Star Angel: Awakening (Star Angel Book 1)

by David G. McDaniel

  No Zac.

  No anyone.

  She was alone.

  Totally, alone.

  “ZAC!!” she went hoarse; began coughing.

  “ZAC!!” she nearly yaked, frustrated with her limitations, coughing harder, unable to do more. Coughing led to tears and, as the coughing subsided, quiet sobs.

  “Zac,” she cried, standing alone in the wide, open clearing beneath the clear blue sky. Like a frightened child. Terrified, tears stinging her eyes.

  All alone.

  * *

  Satori hunkered with several of her fellow commanders at a secure point on the forward line of battle. The sounds of conflict battered the air but in their small bunker was measured calm. Information came in through various sources—screens, radio reports—all while the commanders made plans. Satori welcomed the respite, though the atmosphere was grim.

  “We’ve been too long at this,” said one of them.

  “We’re not even close to meeting our objective,” another pointed out. “No supply lines, no way out. We put this whole thing together as a contingency. This is our last shot.”

  Just then a soldier rushed into the bunker area, dusty and sweaty from the melee outside.

  “Airships are returning,” he reported. “They were just spotted over the Eastern front. Heading for the Imperial Compound.”

  One of the commanders checked with an operator, who in turn began confirming information.

  “It’s the Shogun’s flagship,” the operator reported. “And Kang. They’ve apparently found Horus.” He continued checking information.

  “Great,” Satori stood, preparing to go back into battle. “This is only getting better.”

  * *

  Ashikagi watched out the forward windows of his flagship, from his airborne throne as the pilot flew them in majestically over the Eastern edge of the city. The Tower of Light rose ahead, Vivitak and the seat of the Holy Emperor not far beyond that. Together the twin, monumental buildings towered within the walls of the Imperial Compound. He took a moment to admire the impressive scene. Walls within walls, the Compound heavily fortified, built inside the great city of Osaka, which was itself a fortress. In the heart of the Dominion, seat of the greatest military on Anitra.

  Only, the city was under attack.

  He suffered a glance in that direction, catching a glimpse of the combat on the vast fields outside the Western walls, before putting his attention back where it belonged. Even deigning to look at the intruders was more than he could bear. They deserved nothing but the destruction that would soon be theirs.

  And to have made a strike against the Icon itself! Using one of his holiest warriors!

  That was nearly too much.

  A technician got his attention. “Kang requests audience, lord.”

  Ashikagi cleared his head. “Put him through.”

  An instant later a hologram of Kang appeared.

  “What about the girl, Lord?” his Kazerai asked as soon as his image resolved. Kang, ever ready, ever focused, stood respectfully in the hologram, arms behind his back. His own ship followed closely behind Ashikagi’s.

  “She is of no consequence.” Ashikagi could see this was in danger of becoming a point of contention.

  “But,” Kang persisted, “she was with Horus. If—”

  “Our duty is here,” Ashikagi cut short his imminent speculation. Kang was fiercely loyal but prone to frustratingly independent thought. “A search party has been sent.” It hadn’t, not yet, but Ashikagi determined to do it now. To cover that piece of the puzzle.

  “I should conduct the search,” Kang decided, dangerously close to taking matters into his own hands.

  “No.” Ashikagi let his Kazerai’s insolence pass; softened his tone. “In your comrade’s absence,” and he looked pointedly at Horus, who stood in an alcove to the side of the command area, bathed in the soft violet glow of the Raza energy, “you’re needed in battle. When we return you will prepare yourself to engage.”

  Reluctantly Kang accepted that, nodded and signed off. Ashikagi let the moment pass, gaze lingering on the belligerent Horus.

  Troubled that the eyes of his greatest Kazerai still burned with such hate.

  CHAPTER 16: HOUSE OF THE WITCH

  Jess stumbled aimlessly down the hill, weaving among the trees. Panic surged then ebbed as she reminded herself for the thousandth time there was nothing she could do. Freaking out wouldn’t solve anything. Right then she had to keep trying to find a way out. Keep trying to find her way back down the hill to the car. The importance of that effort fought valiantly with the impulse to scream. And so she struggled heroically with the irrational terror.

  In most respects it was a losing battle.

  Exhausted she caught herself yet again, tripping on yet another root, stubbing toes she didn’t think could suffer any more abuse and, for the moment, at least, decided that was it. She flopped to the ground. All the way, rolling to her back to stare up through the alien branches.

  For many long moments she just lay there. Looking up through the dense forest canopy, slices of blue sky high overhead. Breathing. Mind a million miles away. Thinking back to the occasional camping trip with her father, weekends spent “roughing it”, realizing just how little those outings prepared her for the challenge she now faced. No matter how “rough” it ever got, there were always connections to civilization. Always preparations that covered their basic needs. She was smack in the middle of nowhere with absolutely nothing.

  It couldn’t get any rougher.

  Slowly the sounds of the forest began to impinge; sounds that had been lost behind the shuffle of her rush through the gnarled underbrush and the dull roar of fear in her ears. The roar was still there, but now all else was quiet. Birds flitted through the trees. She caught sight of a few, having mostly missed them before. Glimpses. Small animals scurrying in the branches. Not unlike a forest of Earth, she thought, with green plant life and various creatures at work. Different, but not radically so. Pretty much exactly like Earth.

  So far no giant spiders.

  Absently she wondered if there were giant spiders. Larger predators. Did this world’s version of a bear stalk the woods?

  Were there monsters?

  The thought of that got her moving. She staggered back to her feet, hardly having laid there more than a minute, wobbled from fatigue but got going again, aiming herself back down the hill.

  Determined to make it home.

  She had to find the device. That was the only way. Earlier, numb from the violence of Zac’s capture, once she’d stopped crying she simply started down the hill, slowly at first, then faster, toward the car, their last plan of contingency. Last night Zac ran them up in a more or less straight line. At least, that was her impression of the wild run through the dark. And so she’d been trying to descend as directly as possible. Hoping to find the car, or at least the road back to the city. Home of the enemy, that much now seemed certain, but it was the only choice. That was where they lost the device. Not only that, it was probably where the bad guys took Zac.

  He wasn’t coming back.

  The woods kept closing in. She’d passed no more clearings, no more streams—no more anything to break up the landscape. Instinctively she knew the road would be at the bottom. Should be. All she had to do was continue down, but …

  It seemed like she’d been walking for hours.

  Snippets of survival training, words spoken by her father, flitted at the edges of her recollection. The smartest thing would’ve been to follow the rippling brook to a river or lake and, hopefully, more tributaries, heading eventually to civilization. But she’d run too far from their camp and the creek. There was no way she could find it again. No way she was going back, even if she could.

  The sun was setting. Soon it would be night. If she was scared now she could only imagine her fear of the woods in the dark.

  She had to make the road before nightfall.

  With renewed determination she continued. F
aster. Down and down. Dirty, exhausted, numb to the little pains; thinking how low she’d sunk. By now she was absolutely beat up; a true wild girl. Completely out of the blue she thought of Bianca. Her friend would long since have had a nervous breakdown. It was like Zac said, an average person would probably be in shock. Somehow she wasn’t. Somehow she was forging on. In fact, the thought of Bianca being there now, covered in the same grime after a night in the woods, no shower, no makeup, ruined clothes, actually made her laugh, and the sound of it startled her. In response she laughed again, louder this time, forcing it a little, no real humor in it yet it felt good. The woods seemed to grow quiet in witness of it.

  She tried to hold to that fleeting, positive feeling.

  Then a deep rumble in the sky and she froze. Images of the giant airships sprang to mind, a shot of ice gripping her heart. But as the low bass thundered and subsided, erratically shaking the ground, she realized it wasn’t one of the enemy craft.

  Great.

  In addition to everything else she was about to get rained on.

  * *

  The sun had not yet set but already the sky grew dark. Thunder rumbled. A distant force, barely perceptible through the thick walls of the Tower of Light, but there was power in it. Ashikagi cast his gaze out the windows of the long hall as his small group walked, watching the storm gather on the horizon. Behind him, outside on its massive landing pad, his great flagship added a powerful noise of its own, giving off terrific pops as systems cooled from their recent flight. Ahead of him his golden-robed warrior priests wheeled the cart containing the great Kazerai Horus.

  Conclusion to a terrible series of events.

  At the end of the long hall, in her chambers, waited the cleric witch, Oinana. Oinana led the delegation of holy clerics, the Guardian Council, who in turn set the policy that governed the Dominion. As such Ashikagi answered to her, though that struggle for power was ages old. Even his predecessor, the last Shogun—even the Shogun before him, that one appointed by the Holy Emperor himself—fought silently against the hierarchy put in place by their Lord. Emperor Kagami’s parting wisdom was never questioned openly but Ashikagi railed against it daily. He, Ashikagi, was Shogun. He was leader of their vast military. The military ruled their world. Why, then, he should answer to a witch and a handful of robed priests, why the Emperor deemed that the proper order of things … he could not fathom.

  As they approached, the wide double doors to the Council chambers opened, pulled back by a robed priest at either side. The procession continued through, Horuses’ containment cart humming, giving off its shimmering violet aura.

  Emperor Kagami had, before his death, declared himself Emperor in Absentia, and all now awaited his return. Since then he “rested”, in his holy chamber in the neighboring Vivitak, tallest spire in Osaka. Ashikagi stared at that building now, out the panoramic windows of the Council chambers as the group crossed the expansive, ornate room. Vivitak rose even higher than the Tower of Light, the top of which they now occupied. Vivitak, a beautiful work of architecture and there, at the pinnacle, within the throne room, lay the body of the Emperor. Waiting. For victory, if prophecy was to be believed. For the day the Dominion ruled Anitra in its entirety, all lands yoked beneath His banner. At which time He would rise to lead them once more.

  Perhaps on that day—once Ashikagi had paid his proper respects, celebrated the Emperor’s return, their victory, welcomed him home and so forth—he would ask His Holiness why he ever decreed the clerics and their absurd Guardians in the first place. Maybe it had all just been a mistake.

  Audibly he laughed, not meaning the sound to escape his lips, then harrumphed, guarding his thoughts. That victory would occur only by virtue of Ashikagi and his armies. Which meant, of course, that he, as the orchestrator of that military machine, was directly responsible for the circumstances that would lead to the Emperor’s return. Perhaps the Emperor would forgive him, should he decide to take matters into his own hands.

  They curved around to the other side of the vast room and came before the robed clerics. Ashikagi suppressed an involuntary shudder as Oinana spotted him and separated from the others in the delegation.

  “My dear Shogun,” she said in her haughty voice, a sound he could scarcely stand, then turned her attention directly to Horus, locked aboard the containment cart in the shimmering field. The clerics stayed close, like a flock, following as she moved to stand directly before the mighty Kazerai. Ashikagi took his place nearby. Oinana did have a certain charisma, he had to admit, and though he hated her, at times he looked for ways she might be emulated. Ways to combine her subtlety and pretended compassion with the hard edge of his military rule. In truth that he might one day overthrow her.

  In the humming, purple field Horus strained against himself, for that was really all the Raza energy did. Designed at the same time as the Crucible—the facility that created the superhuman Kazerai—the Raza was of a specifically tuned frequency which induced a counter-impulse in the Kazerai nervous system, rendering them immobile. Kind of like a mini seizure, as Ashikagi understood it, and in a way he felt sympathy for the great Horus. One of his most senior commanders, a one-man army; to see him now, held in check by such a simple thing, brought a sort of remorse.

  Ashikagi listened to the field crackle. The Raza was a holy secret as closely guarded as the creation technology of the Kazerai themselves. For with the Raza their mightiest warriors could be brought to their knees.

  “This is indeed a shame,” Oinana seemed to echo his thoughts, though Ashikagi knew she had no proper appreciation for the value of one such as Horus. Horus was, as was likely also he in her mind, a tool, at her disposal. Since Horuses’ disappearance days ago she’d been without that tool, and now here it was, back in her possession, albeit with some confusing new features. Namely a newfound hatred for its master. Not only had Horus battled his way out of the city the first time, apparently using the holy Icon—which he himself stole—to do so, he returned still bent on escape. After popping back into the city he again battled his way out, this time by brute force, escaping to the distant hills.

  “My dear Horus,” Oinana addressed him directly. “Who has done this to you?” Her voice was filled with false pity. She stepped closer. As close as she dared, for though the field held without question Horus was in a rage, straining with all his might against its effects, and one could not help wonder at the results if there were a flaw with the technology. All he would need do would be to move himself beyond the field and he was free. If that happened everyone in the room would be dead in an instant.

  Ashikagi felt a brief tremor of fear. Even without the enhancing effects of the Crucible, without the effects from the Astake programs before that—without any of that, Horus was powerful. Even in his native state he could do serious harm. Especially to the frail clerics. There were a handful of priest warriors on hand, of course, but their function was ornamental at best, entrusted merely to wield the Raza gear.

  No, there would not be much challenge for Horus in that room.

  But the field held. The moment passed. Horus strained; Oinana scrutinized him in an almost leisurely fashion.

  “It was Kitana,” she said at length. “Of course.”

  She circled closer, reaching as if wanting to touch but holding short. The field could be deadly to an average human’s nervous system. What locked the impulses of the Kazerai tended to fry those of lesser physiology. Death was usually the result.

  “There are serums for such things,” she informed him. “Kitana has no doubt administered one to make you forget. I can give you one to make you remember. Or even obey.” She let this last comment linger, savoring the simmering rage on Horuses’ face. “That, however, is not my desire. I do not wish a robot. The strength of the Kazerai lies in their devotion as much as in their limbs.

  “Therefore we must bring you back into the fold.”

  She turned to Ashikagi. Her thoughts seemed to jump ahead, to other, more urgent matters.
/>   “What of the girl?”

  The scrutinizing gaze of the witch unnerved him.

  “Presumably still in the forest,” he said. “If not dead. I’ve sent men to search.” Irritatingly he was thankful that he had. At least in that he was ahead of her.

  Oinana frowned. Ashikagi saw no use in the girl, but it was clear from the witch’s expression she saw use in her. The girl mattered to Oinana.

  “She should’ve been captured with Horus, my dear Shogun,” she chastised in her syrupy way. “You should have seen to this when you had her in your sights. Together she and our dear Kazerai hold the key to what has happened to the Holy Relic.”

  And there it was. The thought that weighed most heavily on her mind. Where was her precious Icon? Indeed.

  Confirming she cared little for Horus or any of them.

  Had Ashikagi then, even if only sub-consciously, left the girl on purpose? Wishing to bait Oinana, to frustrate her with loose ends that served only to foil her own, skewed plans?

  Perhaps.

  He watched his leader. Forcibly pretending to cow before her. Wanting so badly to kill her. All the clerics. Take his Kazerai, take his legions, lay waste to the Venatres, claim the entire world in the name of the Dominion and end this foolish nonsense. Dogma set in place by a once worthy Emperor.

  “Of course, my lady,” he calmed his voice, mimicking her concern. “I have teams in the hills even now.

  “She will be found.”

  * *

  Jess was petrified. She could no longer see more than a dozen feet in front of her as sheets of rain washed through the canopy of branches in a punishing downpour. The storm was furious. It was dark. The panic, by then, was beyond full-blown. She could barely make herself move. Could not shake its icy grip. Her heart raced so fast she was certain it would fail, which only drove the panic harder. Breathing came in gasps, exacerbated by the freezing rain. She was alive and wondered why; wondered why her body had not yet shut down. Am I going to die?! She shook so violently, uncontrollably, shuddering waves of chill wracking her, teeth hammering in her head.