Provoked (Space Mage Book 1)

by Izzy Shows

  I didn't know anything about the cord, and for all I knew, it could be leading me to worse pain.

  No, I didn't want to follow, didn't want to—

  And then there was a sensation of boots striking the ground—what ground?—as if someone had just arrived and had planted their feet firmly on the floor.

  Pain rippled through me, spiking into my mind like a shard of glass.

  And that's when they came: the memories, like a flood.

  This pain I had been living with was but a pale imitation of what I had endured.

  My eyes burned with the power of Vivoth, my god, the god of light and life and all that was good. He was the hope in the hearts of the people, he was the breath of life in a newborn’s lungs, he was everything. He had Chosen me, given me His powers, but it had not been a kindness. It had been necessary to save my people from the threat.

  "YOU WILL DO ALL IN MY POWER."

  His words, the sound of nature in its rawest form, rocked through me as I remembered the moment he had imbued me, fueling my body with the power of a thousand exploding stars. It had rushed through my mind and body, burning a path through my veins and shocking every nerve ending I had, and had left me confounded by the immense pleasure the sensation had given me.

  There was no euphoria that could be compared to the power of a god, and that was what I had now.

  Every step I took, every breath I pulled in, every motion of my hands, it was all with the power of Vivoth in me. I could move mountains. I could bring a nation to its knees, or save it from destruction. I was Everything.

  But I would have traded it all away, given it up without a moment of hesitation, if it meant I didn't have to do what was necessary.

  Zvarr.

  I scented him in the air before he reached the High Temple, and felt the hatred rolling off of him in waves. The desire for violence, the need to hurt and pillage—it was overwhelming.

  My brother, my twin, what happened to you?

  The fight, oh god, the fight was so terrible. I had never known anything worse than that battle to the death with my twin. He was a piece of my soul, my other half. How could I be expected to harm him?

  I wanted with every inch of my soul to find a peaceful resolution, but I knew there was none. I knew my brother would never give up the path of war he had set himself on, and he proved that with the bloodthirsty way he came at me, carving through the air with his sword as he must have wanted to carve through my body.

  He would destroy me in order to get through me to the people I protected.

  He did not feel the familial loyalty that stayed my hand when I should have fought harder.

  I hadn't been strong enough, hadn't been willing to do what needed to be done.

  Vivoth had been wrong in choosing me. There had to be a better vessel, because I was a failure.

  I had failed him, just as I had failed my people, my fellow Stryxians, and all those native to my beautiful world, Eyrus. Because I could not raise my hand against my brother, not in truth, not with the intent to kill, I had sentenced them all to death.

  But I had tried! I had tried so hard to stop it from happening.

  The plan had been a good one, hadn't it?

  I had bound us together, spoken the words that tied his soul to mine, so that what happened to me should happen to him as well. He would feel every blow my body took, but more importantly, he would be forced to endure what I endured.

  And I chose to endure the sealing.

  I plunged my body to the core of the planet, burying myself alive, and dragged him down with me. I knew not where he was buried, for he had fled from me when I began, but I knew he had been taken too.

  But it had been too late.

  Yes, I remembered now.

  I remembered the moment just before my eyes closed, before the darkness took me, when the cries of my people had thundered through my body as their lives were stolen from them.

  NO.

  No, no, no!

  It couldn't be true.

  The memory rushed through me again and again, playing across the insides of my eyelids like some horrible vid I couldn't figure out how to turn off. But it wasn't a movie, because I wasn't just seeing the fight with my brother, my beloved twin Zvarr; I was feeling everything that had happened.

  And every time it got to the end, every time it replayed the moment when I had felt the pain of a thousand nations at once, it was as if the pain doubled over and over.

  I knew who I was now.

  I was Xiva Moraio, High Priestess of the Aelodhari, leader of the Stryx.

  And I was the reason they were all dead.

  Because I had not been able to do what needed to be done, I had condemned them to death.

  A broken sob tore its way from my throat and I shook my head violently, trying to hide from the memory, from the pain that came with it.

  Oh, gods, if only I could go back to before the memory had taken me, when it was just the pale memory of pain that had taken hold of me. I would give up these memories in an instant. I would forget who I was, if only I could.

  It made sense now, why the gods had not answered my prayers when I begged them to take this from me. I had pleaded, prayed, begged, cajoled, but they had turned a deaf ear to me.

  It made so much sense.

  This was the punishment they had devised for me, that so long as I was locked in the ground, I would feel the pain over and over again.

  But Vivoth was merciful, and he had taken some of the pain from me.

  He hadn't forced the worst of it on me.

  Still, it wouldn't go away. It was worse than it ever could have been, pouring through me again and again, and I felt the floodgates drop.

  There was no point in trying to hold it in. There was no one there to hear it.

  I let the barriers in my mind fall, the mental walls that caged my thoughts and feelings so that no one could read my mind, and let the pain thunder out of me with a violent roar.

  It was greedy, seeking out anyone it could find to heap the pain onto them as well.

  There is no one. I am alone. Everyone is dead. Let the pain flow freely.

  Numbly, I thought of how there was no one to hear my pain, to know what I had endured, and perhaps that was good.

  Perhaps it was necessary that I bear this burden alone.

  I closed my eyes, tears leaking from them, and succumbed to the pain.

  Kaidan

  My breath came in harsh, ragged gasps as I trudged through the sand, and my vision started to blur.

  It had been several hours since I had set out from the base, and it felt like there was never going to be an end to my return trip. I was built for most any kind of terrain—the fucking scientists had seen to that—but trudging through sand that my legs sank into up to the knee wasn't something I had trained for very often.

  Yeah, I'd gone through swamps and mud before, but this sand? And for this long?

  Nah, not quite.

  I wasn't used to it, but I figured I would adapt soon enough. I had to, otherwise the lot of us weren't going to last too long out here.

  You should talk to some of those scientists about having special shoes built. Like fucking snowshoes. I bet that would help to stay on top of the sand. The nanobots can do it, no problem.

  I would say something as soon as I got back to base.

  If I got back.

  No, fuck that kind of thinking. I was going to get back, no doubt about it. I had been through too much to go out as a victim of two suns and a desert planet. This wasn't the death I had been wanting—I wanted to go out in battle, with my blood pumping while I fought for my life.

  That was an honorable death, and that was what I wanted.

  At long last, the base came into view, its form trembling in the haze of the sun, but it slowly got more and more firm the closer I got to it. It was basically a series of interconnected domes, with what looked like tunnels running from one to the next.

  I had definitely been gone for a
long time if they had the base built already, but that was good. That meant I wasn't going to have to stand around in the sand while we waited for it to get finished.

  Finding the entryway wasn't terribly difficult, and I punched the call button as soon as I got up to it.

  "Name." A robotic voice came from a speaker directly above the call button.

  "Kaidan Norton," I said, trying not to let my irritation show.

  This was an uninhabited planet, so they said, so why did they need these security measures? It wasn't like some alien was going to come waltzing up to the base and demand entry.

  Hell, even if the planet was inhabited, I doubted that would ever happen. Natives were always rather skittish about off-worlders, particularly when it came to natives on a planet that didn't see any kind of intergalactic trade. And if this place was inhabited, it definitely fit that bill.

  No one knew about anyone living on it, so any potential natives wouldn't know what to do with us.

  Stop thinking like that. There are no natives. There's nothing but endless sand on this fucking rock.

  The doors buzzed open with a loud whoosh as the oxygen was sucked out of the airlock. I stepped inside, and the doors closed, and then the sound of air filling the room hit my ears.

  I waited until it stopped, then I took off my oxygen mask and breathed the artificial air for the first time.

  It wasn't as pleasant as it could have been, but, hell, I didn't know what normal air tasted like. No one did, not anymore.

  Earth was so polluted, you could barely see when you stepped out of your house, unless you lived in the upper cities. They had artificial air, purified by the scientists so that they could all breathe easy without any fear of contaminants.

  Fuck the poor, right?

  Yeah, all right, I had a chip on my shoulder when it came to the rich bitches and the scientists and politicians and all that, but you show me a grunt who doesn't have one and I'll be mighty surprised. That was just the way the world worked—no one had much love for those who took what they wanted without taking care of the people who needed it most.

  Not that I was looking for a handout, but I had a real problem with the type of person who was OK watching an innocent kid choke to death on toxic fumes just because he was born into the wrong family.

  A buzz sounded, alerting me to the fact that the inner doors had opened and I now had access to the base.

  I walked through, taking in the sight of the newly created base, to get my bearings.

  It was all steel, ugly metal walls and flooring, no touch of home about it at all. But that was normal, expected, even. You didn't come on these kinds of missions expecting any kind of homey feel from the place you lived in. The scientists might have liked the luxuries of home, but there was only so much the nanobots could do.

  I walked down the first tunnel, my boots clanking against the steel floor with every step I took. There were signs at every intersection, pointing the way to the mess hall, the latrines, the barracks, the sleeping quarters for the various parts of the crew. Every which way you might need to go, there was a sign telling you how to get there.

  I followed the signs to get to the barracks and then found the door that had my name on it. I was bunking with Zarek, which wasn't a big surprise, but he wasn't here right now.

  I didn't know where my men were, but I was sure they were either doing what needed to be done, or they'd been given leave to kick back for a few hours now that we were here and it was time for the scientists to take over and get to work.

  That was what I wanted to do, now that I was back on base, after the hellish time I'd had slogging through that sand.

  I stripped out of my tech suit, which left me in my fatigue pants and a khaki t-shirt, but I made sure to strap a blaster to my thigh. I didn't care where I was, who I was with, or how safe it was supposed to be. I didn't go anywhere without at least one weapon.

  Or two, depending on how you looked at it. I was a weapon in my own right, but having a long-range weapon was always a good thing.

  Just as I was starting to think about where I needed to report to find out if I was needed for anything, the comm unit near the door buzzed.

  I punched a button, and a face appeared on the screen—that kid, the shrink.

  "Kaidan! Pleasure to see you again. I hope you had a pleasant trip around 71 Charos B while you were out," he said with a bright smile.

  "It wasn't a pleasure trip," I growled. "I was scouting."

  His smile faltered, but only for a second. "Yes, yes, of course. And I want to hear all about it. Please, report for your debrief."

  A growl rumbled through my chest, but I pushed it down. No need to scare the kid, and it wasn't really his fault I had to report for a debrief.

  I didn't want to deal with this right now, didn't feel like I had the time for it—even if I was the sort of man who didn't mind having a shrink tear through every corner of my mind.

  There was that feeling, the pull of the planet, and the sense that there was something dangerous here—a feeling that wouldn't leave me alone, and I wanted to explore it, figure out where it was coming from and what needed to be done to get it to go away.

  I couldn't do that if a shrink was poring through my head, but there wasn't anything to be done about that.

  Orders are orders, and I always followed my orders.

  "Be there in five," I said, and punched the button to end the call without waiting for the kid to respond.

  He would figure out how I played soon enough, and maybe that would put an end to his annoying chipper attitude.

  No one had the right to be as happy as he was.

  I stalked out of the room and through the tunnels again, following the signs to get to the offices. Walter probably wasn't going to be in a lab, if I had to guess; he would have a cushy little office to do all of his reports in. The other offices belonged to the top-tier scientists, for them to keep track of everything they did.

  It didn't take me long to get there, and no time at all to find Walter's office.

  I rapped my knuckles against the steel door twice, and it swung open immediately.

  "Fantastic! You truly are quite punctual. Thank you," he said, beaming at me.

  The kid didn't even clear my shoulder—but that wasn't as much a comment on how short he was as it was a comment on how tall I was. I had always been a big guy, and that had only gotten worse after they mutated my genes. I was pushing seven feet at this point, and I had the muscle definition to fill out my frame.

  Walter, on the other hand, was an average guy with a wiry frame. Not much meat on him, and he had sandy brown hair that kept falling into his eyes no matter how many times he tried to push it back. Brown eyes that were obscured by Coke-bottle-bottom glasses, too.

  I arched an eyebrow, looking down at him. "I'm a soldier. We're always punctual."

  "Yes, of course, forgive me," he said, taking a step back and ushering me into the small room.

  I stepped past him, having to turn to the side so I didn't shoulder-check him, and looked around. It was a very clinical room—two chairs in front of a basic desk with a computer and a pad of paper and a pen sitting on it. There was a filing cabinet in the corner behind the desk, and that was about it. No decorations, of course, because who had space for that on the ship?

  This base wasn't built for comfort. It was built for work.

  He edged around me and took his seat at the desk, settled in and took up the pad of paper and the pen.

  Interesting. I would've figured a young kid like him would be all over the computer, and would only rely on pen and paper if the thing went down for a bit.

  "All right, let's get down to it."

  An uneasy feeling settled in my gut, but I tried to push it away.

  I hated scientists, doctors, whatever—all of them, hated them with every fiber of my being. It might not have been shrinks who had screwed around with my genes, but Walter wasn't just a shrink, and the lot of them were all the same in my head. The
y wanted to reach inside of you and screw and screw until they got what they wanted out of you.

  That wasn't my idea of a good time, and I wished I could get out of here.

  That I could bypass this part of the process, go about my business, and forget I had ever seen him.

  What use were shrinks, anyway?

  A shrink wasn't going to help me get over the fact that there was nothing in the universe for me. He sure as hell wasn't going to get me over any of the shit I'd witnessed in my time as a Raider. He definitely wasn't going to get me over my mom.

  A shudder passed through me at the thought of sharing any of that with another human being, let alone one like him.

  "Kaidan?"

  "What?"

  "You seemed to drift away for a moment, there," he said with a concerned look on his face.

  Probably manufactured concern. The kid didn't know how to care about anyone. None of the docs ever did.

  "It's been a long day," I said. "The suns are pretty hot out there, and the sand's not very forgiving. If we could come back to this later, in fact, that would be great."

  "Oh, no, I'm sorry, but that's not possible. Really, we should have done this as soon as the base was up and functional, but, well…you were gone. But don't worry, I don't need to make a note of that—it's really not that big of a deal that we're late, and I wouldn't want to get you into trouble."

  I narrowed my eyes as I regarded him, not sure what to make of him.

  "So, let's start with the trip here, shall we? I'll need to know everything you observed while we were in stasis."

  "There wasn't a lot to observe," I said, falling into a more comfortable rhythm. I could tell him anything he wanted to know about the trip to 71 Charos B, that was no problem at all. It didn't have shit to do with me. "It was your average trip. Nothing of note happened."

  "You didn't find any of it interesting?" He frowned. "It had to be quite exciting, watching the universe go by around you."

  I arched an eyebrow. "Interesting?"

  "Well, yes. I wish I could have seen it myself. The view of the planets on the vid screen had to be tremendous, and the stars… I can't imagine getting to see the stars so close like that."