Starblood: A Military Space Opera Series (War Undying Book 1)

by N. D. Redding

  I sent a silent message to my team over the INAS and crawled back, then pushed myself off and moved. New noises came from the hole like rocks moving and sliding, then was followed by a mechanical whirring and heavy vibrations coming from deep within.

  A slightly larger specimen of Ravager showed before I could even see the elevator. He was joined by half a dozen Cantari, all of them in what could only be described as ceremonial clothing. There was no armor on its legs, no cannon, no blades, and only a single shocked expression on its ugly face. Around the Ravager, the Cantari were just as dumbfounded as their bigger brother. We stared at each other for a good five seconds, not realizing what we were seeing. Either of us.

  “Sarge? What are your orders?” Layla hissed through the channel.

  I shook the moment of indecision free and gave a single order.

  “Fire!”

  A torrent of bullets tore through the Aloi priests, or whatever they were, in mere seconds. In theory, they were civilians. In practice, they were in a warzone and I couldn’t care less about preserving Aloi lives. Especially not over our own.

  The elevator platform was now a dish of dead Aloi, complete with a sauce of thick blood. It made that same rock-shifting sound it made at the beginning of this thing and I knew the platform would descend back into the darkness. I got up and ran toward it. Despite my instincts screaming at me, I had to know what was going on. Maybe there was something on the dead Aloi that could shed some light on this whole thing.

  “Sergeant! What are you doing?” Petrushka yelled. “Don’t do anything stupid!”

  “I need to check something!” I yelled back.

  Even if it was just some stupid religious ceremony or practice, it could still prove valuable to the Aloi, which meant we could use it against them. The platform was almost already gone when I dropped myself to the edge and stretched my arm out toward the descending corpses trying to reach anything of use from the pile of dead.

  Instead, an Aloi hand curled its fingers around my arm and pulled at me with all its weight. I slid across the snow and dropped on the platform, hearing Layla and Leo call out to me overhead. I looked up to the hole in the ceiling, which was now steadily closing, and had a last glance at the deathly faces of my squad before everything turned completely dark. The platform still moved, I could sense it of course, but even when I turned on my night vision, all I could see were slick walls and the dead Aloi. The hand that pulled me down belonged to one of the Cantari who used his last breath to make my life miserable.

  My INAS went dead. There was no more signal. Nothing was going to pass through that thick layer of stone above me. It finally dawned on me what the hell was going on. I was cut off from my squad and from our forces, while I had no idea what was going to wait for me down at the bottom.

  “Fucking idiot,” I cursed at myself. “Lilian was going to kick my ass if I ever get back.”

  I don’t know how much time passed as the elevator platform dropped, but I knew one thing for sure: the radiation spikes were becoming more intense. I was getting to the mission objective, though I wished with all my heart that I wasn’t.

  The platform finally stopped some time later. A room, not much larger than the flyer’s hold that brought us here, appeared before me. Two yellow globes floated in the air, shedding light. I turned off my night vision and took a step forward. There was a hole in the wall, from which more light seeped in. I carefully peeked into the next room and felt shivers running down my spine.

  “What is going on here?” I whispered, activating my INAS’s recording feature. At least that shit worked without a signal.

  The room ahead of me wasn’t really a room, it was almost a world of itself. It was so massive that there was no ceiling or an end to the place. There were no giant columns to hold this thing up, no fathomable architectural tech which would explain how this “room” existed. It just did.

  Footsteps resounded somewhere ahead of me but hidden from view. I turned on my Blade Shield. I had no time to summon Bucky and I had no cover out here, but I still wasn’t going to die without a fight. If the Aloi wanted my head, they would have to work their damned hardest. To my surprise, it wasn’t an Aloi’s silk-spear that greeted me. Instead, a human face appeared right before me.

  10

  The Aloi rarely took prisoners, while the Commonwealth Federation would only pick up an Aloi for interrogation and execution. This spoke of no love lost between the two sides. In all the years I’ve been waging war for the Federation, I never actually spoke to an Aloi or Cantari.

  We, as soldiers, were rarely taught anything about the Hegemony. I knew the Aloi spider things and the Cantari reptiles lived in a symbiotic relationship and that they were one of the oldest races in the Galaxy. I knew they wanted detrium because it was as valuable to their civilization as it was to ours, and I knew they hated the Ka and every race that cooperated with them by extension, with every atom in their bodies.

  It came as no surprise that I was utterly dumbfounded when the Cantari just stared at me for several long seconds, showing no hostility, and finally motioned for me to follow him further into the giant, white hall that stretched beneath the mountains.

  A bright light drew my attention far in the distance. Because it shone inexplicably bright and didn’t change no matter how much closer we came, it almost made me believe something was happening in my mind. The glow reminded me of the shade of light that a Ka would shed in those rare opportunities when they showed themselves to the Imminy.

  I only saw videos of such occasions, and most of them were black and white as the light just didn’t allow for color to be recorded. Of course, no human below an Astro Consul may have had the honor of laying their eyes on the supreme rulers of the Commonwealth Federation, but that didn’t mean it never happened.

  “What is this place?” I asked the mysterious Cantari that strode ahead of me.

  The alien was my height and dressed in white-and-gold robes that were spotted with Aloi markings which my INAS couldn’t identify. His skin color was slightly darker than I was used to as well, but that might have been a by-product of them dwelling so deep underground.

  The creature spoke, but my INAS couldn’t register what it said. It wasn’t their common language, no, it was something else. Maybe even older. When I didn’t respond, the Cantari turned its head and looked at me with its slithering, yellow eyes.

  “Follow… my… steps,” he replied, making a pause between every word.

  Now that was a surprise. He spoke in standard Federation, though mangled and broken, I understood what he told me. I stopped and thought hard about returning to the elevator and informing my squad, but something told me I wasn’t in any kind of danger. If they wanted to kill me, they could have done so the moment I dropped with the elevator.

  I looked around as I made my way and followed him. The place was barren with the ceiling being so dark I couldn’t see it. The far walls were too far away as well and didn’t reveal anything. Again, my eyes were drawn back to the center where the ball of light floated. My curiosity was running wild and shutting down any common sense. I wanted to see what was going on. I needed to know!

  It wasn’t long before we came close to the center of the hall. My eyes took several long minutes to adjust as we approached the burning light that both blinded me with its whiteness and radiated extreme heat in all directions.

  My INAS suddenly flared up, showing massive spikes in radiation. The nanites struggled as my Fyre Armor was doing its best to keep me protected from whatever that thing was. The Cantari could absorb radiation like it was nothing and even enjoyed doing so. Some studies suggested that their cells found a way to feed on it.

  I stopped and thought back on xeno-biology from school. It wasn’t an evolutionary trait that they possessed, I was sure of it. Instead, someone had bioengineered them that way. Just like with so many other aspects of their race.

  I focused hard on the ball as my eyes somewhat adjusted. The ring-like structure was e
ngraved with the same style of markings the Aloi in front of me wore. There was something just underneath the glowing orb, a pedestal of sorts, but I could only make out the shade of it. The pure brightness was too intense.

  Surrounding the ringed orb, fourteen Cantari and seven Ravagers stood with their hands clasped in prayer. Or at least it looked as if they were praying. But to what? The orb? They were religious fanatics, so why would they pray to an orb? Was it a representation of their god? Maybe something similar to a chapel?

  At least I understood why they hadn’t attacked me. It would have been rather detrimental to them to charge unarmed into a Tier 4 Technomancer, so did they have to compromise? I never heard Aloi do that before, no matter what, so I guessed this was very important to them.

  My Fyre Armor was starting to overload as the radiation pushed its life-sustaining systems to the maximum. I could feel my nanites working in unison with the armor to keep me “healthy” if I could call it like that, but I didn’t have much time. This thing was burning me alive.

  A booming voice broke me from the kaleidoscope of thoughts that swirled around in my head. I knew the voice came from inside because my INAS didn’t register any sound coming from… anywhere at all. The only beings able to speak directly to us were… no, it couldn’t be! Was that thing a Ka? Were these Aloi and Cantari worshipping their ancient enemy?

  I closed my eyes and shook the idea. They were at war even before humankind discovered the wheel. It was an absurd thought, but it made its way back into my mind.

  “Richard Stavos of humankind: You are chosen to carry the light into Bardeena where the stars cried.”

  “What the hell is going on?” I cursed and growled as the pain was starting to seep into my very skin. “Who are you?”

  The Cantari and Aloi surrounding the light turned toward me as one. It sure felt damn uncomfortable to be at the center of their fanatical attention. What the hell were they talking about anyway?

  The Aloi turned back to the light and fell to their knees as a group. A sound came from nowhere, sounding like a choir of broken records. Then their voices turned up a notch and they started crying. The shrieks that came from their mouths were horrendous! What’s more, my damn guide dropped to its knees as well and put its lizard face into its dark-green lizard hands. They started to chant a hellish sounding canticle that sent shivers down my spine.

  The Cantari standing in front of me pulled a long blade from his robe, and before I had a chance to react, it plunged the dagger deep into its stomach and cried out. The other Cantari followed suit and then the Ravagers did the same, but their blades were much larger. The giant spider things twitched and chittered as they cut into their flesh and spilled their guts before the light in the ring.

  The stench that accompanied the act was horrendous, one that came together with disemboweling someone or something. My body started to tingle with panic and I could feel my nanites rush through me. My adrenaline pumped and my INAS flared up. Danger. Yes, I was definitely in danger, but I didn’t know what kind.

  “Make the stars sleep.”

  “Wait, what? You first said the stars cried! What of it? Make or let? What the hell do you mean?” I yelled in anger.

  Everything stood still suddenly, and it felt as if I was watching myself from overhead. The orb started sucking all of the light into the center where it floated. Instead of just pulling in the light, I suddenly felt my body jerk and move toward the center, a single step at a time.

  There was nothing to grab for and steady myself, so I fell over and slid toward the black pedestal. I pushed myself up hurriedly, gritting my teeth together as the pain was starting to get to me. I still felt my body, but I wasn’t in control anymore. My body moved by itself, or at least partially. Every move I made was a fight against another mind within my own, one that wanted to do things to me.

  My eyes shot toward the floating orb as I steadied myself. The bright white light was mostly gone and was now replaced by a purple ball that vibrated with energy. Light gathered beneath my feet and then suddenly everything turned dark, but only for a brief second. The darkness turned into light and exploded completely soundless. White rays filled with radiation showered the entire hall just as the ball cracked open and all light was sucked inside.

  My feet moved on their own and my hands reached toward the ball against my will. The INAS was steadily overloading, and so was my Fyre Armor. More warnings about radiation, heat, H-Nan damage reports, and all kinds of debuffs flashed across my eyes. My adrenaline was spiking, and my heart rate was critical. The system begged me to do something or I would certainly die within seconds.

  The weird ball started to disintegrate into tiny, purple-green particles that enveloped my armor, slowly seeping through the gaps between nanites and clinging to my skin. There were no reports on my INAS about a breach, but I could feel the particles bite away at my flesh, millions at a time. I was burning up as white flashes filled my view. Was I dying? No! I couldn’t! There was still so much to do! But then everything turned black and darkness took me.

  I woke up screaming from pain. Bright white light assailed my eyes as they fluttered open. I was breathing heavily and looking around, searching for the ball and the enemy, but they weren’t here. No one was. I found myself sitting upright on a bed in an improvised infirmary. A Federation infirmary.

  “What the hell was that?” I muttered and laid back down as I tried to steady my breathing.

  Had it all been a nightmare? Had I hit my head when I fell into the shaft of that elevator up on the mountain? Might have been. I had no idea how I got back to Zero Base nor did I have a clear memory of what occurred the night before. All I knew was that my head was throbbing with a dull ache and my arms and legs felt like someone dipped them in lead.

  My eyelids shut themselves again and I drifted off to sleep, no matter how hard I tried not to. That went on for a while. I woke up, felt pain rush through my body, and then I’d feel some tingling in my arms where the drip was connected and I fell into a semi-coma again. By the sixth or seventh time, I had no idea which one it was. I opened my eyes and instead of loving and caring faces, I saw Captain Tailor with his arms crossed staring studiously at me. He looked like a damn biologist that was staring at a winged Markalan snake-rat. Just without the fascination. “How are you feeling, son?”

  “You didn’t rebirth me, did you?” I muttered as I tried to open and close my mouth without a constant pain shooting through my body. “Was I alive when you found me?”

  “Straight to the point, eh?” he chuckled and shook his head slightly. “No, we didn’t rebirth you, but tell me, how are you feeling?”

  He repeated the question twice now, so I guessed he wasn’t just small-talking.

  “I’m all right, though a bit sore. But that’s all,” I replied, not wanting to acknowledge the pain I was feeling. He wasn’t a doctor, so what was the point of going into detail?

  “Just pain? Nothing else?”

  “Headache, sore limbs… I don’t know. What happened to me?”

  “We found you at the gates, or rather, the guards found you in between shift changes. At first, they thought you were wounded and dying, but then they thought you had a drink too many, but it turned out you were neither. Do you remember what happened before you turned up at the base?”

  “Some of it, I think. It’s coming back to me.”

  Tailor nodded and then checked the door. The moment had this clandestine feel to it, as if we were talking about something forbidden and only on a need-to-know basis.

  “Your first order is to get back on your feet as soon as you can. Once you’ve managed that, I want you to come straight to my office for a debriefing.”

  “What about my team? And the others?”

  “Everyone’s fine but grumpy and tired. They searched for you through the night.”

  “I see. All of them? Even the other teams?”

  He nodded and finally graced me with a half-assed smile.

  “Go ba
ck to sleep so you can see me as soon as you’re ready.”

  “Yes, sir, consider it done,” I replied drowsily. Already was I starting to fall asleep when he spoke again.

  “And Stavos, don’t talk to anyone else about this, you got it? Not even if your life depended on it.”

  “Sure, sir. Whatever you… say,” I mumbled as I drifted off into dreamland.

  I went to his office a day later since I couldn’t get out of bed for another twenty hours. The pain coursing through my limbs never subsided and neither did my headache. The doc said it was probably psychosomatic because there were no signs of tissue or organ damage. It was apparently all in my head. All those advancements in medical science and then they had to tell me it was my own fault my whole body hurt.

  Layla and Leo sat in the corner of Tailor’s office. They had visited me in the meantime, and we had discussed this debriefing before and came to no conclusion on what Tailor might want. I saluted the captain and he offered me to sit down, which I did but slowly and painfully.

  “Sergeant, Private Alexeyeva, Private Mordigan, let’s get right to it. You may be wondering what the last mission was all about and what happened to you, Sergeant Stavos. The Federal Intelligence Agency reported that the Aloi worked on some sort of energy-based weapon in the Hargaar Mountains, something that would shift the tides of this war in the Aloi’s favor. You have probably come across this weapon without even knowing about it.”

  “Yes, Captain, but it didn’t—”

  “Sergeant Stavos,” he interrupted me in turn. “I know you’re still under shock and I sympathize, but there is no reason to think otherwise. This wasn’t an isolated incident. We found several such weapon factories across the planet, some of which far more sophisticated than what you found.”

  Factories? That place was no damn factory! What was he talking about?