by C. C. Ekeke
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Free Short Stories
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Acknowledgements
Lexicon
Prey: a Short Story
Books by C.C. Ekeke
About the Author
Free Short Stories
A Note from the Author
C. C. EKEKE
Copyright 2016 by C. C. Ekeke
First published, 2005, as Star Brigade: First Renaissance.
Revised, 2016 as Star Brigade: Resurgent
STAR BRIGADE: Resurgent is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
“Prey” copyright @ 2014 by C.C. Ekeke
STAR BRIGADE, characters, names and related indicia are registered trademarks of C.C. Ekeke.
Copyright © 2016 by C. C. Ekeke
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the copyright holder, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles.
ISBN: 978-0-9899119-1-7
Website: http://ccekeke.com
Cover design: Derek Murphy
For Dr. Philip Rhyne
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Prologue
“[Why are you doing that?]” The Korvenite, Vantor, opened his eyes at the question, spoken in Korcei—his native language. Since this journey began one-and-a-half orvs ago, he had been praying to the deity Korvan, praying for a life of freedom…until the question interrupted him.
Vantor’s stomach grumbled loudly. One look at the skin that hung off his emaciated body confirmed hunger and he were old friends. The air around him stank of perspiration and other foul odors he tried to ignore. Vantor’s arms were in magnetic restraints up on the wall of a small cell, as were his feet. This prevented him from kneeling or even placing his fists across his chest in proper Korvenite praying posture. Regardless, he still felt obligated to pay homage to his god.
“[Why beseech a deity that doesn’t exist?]” the voice asked again, more scornfully now. It belonged to Rouma, one of the many Korvenite prisoners onboard with him. Vantor craned his head to the right, as much as his tight restraints allowed, and stared at the older Korvenite bound up next to him.
The dim halolights in this cell partially obscured Rouma’s features, but Vantor knew him without even looking. Milk-white skin, thick lavender-hue hair shorn to the scalp, eyes with black sclera and goldenrod pupils, all similar to Vantor’s own features. There were differences, like his birthmarks, small freckle-like marks all over his chest and shoulders. Most importantly, Rouma had lost all faith in Korvan. The humans may have been inhibiting his psionics, but Vantor didn’t need those gifts to sense that.
“[Because I trust in Korvan’s Way,]” Vantor replied, looking Rouma in the eyes. “[Korvan will—.]”
“[Korvan does not EXIST! What deity would leave his begotten race in shackles?!]” Rouma shrieked. Vantor gaped at his brethren’s barefaced hatred, too scared to try countering such loathing.
“[Leave the youngling in peace, Rouma!]” shrilled another voice, a female Korvenite. “[Just because you have lost your faith doesn’t mean you should deny him of his own.]”
Across the tiny cell were at least 20 or so other Korvenites, all bound to the wall like Rouma and Vantor. Most were asleep or too broken in spirit to pay attention. But the one speaking, a petite Korvenite with hair as short as her male counterparts, had black and gold eyes that still blazed with verve.
“[This is none of your concern, Cymae,]” Rouma spat out. “[Shut your trap and stay out of this!]”
“[Please stop,]” one of the more gangly Korvenites next to Cymae pleaded weakly. “[You will only bring pain upon us!]” But his warnings fell on deaf ears as another male chimed in.
He was tall, broad-shouldered and looked a little better fed than the rest. Vantor remembered his name—Khasos. “[There is still hope, Rouma. Korvan must have a reason for us enduring this penance.]”
Rouma snapped a furious glance at Khasos, straining against the magnecuff restraints to get at him, which was never a good idea. The more one struggled, the tighter the cuffs bound their occupants. “[You haven’t seen scores of our brethren die for this Korvan, only to see him NEVER answer your prayers, NEVER answer your pleas for deliverance, only to see yourself stripped of your abilities, stripped of your freedom until age and despair finally accept this entrapment!]”
Seeing them argue made Vantor ill. “[Stop please—ARRRRHHH!]”
It was as if a volcano erupted at the base of the Korvenite’s skull, ripping his thoughts apart.
The nerve shock was triggered by the restraining bolt that humans had placed in the skulls of every Korvenite they captured, mainly to contain his psionic gifts. The pain made Vantor violently convulse, and he wasn’t alone. All Korvenites in the cell felt the same stupefying agony. Their screams thundered in Vantor’s skull, as did his own. The pain skewered through him so intensely—blurring his vision.
Then just as quickly as it began, the shock ended. Vantor sagged forward and gasped for air, as did many Korvenites in the cell. Clarity slowly returned, just in time for him to feel every muscle fiber in his body burning. Some others, including Rouma, had passed out from the pain. Vantor envied them.
“Shut UP! Unless you want more!” a shout boomed over the room’s comms in Standard. Vantor’s eyes welled up with tears, the result of pain and venomous anger yet no means to express it. He looked up to see both Khasos and Cymae staring back, fatigued from the torture, but hope remained in their eyes.
“[Keep praying child,]” Cymae rasped, her voice hoarse. “[There’s still hope.]”
Vantor smiled weakly in gratitude and before long, lost himself again in prayer to Korvan.
Captain Nathaniel Fennimore glared at the mini-viewscreen monitoring the Korvenite prisoners for a couple more macroms to make sure that they stayed settled. He sniffed with disappointment when they did, moving his hand away from the console that triggered their restraining bolts.
Any sentient who cared enough to observe Fennimore would find nothing extraordinary about him. He was an Earthborn human and all too proud of it: average features, average height, and a rather below-average physique with a small paunch that he’d promised to lose forever ago. A sandy crew-cut and a scraggly mustache he could never get to completely grow in capped off his very average look.
A week from tomorrow would be the fifteenth year Fennimore had been doing internment camp transfers on his S-305 mediu
m transport, the Fennimore (he named it himself). This latest drop-off was to a camp another day away in the Mynar Sector, the uninhabited planet Alorum in the Rhyne System to be specific. He usually dropped off a hundred or more prisoners from internment camps at the outskirts of the Commerce Sector. But this run coincided perfectly with a stopover on Terra Sollus, another Rhyne System planet. After he unloaded this group of twenty Korvies, he wanted to catch as much of the planet’s Earth Remembrance Week festivities as possible.
Fennimore’s homeworld was now Terra Sollus, the prosperous capital world to the star-spanning Galactic Union of Planetary Republics and the residence for over 10 billion inhabitants of several species. Most infamously, Terra Sollus was now the replacement homeworld for earthborn humans.
Replacement homeworld. Fennimore still scoffed at the disagreeable thought. A bitter stitch tightened in his chest, even though it was 2403, twenty-six years later. As beautiful as Terra Sollus was, as eerily similar as it looked like Earth from space, any time his former home came to mind, it was just a painful reminder to him of what the Korvenites had ripped away from him…from all of Earth’s children. “Stupid mindrapers,” Fennimore hissed. He had half a mind to give them another jolt just out of spite. But the human restrained himself and pivoted away from the ship’s monitoring array to stalk across the wide half-circle that housed the ship’s bridge.
Once Fennimore had plopped back to his command chair, he cast an approving gaze at his diverse and handpicked crew with a sense of pride. It didn’t matter whether it was the Nnaxan male Ensign sitting at helm in front of him, the towering Kintarian sitting at comm to his far right or any of his forty-member, mostly human, crew. All were true Unionists, proud to be member races in the Galactic Union and unquestioningly behind their Chouncilor, elected leader of the Union, in all his decisions. Fennimore wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Why are we transporting these Korvies again?” Cal Edmunds, his human second-in-command asked as Fennimore settled into his seat. “I mean it’s so tiny a load from our usual drop off.”
“These are no-good slackers like all Korvies,” Fennimore hissed through his teeth. “Most of them are mind-movers. That’s why they’re being sent to Alorum’s Light, to whip their worthless asses into shape.”
The name Alorum’s Light cast a hush over the bridge. The Kintarian comm officer’s tawny fur stood on end. “The worst of the worst. The stories I’ve heard about that place,” he purred in accented Standard.
“Serves them right, H’Merioph!” Fennimore snapped. He then leaned in the Kintarian’s direction with an elbow propped on his chair’s armrest, readying to educate his crew as he had countless times in the past. “I’ve never trusted them Korvies, them with their mind tricks. We humans taking their planet was no less than they deserved after what they did to Earth….”
He didn’t miss how Cal Edmunds, H’Merioph and the other six bridge crewmembers all exchanged secret eye rolls amidst their duties. But Fennimore didn’t care. It didn’t take much to get him on an anti-Korvenite rant, to enlighten the non-humans with enough sense to listen.
“If it was up to me, I’d throw all those little blekdritts in carrier ships and send them directly into the Rhyne sun. That’d be a permanent solution to the mindraper problem.” Fennimore sucked in a deep breath and sank into his command seat, openly pleased with himself.
“Well,” Cal smoothed back his curly hair, eager to change the subject. “I’ll just be glad once this Union-Imperium merger is over with. It’s still over a month away, but you’d think the bleeding thing’s happening tomorrow with all the TransNet coverage they give it.”
“I think it’ll be graw-nd for the Union,” said Jolii Rayber, the other Ensign at helm, a coffee-brown human female with amethyst-colored eyes. Her brogue resembled a mashup of British and Australian accents. That always rankled Fennimore, as the drawl betrayed her non-Earth roots. Jolii had the misfortune of hailing from the Union memberworld Cercidale. Important xenobiology folks had long ago declared that the planet’s natives were ‘human,’ calling themselves Cercidaleans or Cercs. Due to Cercidale’s ubiquitous red mountains, mesas and canyons, they were also nicknamed ‘crimsonborn’ humans. Like how true humans from Earth are earthborn. Jolii was a solid officer, so Fennimore tried his damndest not to hold the non-Earth ancestry against her. “Cawn’t wayeet to see what the Kedri Imperium impoh-rts in,” the Cerc woman continued.
Fennimore snorted and idly scratched his paunch. He, of course, had an opinion on that, too. “Never trusted them Kedri warmongers. Never will. But I trust our Chouncilor to keep them in line.”
Cal snorted. “The Kedri aren’t some barbaric pre-stellar race, Nate. They’ve been a dominant hyperpower for over a millennium.” Fennimore, fuming at an inferior showing him up, leaned in to retort.
“Captain?”
Fennimore turned to the helm. Both human and Nnaxan ensigns had called, sounding puzzled. Cal’s browbeating would have to wait. “Go ahead.”
“Multiple projectiles just appeared alongside the Fennimore,” Jolii answered.
Fennimore frowned. “Onscreen.” The viewscreen switched from the space view to an outside diagram of the Fennimore. He saw a wire frame model of its long barrel-shaped body and the hammerhead rear housing the stellar drive engines, plus four small spheres appearing out of nowhere alongside the transport. One in front, another on port side, a third on starboard and the last one behind the engines. A jolt had run through Cal. He’d seen those before, used by asteroid miners. “Aren’t those—?”
“Z-BOMBS!” H’Merioph yowled. It was common knowledge that just one z-bomb could unleash a colossal seismic shock when triggered. With four of them appearing out of nowhere around Fennimore’s ship, the mood in the bridge instantly switched from casual to crisis mode.
“All hands brace for impact. Shie—” The words “Shields up” never made it out of Fennimore’s mouth. On the diagram, all four z-bombs exploded; each heaved out shock wave after escalating shock wave. And that was when his world turned upside down.
It was like a giant grabbed the Fennimore and shook the ship like a bowl of tossed salad. Captain Fennimore was thrown from his seat, smacking chest first on the unforgiving bridge floor. But he had no time to process the pain. The ship lurched repeatedly, hurled Fennimore and his crew into one another, and then slammed them against the walls. Sparks flew from blown consoles and damaged machinery.
Finally, after the longest three macroms of Fennimore’s life, the tremors stopped. He found himself sprawled in front of the helm. A sharp pain in his chest made it hard to breathe, but he managed to roll into a sitting position and survey his bridge. Smoke covered his vision, but not enough of it.
Bodies of his crew members were strewn all over the bridge, though none appeared dead. Sparks flew from the comm and Ops stations, both visibly wilted by the z-bomb assault. Oddly enough, the viewscreen stayed intact. Fennimore gritted his teeth, barely holding in a furious roar. Someone had attacked his ship, his pride, his joy. Whoever did this was going to pay!
“Damage report.” Fennimore wiped at a busted lip and fought up to one knee. No one answered immediately. He barked the words out again. “Damage report!”
“The weapons array and stellar drives are offline,” was Cal’s weak reply. He’d somehow ended up near comms, operating a diagnostic wall console at frenetic speed. “We also have minor hull fractures on the port side.”
The Nnaxan ensign crawled on all sixes back into his seat. Using his two right hands, he began operating the sections of his console not sparking or charred before he spoke. The craniowhisks branching out from his forehead and down his back twitched nervously. “Bioscans are picking up a sentient out there in space, barely fifty pentametrids in front of us. It’s alive and in good health.”
Of all things to divulge after his ship had been attacked, the stupid Nnaxan updates him on their attacker’s health. Fennimore studied him through narrowed eyes. “What is it, a betelydra, a c
entolydra?” This was pretty far off from any of those creatures’ roost of nebulas, but he figured it was worth a guess.
“No.” The ensign looked back at the captain, and cringed at having to say the words. “A Korvenite.”
[Your faith in our deity will be rewarded, Vantor.] The words boomed in Vantor’s head; calm, potent and beguiling. He opened his eyes and gazed around the cell. Yet every Korvenite in the dank little cell was restrained physically and psychically. Probably his imagination playing tricks from being in this cell too long. Vantor bowed his head again to continue his prayers to Korvan.
[There is no need for that, young one. Korvan has answered your prayers for freedom.]
Vantor shrieked, and would have jumped two metrids in the air if not for the shackles that held him. For a nanoclic, he thought he had lost it…until he saw the faces of Cymae, Rouma and every other Korvenite in the cell. They all wore the same disbelief that he felt. Rouma in particular looked as if he had heard a ghost. “[You all heard that voice in your head?]” Vantor frowned, not believing he said that. With all the restraining bolts in their heads, no Korvenite in captivity could use Mindspeak.
[I am free, as will all of you be,] the voice replied through Mindspeak. Vantor gasped. The gravity of this drilled him in the stomach. A free Korvenite with all his Korvan-given abilities.
“[It can’t…be,]” Rouma breathed, his haggard face wrought with fear and disbelief.
“[Who, Rouma?]” Khasos demanded in a panicky manner. His eyes darted from Rouma to Vantor. “[Who is speaking in our heads?]”
Rouma said nothing, his gaze glassy and distant.
[Maelstrom, ordained llyriac to the Way, Korvan’s Anointed herald,] the voice boomed again. [Rouma was once a most loyal follower until his capture three years ago. But he and all of you will no longer know prison walls or mistreatment. In the name of the Korvenite Deity, I will liberate you.]