.

  I look back, and see Edan propped half up, his arm extended, the Neron gun held shaking in his hand.

  I watch i
t like it happens in slow motion. The remaining men pull side arms out. And I know they’re going to kill everyone but Reena and me. We’re the only ones worth money.

  A scream rips through my lips and I try to pull myself to my feet, but my lower half is still numb.

  I feel it. A rush of hate. A surge of fear. And a connection to everything around me, screaming at me to use it.

  I extend my hand and through the air, my still activated staff rises. I push my hand through the air, and the staff sings forward.

  It slices through the first man with his finger on the trigger. His top half flops backward, hitting the ground with a thud, and his legs collapse to the ground in a pool of blood.

  My staff grazes the back of the man I encountered on Laziria, but doesn’t kill him.

  It does the third man, however. It slices through his spine, and his organs spill out his back, though he remains attached in the front.

  With a look of shock, his gaze goes unfocused, and he collapses to the ground.

  The man with the greasy hair gives a yell, looking at the men dropping around him.

  Finding my feeling again, I pull myself up to my knees, panting hard.

  “Take the bodies, and leave our ship,” I say through my teeth. My focus wavers, and my staff drops to the ground behind the man.

  “Ne…Nero,” the word slips over the man’s lips. He says it in awe.

  “Go,” I say. My entire body is trembling, ready to collapse. I don’t have a grip on myself, and I don’t know how much longer I can hold on to it.

  But the man shakes his head, even as a little smile begins curling on his lips. “Dominion would pay well for you. But knowing you’re a Nero… Cyrillius would kill for a second Nero.”

  He takes a step forward.

  But it’s his words that set me off.

  I raise my hands, and I feel every ounce of Neron on the two ships, and in the space around us.

  My face contorts in rage. I focus every bit of it on this man, just another survivor in the galaxy.

  The air glows brilliant blue, but only for a second, before it rushes at the man.

  And as it explodes into him, he obliterates into a mist of red that lingers in the air, blending with the blue.

  We all lie there, in absolute silence. As if we’re all afraid to speak, because when we do, we’re going to have to put words to what just happened. We’re going to have to address it.

  It will make what just happened real.

  Slowly, I feel the life returning to my legs. I pull myself half up, and Edan gets to his knees, too. Reena pushes her top half up.

  As if it hurts every part of him, my father pulls himself up into a sitting position. Zayne drags himself into the nearest chair.

  The silence is building and building and I feel it like a crushing weight, pressing in on my chest.

  I don’t know what to say. Maybe I should start the conversation, but I still can’t accept this, myself. I still don’t believe it.

  “I’m assuming from all this awkward, suffocating silence that none of them knew you are a Nero.” It’s Edan who breaks the quiet, and I can’t decide if I like him even more now, or if I hate him.

  “You’re…” Zayne says, free to speak now that someone has had the bravery to break the silence. “Nova, you’re a Nero?”

  Slowly, I let my eyes slide over to him. I can’t quite read the expression on his face, but I’m pretty sure it’s mostly filled with . . . disgust. Maybe it’s betrayal.

  And in that moment, I hate him.

  I really hate Zayne.

  Because I didn’t ask for this.

  I don’t want this.

  I don’t dare let myself say anything, because it will be too much, too harsh, whatever it is. So I look away from him, and I let my eyes go to my father.

  All that’s in his eyes is regret and pain.

  I don’t understand it.

  “Dad, I…” I don’t know what else to say.

  I don’t know what to say to any of them.

  They’re all looking at me in an entirely new way.

  Slowly, my father pulls himself to his feet. He walks to the co-pilot’s seat, but he doesn’t sit. He touches the holo command and types something in. I see our location in the P sector. But the view shifts, sliding. Far, far through the galaxy. Out and out and clear to the far reaches of the Z sector.

  Until it stops.

  The images I see are crystal clear and absolutely dazzling.

  It’s a planet, surrounded by five moons. The sun shines on them, casting them in brilliant, astounding blue light.

  Blue. Because that planet and those five moons are engulfed in Neron.

  It clings to the orbs like static electricity, but the arcs are frozen, arms and branches reaching from one side of the planet to another to the moons around it.

  “Before I moved to Korpillion,” my father says as he stares at the incredible image displayed, “I was a soldier for the Orhemian Imperial Army.”

  My brows furrow. I replay what he’s just said, over and over in my brain, trying to make sense of it.

  Before I moved to Korpillion.

  A soldier.

  Orhemian Imperial Army.

  “I was on a solo mission,” he says without looking back toward us, toward me. “I was the best mechanic in the Army. We had a Class 1 ship stranded just outside the Z sector and I was one of the only ones who knew how to fix it. I was taking a personal Class 5 ship from Orhemia, in the X sector, with all the supplies to repair the Class 1. I repaired the ship, but my CO laid into me for taking so long to arrive.”

  I take a step forward on my shaking legs, but they don’t have the strength to go any farther.

  “They were quickly running out of food, water,” he says. His voice is deep and dark. “They’d been stranded for two weeks, and I was their only hope to get that massive ship moving again. But the tech on our Class 5 ships wasn’t as great as the rest of the galaxy’s. It took a long time to get across the two sectors.”

  I think about it. My father never told me where he learned his mechanical skills. I remember the confidence he had when I gave him the Neron axe.

  I think about his weathered and scarred hands.

  “I knew he was only worried for his men and women,” he continues a story I have never heard before. “But he said things to me no man at another’s mercy should say.”

  He presses his fingers against the command dash, and they turn white.

  “I knew then that when I returned to Orhemia, I was going to resign. I’d been in service for ten solars, and that run-in was the answer to my question of if it was time to retire.” His head sags between his shoulders, and I can feel the weight of that decision on him. “I left the Class 1 and headed back toward Orhemia, cutting through the Z sector.”

  I wrack my brain for any knowledge of the Z sector. It’s so far out there, so remote, the edge of nothing. I don’t think there are even any inhabitable planets out there.

  “I felt this . . . shock, rock through my ship,” my father says. “A ripple. A tidal wave of power. It knocked me unconscious. I don’t even know for how long. But when I came to, when I looked out the port window . . . this is exactly what I saw.”

  My eyes shift back to the display. To that planet and its five moons, encircled by more Neron than I ever thought existed in the galaxy.

  “It’s the planet Glorra Quin Lune,” my father says, and there’s reverence in his voice when he says the words. “The last planet in the galaxy. The edge of nowhere. The most glorious planet in the known universe.”

  There’s something about how he says the name that tugs at a place in my chest.

  Glorra.

  “The core of Glorra is solid Neron,” my father says. “As is the core of all five of its moons. And before Dominion crushed all whispers of the planet’s existence, before something happened on that planet and it exploded into this frozen state, a quarter of its inhabitants were Neros.”

  I blink, my
eyes widening.

  An entire planet, and its five inhabited moons . . . a quarter of them were Neros.

  My mouth opens as I take a step forward. But I don’t know what to say. My mind is spinning with too many questions. But I can’t sort them out into logical order or logical sentences.

  “I don’t know what happened on that planet, but everyone who lived on it is still there, frozen,” my father says. “I cannot imagine who had the kind of power to cause the explosion that trapped an entire planet and five moons, or what kind of weapon could have done that.”

  My eyes shift back to the image, and the thought horrifies me. That trapped beneath all that Neron, there is an entire population. Frozen.

  “They were an isolated monarchy.” I nearly jump out of my skin when Edan speaks. For a moment, I forgot I wasn’t alone with my father. “They were strong enough, with all their Nero who were devoted to their planet, that Dominion didn’t stand a chance at conquering them. They lived out here on the edge of the galaxy, at peace, with their King and their Queen and their two children.”

  My father nods his head, and I have to wonder how Edan knows this, when I’ve never heard a word about the planet Glorra Quin Lune.

  “That’s why those who believed the rumors call it the Frozen Kingdom,” Edan says.

  Goosebumps flash across my skin.

  “I saw this with my own eyes,” my father says. “I could feel the energy, the power was radiating from the planet. I came close enough that all the systems on my ship began to fail. It couldn’t handle the surge of energy. So I backed off, and I planned to return to Orhemia and report what I’d seen.”

  Torin’s head lifts, and he looks back at the image of the Frozen Kingdom.

  “But there, right in front of my ship-” His voice breaks and he takes several long moments, gathering himself. He takes three deep, quick breaths. “Was something impossible. Something I couldn’t make sense of.”

  I feel frozen. Rooted to my place. I feel this sense of anticipation, but also dread.

  My father turns then, looking at me with bloodshot eyes.

  “It was a child, floating out in space, surrounded by Neron,” he says. The words come out as an awed whisper.

  I feel something rip in my chest. I feel it crack. I feel like something is pouring into me.