The Joining: The Saga of the Shards Book One (The Cycle of the Shards 1)

by Chris Stephenson

  Not knowing what to expect, his breath was still taken away by the sight that awaited him when he exited the cavern. The Katron ice fields had formed in such a way that in their center there was simply a hollowed out sphere, completely constructed of ice but allowing for plenty of space on the inside. He knew that the purpose and reason for this sphere was not for him to know, and he didn't care. For all he knew, it was made just for him to hide within. Critock would look forever for him out there. Let him freeze, let him burn for all he cared. He would wait it out in here for a few days, maybe longer if this ship carried any supplies. He had called the fields the perfect hiding place, never knowing just how true it was. So he sat, powering down his vessel to where only life-support would sustain him, this time not needing any communications. Let those that would control him burn with the rest of time. He had the Shards, soon enough he would be invincible! For once, it would be his leader bowing to him! Yes, the universe would bow to Pt'ron, and Pt'ron would bow to no one!

  Lost in his fantasy of domination, he caught a face out of the corner of his eye and jumped, almost firing a shot before relaxing at the sight of his own reflection. Looking back in the opposite direction he saw himself again, and as he glanced around the sheer ice crystals that formed this sphere he realized that he was surrounded by identical ships and identical faces staring out of identical cockpits. He was not alone in here, not anymore.

  The reflections took on a dark, accusatory look, glaring their hatred at him. He squinted and tried to shake it off. Surely this was just a delusion. He had no doubt that the intensity of the past few days had made him slightly insane, but he was not crazy, he knew that much. A little megalomaniacal, maybe, but who wasn't? And if he wasn't crazy...

  The faces continued their ceaseless stare. Their eyes burned into him angrily, hatred seeming to exude from their pupils. They did not blink, they did not tire. And in Pt'ron's head, they began to speak. Not just speak, but to yell, spit, and rage against him, against everything that he had done or would do. They attempted to convince him of his evil, how his actions had doomed entire worlds. Entire civilizations...and her. Blinking once, he saw her face in a reflection. He rubbed his eyes. Surely this could not be happening! But indeed to him it was, and all of the faces seemed to morph into the face of his love. His dead love. Dead because of Critock, of course...But why was she accusing him? Why did she call him a murderer? Why was she now asking why he killed her, after all they had been through together? She, Critock and himself, once all together in friendship and in war...and now it had all come to this. A togetherness forged by fate and conflict that led to a deeper bonding on the battlefields of the war, a war that she now blamed on him! And now she was gone, and the two remaining friends now hunting each other across the stars.

  "No..." He muttered silently. "It wasn't me. It wasn't my fault...He did this..." He repeated the words, but her face remained constant, her voice ringing in his ears. "NO! HE DID THIS!" No change, only her stare. He had had enough, all reason and sanity had left him. This wasn't her, this was just another trick, undoubtedly designed by Critock himself. And so there was only one way to deal with this. Screaming at the face, he began firing his cutting lasers into the sides of the sphere, and they seared through the surprisingly thin walls as a knife cuts through butter. In an instant, the sphere began to collapse inward. Pt'ron had a brief instant of triumph as her face disappeared into the crashing ice, only to realize his folly. He turned his ship around and accelerated quickly, but not quick enough as the sphere collapsed upon him, shards and crystals raining down upon his small ship.

  Critock could not miss the destruction of the sphere, though it had initially escaped his attention since from his view it appeared to be solid. He paused his increasingly fruitless search to watch the top half begin to fall, causing the flimsy shell to explode outward in a blaze of small ice shards. The shrapnel bounced harmlessly off Critock's shields, and once the threat seemed to have passed, he decided to risk a closer look.

  What he saw didn't surprise him as much as it probably should have. There floated Pt'ron's ship, battered by the ice, and completely defenseless. He put his finger on the trigger as he watched a bloodied Pt'ron struggle with the controls, and watched as he came to realize that Critock's eyes were upon him, and this time there was no escape.

  It seemed so simple to Critock that after everything that had happened, the only thing he had to do was send one simple stream of fire, and it all would be over. It didn't seem fair, really, considering all the suffering that Pt'ron had caused him, to say nothing of the atrocities that he inflicted on the rest of the universe in the name of the Shards and of his Mistress. The idea came to him then, a vengeful, even evil idea. After everything he had gone through to get to this point, he found that he didn't care about the consequences. In a haze of righteous fury, Critock switched his firing controls. No longer would he be sending Pt'ron to his death quickly. But neither would he capture his foe and take him back to 'the proper authorities'. No, this would be true justice, not something as simple as a painless flash of light and fire. He depressed the firing trigger as he stared at Pt'ron, his face emotionless.

  The silver steam surged out of the military ship, striking Pt'ron's vessel on the back end. In seconds, where it had hit was completely frozen over, and it was spreading. Ice was forming on the interior where Pt'ron was now pounding uselessly on the windows. But it was too late for him. The ice had now reached Pt'ron's leg, and in an instant it spread across his body to his other one. The only thing he could move now was his head, and he looked up, shaken by fear and rage, as the ice crawled across it. His entire body sat frozen, covered by ice and extreme cold. The weapon that Critock had used was an experimental device meant to temporarily place it's victim in a state of suspended animation, brought on by a state of being essentially flash-frozen. In anything but the cold vacuum of space, it only lasted mere moments, long enough to subdue whomever it struck. The weapon was rare, and Critock was lucky enough to have chosen a ship which had the prototype installed. In later times, it would be banned by peace accords due to long term suspended animation causing madness. Here and now, Critock had just tested it out on his enemy, and it worked. Pt'ron would float forever as one of the crystals, the cold of space keeping him infinitely locked. Critock hoped that Pt'ron was not truly unconscious. He wished for his mind to stay awake, locked in a hell unlike any other Critock could imagine. He watched him float away, the silent look of perpetual pleading in Pt'ron's eyes fading as the ship became smaller, and soon indistinguishable from any other ice shard. If Pt'ron was lucky, he would strike another crystal and be annihilated. As Critock maneuvered his vessel to exit the ice field, taking as much care as he could to not end up destroyed himself, he prayed that Pt'ron would be unlucky, very unlucky indeed.

  As the war closed, much of the historical records dealt with the rebuilding of the great alliances and federations and councils. Marconia reasserted itself as the central governing power, and the Qua'roti reigned.

  Critock was stripped of his service record and rank due to depriving the Government the Shards, and in the interim little was known about him, other than that he turned his back on Marconia and their rulers, some would say rightly so.

  The Katron ice fields were searched lightly for Pt'ron's body, and more importantly the Shards, but nothing was ever recovered. The danger of the ice was bad enough when you knew what you were looking for, but when your target is identical to everything else around you, the recovery operations proved to be truly impossible. Despite the promise of the greatest power in the universe hidden in plain sight, after a few cycles Pt'ron was officially listed as deceased, and the matter of the great war was put to rest at last. It was assumed that he was likely killed within the fields soon after entering the suspended state.

  The fields themselves moved through space as they always had, pulled by the solar winds and gravity pockets. Eventually a small portion fell through a wormhole. This was documented by a survey team,
but no more was noted of this. Later, much much later, it was discovered that the portion of the fields had emerged in a small galaxy several million light-years away, where only one planet supported life, and even then it was undeveloped life, unable to detect the fields or approach them. Again, it was documented but deemed unimportant.

  If it had been truly unimportant, this would be where the tale would end. Instead, this is where it would begin. While the life there was undeveloped, they and their planet would prove to be more important than anyone could have foreseen.

  To the local time customs of this planet, just over two thousand years had passed since the end of the War of the Shards.

  The inhabitants, uncultured and undeveloped as they were, simply called their planet:

  Earth.

  NOW

  2

  The incessant buzzing of the alarm clock had been unnecessary on this early Monday morning, as the boy laid awake after a fitful night's sleep. It wasn't that he was dreading the day exactly, it was just that he would rather be absolutely anywhere else than where he had to go.

  As he did most weekday mornings, he briefly mulled over the options before him. Namely, if he chose not to participate in the rituals of daily life, and instead just hid in his bed. Unfortunately, it was not even realistic enough of an idea to waste time creating a fantasy about. Any insubordination would only be short lived, and the punishment not worth the crime. So with the lack of sleep still attempting to hold him down to the bed, Kyle Edison sat up with a heavy sigh.

  He sat, his mind pulling him in every direction but to his feet. Would this week be any different? Would the busywork forced upon him daily lighten? Would he be forced into some kind of team exercise? Would he have a actual conversation with anyone that didn't involve the answers to a test that he was not prepared for? Would anything happen that would actually matter?

  As he swung his feet to the floor, and with a grunt stood up to begin the short walk to the bathroom, he tried to psych himself up for the day and the week ahead. The school year had just started, after all. It was barely fall. He had plenty of time to make up for lost time and do better. He really wanted to do better, but when the time came to act on that desire, it just didn't seem like it was worth the effort. He and the mediocre C average he carried continued through the morning routine, finishing with wiping the steam from the shower off of the bathroom mirror and looking at himself in the glass. The barely controllable brown hair on his head was just another obstacle as he began to comb it down from a total disaster to a presentable one. There was a slight pimple forming, not enough to care about at this point, yet later he was sure he would look at it with anger. Blue eyes looked back at him with a pleading look, wondering why he was being put through this.

  He dressed as slowly as he dared, just jeans and an unimpressive t-shirt. Unimpressive was a word that seemed to follow him like a cloud in the air. He trudged to the kitchen, glancing at the hanging clock on the wall. Despite his grumbling stomach, and the constant reminders from old commercials in his head telling him how important the first meal of the day was, he knew he didn't have time to eat anything substantial. Not that there was an overabundance of food in the house. Hopefully his dad would find time to get to the store soon, but with his constant work he knew that was unlikely. It wasn't anything Kyle minded, as he did like the solitude, only seeing his father a few times a week. Kyle didn't blame his father. Glancing at the picture of his mother on the living room wall as he grabbed an apple, he wondered how it would be different if she had been around.

  Taking a large bite, he slung his backpack around his shoulders. Its bulk from the three schoolbooks weighed him down just as much as the weight of the day upon him. He sighed one more time as he slipped his white non-descript tennis shoes on, and glanced around, willing a distraction to appear. Or a comet to wipe out the Earth sometime in the next five seconds. When neither happened, he turned to the front door and stepped outside.

  The walk from his house to his school was short, roughly ten minutes. Convenient on the way home, but on the way there he wished it was much, much longer. Still, when he was in grade school he was bussed several miles, and that was as good as torture at times too. At least if he wanted to speed up the journey, he could jog or run across the large field. On a bus, he was under the control of the driver. If there was one thing he hated, it was having his freedom to move around at his own pace controlled by anyone else. So at least that was behind him.

  As he crossed the field to the main sidewalk leading to the high school, he saw others walking along. Few others crossed the field, despite it being a more direct path and at least allowing other distractions from the nearby wooded area. That was one reason Kyle liked it, he was typically the only one there. He wasn't trying to be non-conformist, he just appreciated the silence, which lessened more and more as he got closer to the school and the random discussions and yelling between his schoolmates. As he got to the point where he was forced to walk on the same path as others, he paced himself purposefully to not be too close to anyone. He wasn't intentionally anti-social, he just didn't want to be bothered nor bother anyone else. It probably wouldn't have been an issue in either way, as he didn't think anyone on the walk cared he was there at all.

  As he got closer he recognized more and more faces, yet most names didn't come to him. He saw the embittered science teacher Mr. Phelps, trying to present a face of authority to the arriving students, though it appeared he only was making himself a target to comments whispered under the breath of those he was enforcing the multitude of rules upon. There was Jim McClane, who was a friend in the sense that they could commiserate on shared dislikes of teachers, but Kyle never talked about too much more than that with him, and like essentially everyone here he didn't see Jim outside of the school. Just one of a few people he felt safe enough around to sit at the same table as at lunchtime. He was next to Claire, Jim's slightly younger sister, who appeared to be annoying him on some topic or another. That was not a new thing. There was Daniel, a friend not as 'close' as Jim but they still nodded to each other. Daniel had been in and out of school in earlier years but had straightened himself up as they entered Freshman year at the same time. A few others, but as usual nobody he would be interested in speaking with even if there had been time. He strained his head around to look for the one person he actually wanted to see, to no avail. He did see someone he absolutely wanted to avoid, the orange haired Brian Boyd. Like Kyle, Brian was a sophomore, but one that had been held back a few times throughout his long school career. He had known of Brian through the years, and without knowing why, had become a target for his collection of similarly undereducated fellows. Apparently just the simple act of wanting to be left alone was enough to open him up for whatever creative ways they could get away with to make him or whoever their target was that day miserable. He quickly jogged inside before he was noticed.

  As he entered and headed down the hall to his locker, he saw exactly who he was wanting to see, someone whose very presence made him forget where he was going and what he was doing. Shanna Ewing. The thought of her made Kyle forget his locker combination. Red hair, green eyes, and today dressed rather demurely, though that didn't matter to him at all. She moved towards him, and for a moment a fear arose in him. Would she speak to him? What would he say back? Could he say anything? His inherent anti-socialness vanished as his demeanor completely changed. She smiled at him, and began to speak...

  ...To the girl behind him. As she passed out of sight, thankfully unaware that Kyle had nearly had a heart attack over just the thought of a conversation that didn't involve homework or something equally mundane, he let out a heavy sigh and continued to his locker, hoping that would be the most exciting thing that happened to him today.

  He moved past the steps in the main foyer, a main feature alongside the chandelier in what Kyle considered to be an extravagance considering every year there would be ads on the television and on the front yards begging for more money for schools,
and headed down the left hallway. There he found his locker amongst the sea of humanity that filled the halls. The five minute bell rang as he fumbled through the combination, and the crowds thinned around him. He quickly grabbed the first few books he needed, weighing him down even more, and walked quickly to his first 'class'.

  The first part of the day Kyle was weighed down by what seemed to be make-work. From Homeroom, to Pre-Algebra (Brilliant scheduling he thought, to put one of the driest classes taught by the driest teachers in the part of the morning where people would pay the least attention) , to History (Slightly more interesting, and the part where he was finally waking up on most days), to Science, he moved slowly through the day just as he had any others. He had more than a passing interest in science, at the very least due to the attempts from Mr. Phelps to get his students to show the same interest he did. He would frequently, once a week or so, go off in a session-long tangent about the advances in science, the intricacies of space and planets and everything involved with traveling there, and the disappointment that despite how far we've come we have not made it even farther. It did lighten up the day somewhat when the alternative was solving problems or memorizing facts from a text book.

  When Science had ended, it was lunch. He tried to blend in with his classmates, hoping that as part of the larger group he would go unnoticed. As in most days, this tactic did not work. As he stood quietly in the lunch line, attempting to make himself as small as possible, he suddenly was pushed slightly but firmly from behind, and heard the dreaded voice of Brian Boyd.