The Last Stryker (Dark Universe Series Book 1)

by Alex Sheppard

  Let’s see you combat that, witch! For the first time in a long time, Ramya felt the warm flood of happiness inside her. A parent’s support was good to have when your back was against the wall. And if that parent happened to be Trysten Kiroff, there could be nothing better in the galaxy. But . . . Ramya reminded herself sternly, her father was only doing this to protect his image, not her.

  “But, Lord Paramount Kiroff, we can’t do that,” Leona protested, her stout voice dwindling steadily into a whine. “That will be setting a dangerous precedent. The CAWStrat has always been above galactic power play. If we do this—”

  “The CAWStrat has never been above anything, Leona. You know that well. Besides, I’m not saying my daughter should go unpunished for her . . . lapses, but I shall mete out the penalty myself. I give you my word.”

  Ramya’s heart sank into an abyss. She had been hoping for a respite from Leona, but this was not the kind she wanted. Passing from Leona’s hand into her father’s was the proverbial jumping from the stewing pot into the fire. At least Leona’s punishment would have been impersonal, but her father’s . . . . She suddenly hoped Leona would resist the elder Kiroff’s offer.

  “I’m not sure I can—”

  “Of course you can. And before I forget, I quite like the proposal for the space dome. House Kiroff is considering voting in favor of disbursing the funds you requested.” Her father smiled. “There isn’t anything else to discuss, I hope?”

  Leona blinked a few times, and then shook her head. “No, nothing else at all.” Leona placed her hand, fingers outspread, over her heart. “Apologies for taking up your time, Lord Paramount Kiroff. Good tidings to you.”

  A shadow of a smile floated over her father’s face. “Good tidings, Leona.”

  He glanced at Ramya next, his icy gaze sweeping over her and soaking her heart with the fear of impending doom. “We shall speak shortly,” was all he said to her before the projection went off air.

  2

  Trysten Kiroff, it was said, had the golden touch. Since he assumed leadership of House Kiroff from his father Lord Abelei, there was nothing stopping the family’s rise. During his time, the Kiroffs’ mining empire sprawled further, profits soared, and Trysten’s younger brother Lynden was elected to the High Council of the Galactic Confederacy. House Kiroff’s influence in the Raonic times was not unchallenged, yet unparalleled to date.

  Such influence translated to great expectations on the next generation. The heir of a great house couldn’t avoid the limelight even if they descended from someone lesser than Trysten Kiroff, but Ramya was sure her position was the worst. Being a female firstborn to a leader of a great house didn’t help Ramya any. While the Confederacy didn’t distinguish between males and females when it came to inheritance laws—the firstborn of a firstborn would carry the lineage, the Law of Bequests stated simply—a woman head of house was unusual and, like Ramya, faced greater scrutiny and carried a larger burden.

  However, after the mishap at the duel with Armand Danukis, Ramya realized the benefits of her status. She had expected Administrator Leona to carry a grudge against her after her father coerced her to drop the sentence. But no, Leona acted as if the incident had never happened. She called Ramya to assist her after instruction hours, but was hardly her reproachful self. Armand and his minions stayed out of Ramya’s way for the most part, and Ramya deduced that also had something to do with her father’s cautioning.

  Three days after the incident, Ramya sat in CAWStrat’s main lunchroom with her best friend Isbet, eating, talking, and watching boys. Isbet did most of the talking and watching while Ramya stared out the tall glass walls. Magnificent mountains surrounded them, like sentinels watching over Confederacy Peak on which the pink CAWStrat buildings shone like a jeweled tiara.

  “Come on, Rownack, just ask me already,” Isbet muttered. She sat across the table from Ramya, twirling her curly locks around her finger as she poked absentmindedly at her food. Her eyes flitted back and forth between Ramya and the table directly on the opposite side of the corridor where two boys—both two years senior to them—were seated.

  Isbet leaned across the table, frowned, and whispered, “By the God of the stars, girl, what do you keep staring at? It’s like you’re seeing the Tajita Ranges for the first time. And why do you keep frowning? Don’t tell me you’re still worried about that stupid duel with that idiot Armand?”

  Ramya was worried. She had to be. Her father had said he’d speak to her. That was three days ago. She was still waiting for his summons.

  Trysten Kiroff always kept his word. If he had promised Leona he’d take his daughter to task for her conduct at the duel, he was not about to let it slip. What in the stars was taking so long?

  “Come on, Rami.” Isbet reached over the table and tugged at Ramya’s hand. “Forget about it. Move on. No one is talking about it—not Leona, or Armand, or those goofs who follow him around. Why can’t you?”

  Because my father hasn’t. And until I know what punishment he’s about to throw at me, I can’t move on.

  She shrugged at Isbet and decided to change the subject. “What’s with Rownack? Still nothing?”

  Isbet had been waiting for Rownack, a flight-honor-badged senior, who was seated at the table across the aisle, to ask her to the annual Concert Night event at the CAWStrat. She had turned down offers from two other boys in hopes that Rownack would ask her, but so far he had showed little interest in the matter. With only two days left until the event, Isbet was all nerves.

  “Something’s wrong with that guy,” Isbet announced with a wave of her hand. “It’s my mistake. Should’ve accepted when Arren asked. Now . . .”

  “Why don’t you ask Rownack instead?”

  Isbet froze as if she had seen a ghost. Then blinking, she turned slowly to look at Ramya. “Me? Ask him? You gone mad, Rami?”

  No! I just don’t support your pigeonholing tendencies.

  “The skies would part and the stars would rain fire on us if you did, hmm?” Ramya asked, not holding back the bite in her voice. A girl asking a boy out would be unconventional for sure, but how better to solve the tangle Isbet was in now?

  Isbet made a face. “Not for you maybe,” she said crossly. “You’re the Kiroff heiress, the universe is in your palms. But if I asked a boy out, all hell would break loose.”

  Isbet was the fourth-born daughter of a second-born son from House Valpenrys, a lesser fiefdom under House Kiroff. From her low position in the hierarchy of power, the conventions of galactic social order seemed more binding. Ramya however thought it was just an excuse Isbet used, and her fear of hellfire from society was mostly fictional.

  “Do what you will, Isbet,” she said. “The other option is going to Concert Night without a partner. Now that sounds like more of a hell to me.”

  “Never mind my hell. What about you? Don’t tell me you’re going alone again?”

  Ramya quickly suppressed a sigh. Isbet wouldn’t understand. Since Ramya had turned fourteen and been debuted in social circles, boys had been flocking around her. Ramya was a generous mix of her parents’ genes. Her oval face was framed by auburn hair that was rare among the Kiroffs and non-existent in Sonya’s heritage, blue-gray eyes like her father’s stood out in stark contrast on Sonya’s dusky skin. Although Ramya was no great natural beauty like her mother, she was put together pleasingly. But then, even if she were ugly, she had more than enough to attract generous attention from the opposite sex—her social stature. Ramya Kiroff was considered a prize in the matrimonial market. Every boy she met was more interested in the riches she was set to come into rather than in her. Ramya hated it enough to stay away from the courting scene altogether.

  “Rami? Hello? You didn’t answer me,” Isbet probed again.

  “I told you already, Isbet,” Ramya said. “I hate their empty praises, the show they put on to impress me.”

  “That’s what boys do when courting girls,” Isbet muttered between mouthfuls of julienned vegetables. “Woul
d you rather they shout obscenities at you?”

  “You know that’s not what I meant. I’m invisible to them, Isbet. If I were a wall inheriting the Kiroff name and fortune, they’d sing my praises just as devotedly. What they really want, what they’re really courting, is House Kiroff.”

  Isbet was not one to give up easily. She simply shrugged. “Well, at least they’ll stay loyal even when you don’t look half as good as you do now. That’s not bad.”

  Why did she even argue with Isbet? “You’re right,” Ramya huffed. “Maybe you should send out word that Ramya Kiroff is looking for a partner. Perhaps we could set up a jousting tournament to pick a winner. I’m sure that’ll make Leona pleased with me once again.”

  Isbet shook her curls and held her hands up in mock submission. “I get it, you’re not interested. All right, forget boys,” she said. Leaning forward, her eyes sparkling, Isbet whispered, “I heard some fresh rumor about the GSO today.”

  Now this was why Ramya endured Isbet’s endless lectures on relationships. Being friends with Isbet had its perks; her immense network of informants served endless news and gossip, even though it required hearing about boys and advice on courtship nonstop.

  “Tell me.”

  “So, there was a GSO agent at your duel, right? Guess what? He wasn’t the only one around. There were many more around the CAWStrat. They came to the sessions, dropped by the arenas, and some simply walked the corridors.”

  That didn’t make any sense. People from GSO—recruiters mostly—only showed up during the annual enlistment season which was still six months out. Even then, the recruiters didn’t just stop by random places at the CAWStrat, not like this.

  “What in the stars is going on? Are they here to watch over someone at the CAWStrat?”

  Isbet shrugged and deftly munched on a piece of carrot.

  “Or maybe they’re here to guard something valuable. I’ve heard they keep a lot of defense-related . . . things . . . strategic plans, blueprints here,” Ramya mused.

  “No, not that.”

  “What then?”

  “They’re recruiting,” Isbet informed, flashing a telling glance before digging into a gelatin pudding.

  That was absurd. The GSO didn’t recruit so often and never directly from the CAWStrat. Graduates from the Institute were given internships at the GSO, some of which could stretch as long as five years, and only after completing the internship successfully were promising candidates offered a position.

  “You mean hiring interns?” Ramya asked.

  “No. I mean recruiting.”

  Ramya could only shake her head in disbelief. Perhaps Isbet’s informant was wrong.

  “The GSO is on an emergency recruitment spree,” Isbet whispered. Her eyes widened. “The word is the GSO has lost an entire fleet near Sector 22. An entire fleet.”

  Ramya sat up, frowning. This was impossible news. A Confederacy fleet was no small thing, and GSO fleets were the biggest among all kinds of fleets in the Confederacy. Even the smallest of them had to have ten battlecruisers, each with a thousand jets and two or three thousand people on board. What could’ve wiped out such a behemoth? There wasn’t even a war going on.

  “How?” Ramya managed a whisper. Isbet shrugged. “What’s in Sector 22? There isn’t much, is there?”

  “Two star systems. No colonies.”

  “What could’ve wiped out a whole fleet? Wait . . . what was a fleet doing in Sector 22 anyway? The GSO usually have their exercises in the outer colonies.”

  Isbet shrugged again. “Don’t know. Everyone’s going on about how catastrophic the loss is and how the GSO is ramping up its forces to make up for it.”

  “When did this happen?” Ramya asked on a sudden hunch.

  “Last week apparently.”

  That was probably why her father never called. The GSO fleet was mostly manufactured in mega-factories owned by House Kiroff. Not just that, most of the ores used to build the spacecraft also came from Kiroff mines. If the GSO was rebuilding its lost fleet, then it would mean sudden and tremendous demand on production. House Kiroff, particularly her father, had to be busy. Could he have forgotten his promise to Leona?

  Fat chance!

  “Wish I knew how what skills they’re looking for in people,” Isbet said meditatively.

  “You want to join a GSO fleet?”

  “Of course. Donning the blue has always been my dream. I didn’t bust my haunches getting that flight honor badge for nothing,” Isbet said. The girl loved to fly and was great at it also. For two years straight, Isbet, with her flawless flight record, had wrangled the flight honor badge from her frustrated, mostly-male counterparts.

  Ramya was not too bad a pilot herself, but not nearly good enough for the flight honor badge. In the two years at CAWStrat, she had accumulated quite a few flight credits to her name and held a steady spot near the upper-mid-level pilot rankings among the trainees. Since joining CAWStrat, Ramya had grown to like flying.

  Liking to fly was one thing though, but joining the fleet? That was serious commitment. Being part of the fleet wasn’t exactly leisurely business. Apart from the ten-year vow of celibacy, rigors of training, and risk of combat, it also meant living in space for long stretches. Sometimes, GSO fleet personnel didn’t set foot on land in years.

  Years in that never-ending darkness of space. For the love of stars, what a life! Ramya fought the shudder threatening to rise up her spine, but failed. It shook her, slightly, but enough to catch Isbet’s eye.

  Isbet flashed an understanding smile. “Thinking of space still gives you the jitters, huh?”

  At least it was just the jitters now. Ramya searched for a spot on the Tajita Ranges to fix her gaze. A year ago, during their first space flight at CAWStrat, she had totally lost it. She had not feared space before that, but being out in that tiny scrambler jet, all alone in the darkness . . .

  Leona had made quite a spectacle out of Ramya’s nervous breakdown. Her father had visited at the infirmary. He didn’t even inquire about her health. “In all of my CAWStrat years, the flight honor badge was mine,” he’d said. Every word meant to bite, gnaw, and rip into Ramya’s heart. “It’s a pity my daughter needed a rescue mission to salvage her scramjet.”

  She had failed her father and her magnificent heritage yet another time. Her father had not wasted the opportunity to hit her where it hurt most. He had cut off her access to the Kiroff spaceship factories.

  “Prove yourself worthy and then you can visit again,” he had hissed before leaving the infirmary, knowing well how much she loved touring the production lines and hanging around the design labs, watching little parts and pieces fit together to make a spacecraft. Someday, she hoped, she'd be able to bring her own designs to life.

  Ramya had tried hard to prove herself since. She worked at improving her pilot rankings, fought back her fear of space flight. But her father hadn’t budged.

  Tired of being refused access, Ramya had found other ways to get into the factories. She couldn’t visit in person, her father saw to that, but he couldn’t stop her from hacking the networks, could he? Right from her room at CAWStrat, Ramya kept tabs on the Kiroff shipyards. She knew every spacecraft they built, every weapon they installed, and every new tech they researched. To this day, her father didn’t know.

  “Rami!” Isbet’s sharp voice nudged Ramya out of her thoughts. “Let’s get out of here.” Rownack and his friend had finished their lunch and Isbet nodded meaningfully at them.

  Ramya was about to shake her head at Isbet when she noticed the liveried man at the entrance. Her insides crumbled. The man was wearing the unmistakable colors of House Kiroff—red and gold. His name escaped her, but she recognized the man nonetheless; he was her father’s personal messenger.

  This couldn’t be good. Isbet’s voice reached Ramya’s ears, but she couldn’t make out the words. All she saw was the man as he scanned the lunchroom, his sharp gaze settling on Ramya within a few seconds. Before she knew it, he was next to
their table, bowing.

  “Lady Ramya,” he addressed her in a deep, almost guttural voice and retrieved an envelope from his liveried smock. “I have a letter from Lord Paramount Kiroff.” Another bow later, he was gone.

  Ramya sat frozen in her chair, staring at the letter from her father, dread making her heart leaden. In Raonic times, letters were reserved for carrying the most joyful of news and the most dreadful ones as well. Her father, Trysten Kiroff, had no joy to share with her.

  It has to be my punishment.

  How apt that it was delivered just the way her father served his adversaries news of his victories over them: signed, sealed, and delivered via personal courier? Ramya’s fingers hovered over the blood-red seal with a mighty and thorny “K,” unable to gather up enough courage to unleash the verdict inside.

  3

  The evening skies were stained a deep shade of purple when Ramya finished reading her father’s letter for the tenth time. She put it away and shuddered, as if the paper was burning her fingers. For a second she simply stared at it, then scowling, she crumpled it and tossed it into the trash receptacle. With teeth clenched and fists curled, Ramya watched until the last bits of paper crumbled into ash within the translucent vessel.

  I’m never going to be your bartering chip, Trysten Kiroff. I don’t care if House Kiroff goes to hell.

  Seventeen years of trying to live up to her father’s impossible expectations was enough. Was it her fault that she was born a girl? Was it her fault that she wasn’t as perfect as he was? Her education at CAWStrat had to be terminated forthwith, her father had written. According to him, a strategic marriage was the best way Ramya could serve House Kiroff.

  This wasn’t the first time she had heard of her father’s plan to marry her off to a man of his choosing, a man who would come from a reputable family of considerable wealth and add to the Kiroffs’ clout, a man he would then groom to run the Kiroff business empire. Over the years she had hoped to convince him otherwise. She’d hoped he’d groom her instead, treat her like a worthy successor. She had hoped he’d be impressed by her records at CAWStrat, by the model spacecrafts she designed year after year. But no, he hadn’t paid any attention to those.