Empire of Ashes: An Epic Space Opera Series (The Augmented Book 1)

by Ben Hale

  Reklin stood on two plates of seracrete, each bound to gravity repulsors that reacted to his motions, simulating real movement. The rest of the floor rose into place and smoothed, turning the room into a seamless expanse of white seracrete. Reklin shifted the holoview and spun through the vid options before settling on a training vid. The floor dropped out from under him and the light on the walls brightened. They seemed to expand into an enormous room with dozens of dakorians fighting in tight groups. Windows in the square hall showed a rocky landscape and a sea, while banners depicted the Hammerdin clan.

  “Come in,” Reklin called.

  A door seemed to open out of nowhere, revealing Worg leaning against the bulkhead. The stocky soldier eyed Reklin with an amused expression, noting Reklin’s blade and the vid.

  “Are you always training?” Worg asked.

  “To stop training is to start dying.”

  Worg entered the room. Although neither of them could see them, two panels rose and attached to Worg’s boots, so smooth Worg would not have noticed the motion. He appeared to walk forward, while in reality it was the room that shifted Worg to the side, keeping him a short distance from Reklin.

  “Belgin wants to speak with you,” Worg said.

  “Why?”

  Worg shrugged as he picked up a blade from a rack on the wall. “He wouldn’t say, but he claims it’s urgent.”

  “Has he said anything else?”

  “Nothing.” Worg spun the blade to test its balance. He sniffed in disappointment. “We’re supposed to have a high-quality holochamber, but I still feel like I’m holding a rod of seracrete.”

  “The room can simulate a great deal,” Reklin said. “But not the fine balance of a weapon.”

  “Are you training me now?”

  Reklin smiled and shrugged. “I’m pretty sure it’s my job to train you.”

  Worg laughed. “Do you want to speak to him?”

  “Bring him here.”

  “You want to speak to him in the holochamber?”

  A thought crossed Reklin’s mind, and he nodded. “The best place to perform an interrogation is where the captive is most vulnerable.”

  Worg inclined his head and departed, and Reklin activated his holoview. With his codes, he beamcast a link to the central military archive on Valana and searched the private records. Although most of the vids of the accident on Kelindor had been erased from the public network, the military had acquired every vid they could find, with Reckoning officers poring over them in an effort to find the cause.

  Vids appeared all around him, and he sorted them by type and time. He was already very familiar with the destruction on Kelindor, so he rejected all the vids on the ground. He wanted something high enough to see the destruction, to see the Dark approaching.

  House Jek’Orus, first ranked in the Empire, controlled the public vids, but Reklin had access to the highly secure private vid network, reserved for the dakorian military.

  After several moments of searching, he located one vid of a krey restaurant, taken by an amateur recording an evening with friends. Located on a roof of a high structure, the restaurant boasted glass walls with a sweeping view of a bright city. Renowned for its fare, the place had been a favorite for the krey nobles on Kelindor and would be known by Belgin. With a touch, Reklin activated the vid.

  The holochamber took the vid and extrapolated a three-dimensional image, building the landscape, the sky, the people, in merging threads of light, gradually blending into a seamless image. The walls of the room shimmered and faded into blue skies and a brilliant horizon. Twisting towers of blue glass and white seracrete, common for the architecture on Kelindor, extended in all directions.

  Around Reklin, dozens of krey and dakorians materialized, eating and talking while humans served them from crystalline platters. Ships glided through the afternoon sky, many of the sleeker variety. In every direction, wealth was on display.

  Suddenly a dark cloud billowed in the distance, a plume of smoke that curled into the sky—and then expanded. There was no explosion, but the smoke quickly drew attention from those on the rooftop restaurant. Krey stopped eating and crowded at the glass railing, pointing and speculating.

  “I don’t see a fire,” one said.

  “Perhaps an accident?” another said. “It’s coming from the edge of the woods.”

  “You should have run,” Reklin said to himself.

  In an hour, everyone in the vid would be dead, not that they knew. The plume of smoke looked innocuous and harmless, and none had suspected the catastrophe that was about to unfold.

  The cloud swelled outward rather than upward, covering streets and ships. The krey stood to watch the spectacle, laughing and chattering. Then screams erupted in the street below, and the face appeared in the cloud.

  Larger than the building on which Reklin stood, the face opened its jaws, revealing black fangs of roiling smoke. The eyes were enough to make even Reklin shudder. He still wondered if the Dark had been sentient.

  A starship lifted off the roof of a nearby building and sought to escape. The jaws opened wider and rose upward, swallowing the ship. The powerful vessel did not reemerge. Voracious and insatiable, the smoke poured from the mouth of the face, flooding into the streets, a wall of black that filled Reklin’s vision until it cast him in shadow. The face opened its maw to consume Reklin’s building,

  The fangs of the Dark were the size of the Fell Shadow and were as dark as a black hole. The face was so visceral it looked like a predator trying to swallow the building, and the wave of the Dark blocked out the sun, casting the restaurant in shadow. The krey and humans had begun to flee, their faces panicked as fell over each other in an attempt to escape. In that moment Reklin paused the vid. He turned and waited.

  A moment later, Worg opened the door and Belgin entered. Accustomed to conflict, Worg started in surprise, but Belgin’s response was far more telling. The krey blanched at his surroundings, his blue eyes going wide. It was not the fear of one who’d seen, it was the fear of one who’d felt. Veins bulged in his throat, and sweat beaded his forehead.

  Reklin smiled. “You wanted to talk? Let’s talk.”

  Chapter Nine

  Belgin scowled. “This was a bad idea.”

  “It’s too late for regrets,” Reklin said.

  He motioned to Worg in the hall. The dakorian smirked and tapped the crystal at the side of the door. In a swish of air, the door shut and disappeared behind Belgin, leaving him trapped in the vid of Kelindor.

  “I wasn’t on Kelindor when the Dark was released,” Belgin insisted.

  Reklin didn’t argue. He’d seen the truth in his expression. Belgin had been on Kelindor and knew far more about the accident than he was letting on. Reklin shifted to face the cloud and gazed into the giant black features.

  “Your world was as beautiful as Mylttium,” Reklin said. “Before the Dark devoured the planet.”

  “I’m not going to tell you anything.”

  Reklin shrugged. “Then I’ll tell you what I already know.”

  The blue-eyed krey scowled. “I don’t think you know anything about the Dark.”

  “Maybe,” Reklin said with a chuckle. “We know a cloud of unknown composition was released from a lab on Kelindor. We know your brother, Orion, was in command of the lab, but was killed along with several billion others when the cloud covered the planet.”

  Belgin remained silent, so he turned and looked up at the cloud. “Ion weapons, plasma, even older lasers had no effect on the cloud. In fact, it seemed like such energy weapons only made it stronger and accelerated its growth. The Empire sent a dozen ships from the fleet to aid in the rescue, as did other Houses. Fourteen ships tried to fly into the Dark. Not one returned. Of course, most of those on the ground tried to escape by Gate, but in a way we still do not understand, the Dark infiltrated the Gate network, and the system automatically shut down. Less than a third of the planet survived. Or would you call those that fell into the Dark survivors?”


  Belgin scowled and remained silent. Reklin didn’t push him and merely leaned against a table next to a krey that had spilled his meal in an attempt to flee. The sheer panic on his face made it clear he knew he was doomed. Reklin noticed his blue eyes and motioned to him.

  “Do you know how many vids show the transformation? Seven. That’s all that we managed to recover. But we know the Dark subverted krey, humans, dakorians, and two nonsentient creatures into twisted versions of themselves, apparently robbing them of conscious will. They became rabid beasts, attacking anything that moved.”

  “We called them fiends,” Belgin finally responded, his voice filled with revulsion. “They killed everyone and everything.”

  “Your House fought back,” Reklin said, hiding his smile. Once they began to talk, it was over. “Although the fiends could be killed, nothing damaged the cloud.”

  “It took three weeks for the world to be swallowed,” Belgin said. “Gates shut down, overloaded ships abandoned the planet, and everyone without a ship was left behind.”

  “Did you know him?” Reklin pointed to the krey at his side.

  Belgin’s eyes flicked to the krey and back to Reklin. “A cousin. I don’t remember his name.”

  So far, neither Reklin nor Belgin had shared anything that was not publicly known, but Belgin’s expression spoke volumes. The way his eyes twitched, his hands clenching and unclenching, suggested he still grappled with what he’d witnessed. Reklin guessed he’d witnessed someone die to the Dark. A krey ally? A dakorian soldier? A sibling? Maybe he’d been one of those left behind.

  “Several attempts were made by other Houses and the Empire to reclaim the world,” Reklin said, “but the Dark destroyed entire ships.”

  Reklin shifted the vid to a view from low orbit. The tower and the dark face in the cloud were replaced by the darkened curvature of a world, and Reklin allowed the Dark to continue its slow expanse. Several ships dropped from space and entered the cloud. One by one, the lights were extinguished, and they plummeted from view. The last, a Ro fighter, was caught by what was unmistakably a hand, which rose from the cloud and grasped the vessel, dragging it from sight. Belgin shuddered.

  “The Dark destroys everything,” Belgin said bitterly.

  “Which is why the office of Reckoning found your father guilty of attempting to create an unsanctioned weapon.”

  Belgin remained silent.

  “Three years,” Reklin continued. “That’s how long it took for Reckoning officers to find your father guilty. A shockingly short time by krey standards. Your other worlds and assets were sold at a fraction of the cost, all to other krey that recognized Kelindor as a gaping wound in your House.”

  “It was hard not to see it that way.”

  “I hear your mother abandoned your father within months of the accident,” Reklin said.

  “She returned to the Imperial line,” Belgin said. “Taking most of my siblings with her.”

  Reklin caught the anger tightening Belgin’s face. He knew that Belgin would have gone with Hellina, if he’d been invited. But his mother had abandoned him and his father. Unable to support anyone else, Dragorn had cast out the remainder of the House. Reklin almost felt sorry for the once powerful krey.

  “Is there anything you want to add?” Reklin asked.

  Already on edge, Belgin twitched. “It doesn’t matter. You won’t listen.”

  “Try me.”

  Belgin fixed Reklin with a glare. “You think this will intimidate me? In the last ten years, I’ve suffered more than you can imagine. That weapon is more dangerous than you understand.”

  “So it was a weapon.”

  Belgin scowled. “If you knew anything, you’d let me go and say I escaped.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Because my House is being hunted.”

  Reklin scoffed at that claim. “You’re a Houseless krey with no power or influence. Why would anyone want to hunt you?”

  “You came for me.”

  Reklin regarded the krey. In a way, he was right. In all of Reklin’s years of military service, he’d never been loaned to Reckoning. The investigative arm of the Empire had its own officers, mostly former fleet officers or dakorian soldiers. The military—and especially Shard teams—operated independently from Reckoning and were given entirely different missions.

  “A Reckoning team would never be able to infiltrate Urgin-4,” Reklin said. “It’s why we were requested.”

  “Are Shard teams often asked to help civil investigations?”

  Reklin didn’t need to answer. They both knew it didn’t happen. Even more strange was Belgin himself. The blue-eyed krey might have been a mercenary, but he lacked the tattoos or savagery common for a criminal. He was just a common outcast, yet Malikin had requested an elite Shard team to retrieve him.

  Reklin asked the obvious question. “Why?”

  “Because I know what caused the accident.” Belgin folded his arms. “And I know who.”

  “Orion.”

  “Was involved,” Belgin finished. “But he was not the reason the weapon was activated.”

  “You’re claiming it was not an accident?” Reklin swept a hand to the darkened world below them. “Who even knew of the cloud’s creation? Let alone how to release it into the atmosphere?”

  “Let me go, and I will tell you.”

  Reklin began to laugh. “You are convincing, but you know I cannot release you.”

  “Then you are already dead.”

  “I’m just a soldier,” Reklin said. “I tracked you, captured you, and will now deliver you. I have done nothing to merit dismissal, let alone execution.”

  “Anyone involved in my House is already gone,” Belgin said. “My father has been officially condemned. My outcast brothers and sisters are being killed. Even my mother is threatened. Kelindor was a bomb that is still exploding. And because you were assigned to me, you’re going to get caught in the blast.”

  “Were you on Kelindor when the Dark was released?”

  Belgin’s mouth shut with a click. “No.”

  It was a lie, and they both knew it, but Reklin recognized the trace of fear. Belgin had not gone to the moons of Urgin to start a new life. He’d gone to escape his old one.

  “Why did your father keep Skorn and Ero in his House?”

  In the weeks preceding Belgin’s capture, Reklin and his soldiers had learned a great deal about House Bright’Lor. Of all the sons Head Dragorn could have retained, he’d kept Skorn, an obvious choice, and oddly Ero, arguably the reason for his House’s downfall.

  Belgin’s features contorted at the question. “They were always his favorites.”

  Reklin smiled at the sullen response. “They were favorites for a reason.”

  Belgin growled and looked away. “Skorn took after my father and always had a gift with the nobles. Ero had the connections with the seedier side of the Empire. My father kept them because he needs what they can do, even if he blames Ero.”

  Reklin noted the trace of triumph in the final words. Did Dragorn intend on killing Ero? It would not be the first time the head of a House punished a son or daughter for failure. But he would not do it while he still needed his sons. Alliances in the Empire were always safe as long as they were in balance, and for now, Ero needed the protection of the House, and Dragorn needed Ero to overcome his tribunal.

  “You have revealed little, yet I suspect you know a great deal,” Reklin said.

  Belgin sniffed. “I know what my father is planning.”

  “It doesn’t matter if you tell me or not,” Reklin said. “Voice Malikin will ensure you speak.”

  Belgin scowled. “For a Shard captain, you are shockingly dense. Take me back, and you sign your own death.”

  “Why?” Reklin demanded. “Only the Emperor, a High Voice, or a member of the dakorian Bone Council on Valara has the authority to do order the execution of a Shard captain, and I certainly don’t merit such punishment.”

  “Yo
u will after your next assignment.”

  Reklin frowned, disliking the smug response. “What do you know of my next assignment?”

  For the first time, Belgin smiled. The expression was not comforting, rather it was the smile of one who knew far more than they revealed. He swept his shackled hands to the expanse of Kelindor below their feet.

  “I will tell you this,” Belgin said. “I do not know who, but someone powerful wants the eradication of House Bright’Lor, and your involvement has just begun. The destruction of Kelindor will have many victims, and unless you release me, you will be added to the list.”

  A touch of unease settled in Reklin’s gut, an instinct of the truthfulness in Belgin’s claims. Reklin had no reason to believe him, yet he could not shake his doubt.

  Over the next hour Reklin tried several tactics to get Belgin to speak, but he proved adept at guarding his secrets. When the effort proved futile, Reklin summoned Worg, who took him back to the cell at the rear of the ship.

  “Remember what I said,” Belgin called as he left. “When you are being betrayed by those you trusted most, you will wish you heeded my warning.”

  “Do you ever stop talking?” Worg rolled his eyes. “You chatter more than teenage humans.”

  The door shut, and Reklin remained in the holochamber, disturbed by the conversation. In Reklin’s career he’d hunted plenty of criminals, and they fell into two categories: the fallen and the fighters. The fallen were those under Reckoning because of circumstance, criminals only because they’d succumbed to their baser instincts. Houseless krey, disgraced dakorians, even the odd human or two. They always followed the same pattern. Flight, fight, desperate claims of innocence, followed by desperate attempts at bribery.

  The fighters, unlike the fallen, were a breed apart. Lifetime smugglers, killers, and destroyers, they typically belonged to criminal organizations. They were dangerous because if they were caught, their fate was sealed. They didn’t get a comfortable cell on Mylttium; they were taken to military installations, where their known crimes were enumerated, followed by a quick sentence to either the Exiled planet, or death.