Thief of Stars
Final Dawn ✺ Book Two
T.W.M. Ashford
Copyright © 2020 by T.W.M. Ashford
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Any characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cover design by Tom Ashford
Images: sdecoret/Shutterstock.com
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Dark Star Panorama
The Dark Star Panorama is a shared universe of sci-fi stories in which Final Dawn is the first series.
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Contents
1. Three Months
2. The Stowaway
3. Ankhir, Paryx
4. The Krettelian Resistance
5. (Thermonuclear) Family
6. Stealing a Star
7. Crossing the Line
8. Lockdown
9. Death and Sand
10. Stars in the Desert
11. Sewers and Subterfuge
12. The Benefactor
13. Dead Shoulders
14. Lock and Key
15. Tower of Sand
16. Escape From Paryx
17. Dark Side of the Moon
18. Krett
19. Charon’s Hideout
20. The Damned Planet
21. The Mansa Armada
22. The Price of Freedom
23. Out of Time
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1
Three Months
If Jack Bishop had learned one thing in his months exploring interstellar space, it was this.
Alien beer tasted good.
He sat back in his chair and took in the view from the balcony. The city planet of Kapamentis looked beautiful, providing you were high enough off the streets. Neon-kissed towers of glass rose up through clouds of smoke and rainwater. Shuttles flew by through the ever-night. The misty drizzle turned everything into a crystalline blur.
It could have almost been relaxing, had it not been for the rowdy bar behind him.
“I don’t see why you keep coming back to this place.” Rogan crossed her mechanical arms and scrunched up her faceplate. “There are much nicer drinking holes in the galaxy.”
“Because it reminds me of home.” Jack turned back to the midnight vista. “Besides, it’s nice to stop every now and again. Don’t be grumpy. At least it’s better than Tortaiga Square.”
“What isn’t?” replied Tuner, wriggling in his seat. He shrugged. “I guess it’s all right. Nobody’s killed anybody yet.”
“That’s the spirit,” said Jack, distracted.
In truth, Jack had learned a lot since leaving Detri, the sanctuary for liberated automata. In the cold days and nights travelling through subspace aboard the Adeona, there wasn’t much else to do. Rogan had copied terabytes of her encyclopaedic knowledge onto a data pad for him, and he raced through it the way a blue whale might eat a krill buffet – open mouthed and without discrimination, but just as confused afterwards as when he started.
When he got back to Earth, he was determined not to turn up empty-handed. He’d come bringing the secrets of the universe.
He’d studied files on hundreds of different species, from the mining beetles known as Dryggs to the Ghuk, a race of insectoid capitalists happy to buy and break down whole solar systems. Some, like the aquatic empire of fish called the Plillup and the mysterious, unnamed species who had built the ancient Libraries, he found endlessly fascinating. Others he struggled to even comprehend, such as the primitive, venomous, hive-mind race of microbes imprisoned on Nirilan-III.
There were folders on not just hundreds, but thousands of years of galactic history. He’d skim read everything he could. From the first encounter (and following that, the first war) between two spacefaring races, to the earliest documented case of intelligent automata, to the design of technologies such as the Ceros Gate – Jack couldn’t get enough.
But no matter how much he read, there remained one riddle he was no closer to solving: how to get back home.
Gaskan Troi might have known. He seemed to be the only person in the galaxy who had ever heard of Earth, at least. But Gaskan was dead, his battlecruiser destroyed. Whatever secrets Gaskan could have spilled had disintegrated along with the rest of him, burning to ash in the atmosphere above Ceros-VI.
Jack was starting to think he’d be lost out there forever.
“We’ll find your home world, Jack.” Rogan may have been synthetic, but she could read people better than any human. “You’ve got to be patient. It’s out there somewhere.”
“Galaxies are big,” said Tuner, tilting his cassette-tape shaped head sympathetically. “There’s an awful lot of ground to cover. And I don’t just mean for us. There are still places where nobody’s ever been before.”
Jack nodded and turned back to the table. He’d long suspected that Earth was somewhere uncharted or insignificant – why else hadn’t humanity already been invited to join the intergalactic community?
He couldn’t see any other reason. Judging by the variety of species standing around the bar, the entry criteria wasn’t exactly stringent.
“I know, guys.” He clasped his hands together on top of the table. “And I hope you both know how much I appreciate the support. I wouldn’t have got this far without you.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Tuner shot Rogan a cheeky glance. “I think the Adeona would have been more than happy to help.”
Jack sighed. The Adeona was their ship – an old asteroid-mining vessel that Brackitt, their robotic mechanic and First Mate, had refitted into a fully-armed exploratory spacecraft. She also happened to be completely sentient, and had developed quite the crush on Jack.
“Very funny, Tuner. Honestly, it’s getting a bit weird. I feel like she’s watching me when I sleep.”
Rogan laughed and rolled her eyes.
“She doesn’t have any cameras, Jack. She can’t actually see you.”
“But she does have sensors for monitoring the crew,” said Tuner. “So she is watching you, in her own special way.”
“Great. That isn’t creepy at all.”
A heavy silence fell upon the three of them, made all the more awkward by the revelry throughout the rest of the bar. Rogan placed her hand on Jack’s.
“We will find it. I promise.”
“I know, I just… I just wonder how Amber is doing. What she’s doing, now she thinks I’m gone. And there’s probably been another flare since I disappeared. Maybe there were riots. Maybe she got sick. I…”
Jack shook his head.
“I just hope everyone is all right. If we can find them, maybe there’s a chance we can save them. Everybody on Earth, I mean.”
“And we’ll get to meet Amber!” Tuner clapped his hands together. “Just don’t introduce her to the Adeona. That’s a recipe for disaster.”
Jack groaned and took a swig of beer. It had an aftertaste that resembled honey.
“Are you sure you two don’t want anything?” asked Jack, gesturing at the otherwise empty table.
Rogan waved her hand dismissively.
“No point. I can’t drink an
ything they’ve got on offer. Not that we’d get served in here anyway.”
“The only reason the doorman let us in was because he thought we belonged to you,” said Tuner. “The automata liberation movement hasn’t made much progress.”
“Well, the joke’s on them,” said Jack, raising his glass. “We’re friends. Equals. And money’s money, whoever’s buying the drinks.”
“How very progressive of you.” Rogan smirked and watched a cruiser drift by the balcony. “Though I must say, you’re sort of right. It is nice to just sit here, knowing that I’m free… even if nobody else does.”
“Things will change. Give it time.” Jack paused. “Speaking of which, how long does an automata live for? On average, I mean.”
Rogan shrugged.
“That changes from model to model. Forever, potentially – so long as we upgrade and switch out the parts that need fixing.” She tapped the side of her head. “Though if we lose our data cores, we’re done for.”
“Well, that’s good then. It means you have time to wait. And if all else fails, stage a robot uprising.”
“We might have to, at this rate.” Tuner drummed his fingers against the table. “It’s not like anybody takes us seriously. Remember what happened when we tried getting an appointment with the Ministry?”
Of course he did. The Ministry was the closest thing the galaxy had to a unified government, though Jack would have been hard pressed to describe what it was they actually did. They certainly didn’t enforce a single set of laws – whilst some alien cultures were kind and enlightened, others believed in eugenics and sacrifice. It seemed to Jack that the Ministry mostly cared about regulating trade. That and making sure nobody did anything too stupid, like carpet bombing planets of significant financial interest.
They had a building on Kapamentis – towering, black, and shaped like a pyramid. Jack, Rogan and Tuner made an appointment with them not long after departing from Detri in the hope that something might be done about Charon. Jack had been escorted through to a featureless granite room upon arrival, whilst the two automata were told to wait in the lobby away from the diplomats and politicians.
After a few minutes, a slender, wrinkled alien in a long, black gown came in.
“Greetings from the Ministry,” it said. “How may we assist you?”
Jack had gawped anxiously, not knowing where to begin.
“Well, there’s a guy out in Dark Space – a warlord called Charon, or something. He’s hijacking freighters, killing their crews and forcing their automata to build something called an Iris. Possibly a weapon. Somebody needs to put a stop to him.”
The minister smiled and bowed politely.
“Thank you for bringing this to our attention.”
It gestured towards the door as if inviting Jack to leave.
“Is that it?” Jack glared at the alien in disbelief. “You are going to do something about it, right?”
The minister’s smile didn’t shift even a millimetre. Neither did its outstretched hand, still pointing towards the exit.
“We are aware of the rumours. It is unfortunate… but there is no evidence to suggest anything more sinister than a random increase in pirate attacks is to blame.”
“No evidence? I’ve got two automata outside who might disagree.”
This time the minister’s smile actually grew.
“We find that automata don’t make reliable witnesses. The Ministry is looking into it, I can assure you.”
And that was the end of the conversation. Jack, Rogan and Tuner had been ushered from the building. As far as they could tell, nothing had been done about Charon since.
It seemed the bigger the universe got, the more everyone was on their own.
“Hold on a second,” said Rogan, glazing over for a split second. “Brackitt is trying to call us.”
Jack put down his beer and pulled a data pad out from his pocket. He laid it on top of the table. A little blue hologram of Brackitt popped out.
Jack still found talking to a projection odd.
“Hey, man. How’s it going?”
“Everything’s fine,” replied Brackitt, standing at the hologram table inside the Adeona’s cockpit. “I just finished taking stock of the new inventory and Adeona’s fuel tanks are all topped up. We’re good to go whenever you’re ready. Not that there’s any rush. We’ve still booked into the port for another few hours.”
“Thanks, Brackitt. We won’t be too long.”
The hologram disappeared. Jack put the data pad away.
“Sounds like we’ve got time for another round,” he said, clapping his hands together.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Tuner studied the label on Jack’s empty bottle. “We’ll be taking off shortly.”
“Ah, what does the Adeona need me for?” Jack stood up and shook his head. “She can fly just fine on her own.”
Rogan raised an amused eyebrow as he left for the bar.
“Yes,” she called after him, “but she won’t be happy if you throw up all over her dashboard.”
Jack pretended not to hear her. Besides, he doubted the Adeona would even care. There was a bathroom on board, for heaven’s sake. She put up with his bowel movements on a daily basis. A little vomit wasn’t going to put her off.
He weaved his way through the crowds, taking extra care not to bump into anyone. The bars of Kapamentis’ more cosmopolitan districts were welcome to aliens of all backgrounds. An innocently tipsy stumble might be interpreted as a racially-aggravated assault by one species and a mating display by another.
A gap opened up along the counter. Jack squeezed himself into it and smiled at the rhinoceros-skinned creature drinking beside him. She replied with a dry grunt. Jack didn’t need his translator chip to tell him that she wanted to be left alone.
There was only one bartender taking orders. Even with four arms, it was going to take forever for Jack to get served. He guessed some things never changed, no matter where you went.
He canvassed the room. When he and Amber had gone out drinking – back before the first solar flare had hit, that is – they’d often taken to people-watching to whittle away the time spent leaning against bar counters. Picking another couple at random, they’d come up with ever more ludicrous backstories. Amber’s were usually sweet and romantic. Jack’s tended to steer towards the tragic.
It was funny when they did it together. By himself, it just felt lonely and mean.
God, he wanted to go home.
It wasn’t that he didn’t care for the automata. Far from it. They’d really grown on him, especially now they weren’t running away from Charon’s lackey anymore. They were a team. A family. If finding Earth meant saying goodbye to them, he’d be devastated.
But it had been almost three months since the experiment that had thrown him across the universe. Three months. He was starting to forget what regular human life had even been like. He missed the relief he felt coming home from a shift in the pit. He missed the smell of cheap coffee in the morning. Hell, in a strange way he even missed the daily struggle to survive. Well, almost.
No matter how wonderful Rogan, Tuner and Brackitt were, no matter how much his life had benefited from meeting them, they weren’t human. They didn’t see or feel things the same way he did. They couldn’t. He needed to be around his own kind again, for his sanity’s sake.
And, if he could bring back the secret behind faster-than-light travel, the sake of everybody else on Earth.
Especially Amber.
Because as lucky as he was to be alive, he felt guilty. To be out there exploring the cosmos while the rest of humanity laboured under a dying sun…
It felt like jumping the queue.
Which at that precise moment in time, as he waited for the bartender to make his ponderous way down the line, Jack supposed wasn’t always that bad an idea.
In his boredom, he glanced over at the private cubicles down the other end of the bar. He caught sight of a young girl in a tatty, bro
wn cloak staring at him. She was quick to turn her head. A pair of thin mandibles twitched nervously under her hood.
This hardly surprised Jack. As weird and wonderful as the menagerie of alien species around him was, he knew that the only one who truly stood out was him. Most kept their odd glances to a minimum, but who was he to judge? He’d practically collapsed in a puddle of his own drool the first time he stepped foot on Kapamentis.
Still, it was a little unnerving.
He looked over his shoulder at the balcony. Through the gaps in the crowd he could just about make out the table at which he’d been sitting. Rogan and Tuner hadn’t gone anywhere, but they didn’t look like they were having much fun either.
The tough-skinned alien beside him got up and left. Her spot was quickly filled by a lanky humanoid who had blasters strapped to each of his leather-clad hips.
Jack’s skin began to itch. Something was wrong. He didn’t know what, but he could feel it deep in his stomach.
Had Charon finally sent someone after them? Had he come to reclaim the automata who’d fled from his superstructure, to take revenge for the death of his second-in-command, Gaskan Troi?
They’d heard nothing from him since, but that didn’t mean he’d forgotten about them.
Two more humanoids stood close to the west exit. Each wore the black uniform of a mercenary. One of them had a comm device surgically implanted in her skull, just above her ear. Neither was looking in Jack’s direction, but that didn’t mean much. If they were any good at their job, they wouldn’t need to.
Thief of Stars (Final Dawn, Book 2) Page 1