The Shadow Among The Stars: Book One of the Dread Naught Trilogy Read online

  The remaining guards fought at third and final set of bulkheads on the approach to high-value storage, where the Stone was kept. Twenty-two guards had fallen since the first Dreaded reached the facility twenty five minutes ago, even though their practical formation and use of the facility’s layout gave the guards the best chance possible. Even then, Bryluen knew the goal of The Dreaded was not to kill the guards: it was to acquire the Stone. If anything the situation had been as beneficial as it was going to get for the guards.

  Bryluen quickly routed an efficient course that would take them on a fast route to the Stone with the minimum of open spaces where they could easily be overrun. She called Runner and Nicadzim to her and ran toward the nearest facility entrance, a cargo hatch about twelve meters away.

  “Kirby, Vort, stay with the walkers—we need the landing area held open for extraction. Do all you can. Kirby, you’ve got orbital targeting authorization, so tell those monitors where to hit and do the same when the Marines hit orbit!”

  Kirby and Vort affirmed their orders as they kept firing into the swarm around them. The cargo hatchway was relatively undamaged—the majority of The Dreaded had gone to entrances that weren’t directly behind the trio of furious walkers. After a brief sprint, Bryluen slapped a gauntlet onto the hand scanner by the hatch. The security bypass transmitted by her armor overrode the hand scanner, and the hatch slid open. The three of them rushed inside, and Bryluen closed the door behind them as fireballs splattered all around. They heard the unmistakable rumble of a starship cannon impact occurring outside, a kilometer or two away. The three of them were inside the perimeter hallway of warehouse 4b. Bryluen intended to have them skirt the outside of the warehouse by following the hallway to their right, away from the main flow of the enemy army. She led the group in a jog down the hall.

  A cluster of Rabisu squirmed in through a damaged hatch further up the corridor ahead. Bryluen aimed her shotgun and snapped off a shot. Milliseconds apart, each of the weapon’s barrels fired in turn. The first unleashed pellets that maintained and transferred incredibly low temperatures to their target—enough that even gently laying them on a pane of tempered glass would instantly cause it to shatter. Each pellet trailed frosty white vapor behind it in a fluffy column. The payload of the second barrel was the polar opposite, trailing flame and heated to white-hot at the instant of firing through a chemical reaction. The combined effect on a target resulted in violent thermal shock, the rapid change in surface temperature causing most materials to burst or tear apart with force much more violent than the kinetic force of a normal shotgun blast. The shotgun was thus able to damage most forms of heavy armor—unfortunately for the Rabisus, who were not armored at all. The three struck in the initial blast were rent apart with the same violence as if a giant had picked them up and pulled them apart. The dark creatures simply fell to pieces and momentarily spouted dark soot across the hall around them, as if Bryluen had shot a small hole in a can of black paint.

  A bright pulse of bolts from Runner’s adjustable energy weapon laid the others to rest in a rapid trio of precision head shots. The Astral Marines had tested adjustable weaponry similar to Runner’s gun in the past, but found cost-efficiency and the extra concern of having to vent the weapon safely made it impractical for mass deployment. Additionally it was rare that the ability to adjust a weapon was of particular use, given the variety weaponry and equipment afforded any unit of Marines. For a task force in the unique situations Dread Naught was fielded in however, such a thing was already proving quite useful.

  Bryluen registered an interesting transmission: a unit of Qixing Gate Sentinels had received the mayday transmission from the Qual-Ex depot and were on their way to provide reinforcements. The Gate Sentinels had long held jurisdiction to provide relief for civilians in Human systems. Their response times were legendary, and a number of disasters had been averted by their deployment speed. Human relief organizations passed over into Qixing space for similar purposes, but Qixing regulations on armed ships prevented Marines from ever passing through unheralded. Bryluen forwarded the information to Kirby and Vort so they would be aware of the extra help on its way.

  Kirby stood near the walkers outside with one fist continuing to pump flak into the foe, while the other wielded an extended blade. She had cut down several Gugalannas and a countless number of Rabisus so far. It was fortunate the bulk of the foe was focused on the depot, because the only real cover came from the walls of flame Vort created around them over the course of multiple attack passes. Even that barely served to deter some of The Dreaded. Currently the small alien clung to the top of Kirby’s cockpit, taking a brief rest to conserve his energy as the jockey spun about dealing death. A neat side step and an almost blind blade swipe left yet another Gugalanna headless, its body twitching as it thumped to the ground.

  The Shalas had stepped back somewhat, picking off enemies and pouring fire into the wider horde now that Kirby could draw most of the close combat away from them. The Shalas didn’t have the dexterity required for extended melee. Though their talons were dangerous, an error could result in leg damage. Subsequent hits could eventually impair the walkers’ ability to move, which could quickly prove lethal.

  Kirby swatted a group of Rabisus with the back of her hand, stepping on a couple of them as she sliced her blade through the remainder. A cluster of Gugalannas coalesced and came toward her from forty degrees to her right. A pair of rockets from the Shalas brought down six or seven of them, and Kirby shredded a pair in the front row. This left several of the horned beasts soldiering on.

  The first she slapped aside, causing it to stumble into one of its fellows and throw it off course. As the pair regained their footing, Kirby extended her arm and allowed a third to skewer itself on her blade. The weight of the beast was substantial, but not nearly enough to budge the hefty, hydraulically-muscled Marduk. The creature’s tentacled maw thrashed around the metal now transfixing the greater portion of its body, the force of its flailing enough to throw a man aside. Kirby held firm as the monster soon shuddered and collapsed, its boundless aggression seemingly spent. Kirby killed one of the remaining Gugalannas with a shot to the face, then extracted her blade from her latest kill and cleaved the other’s head in twain.

  “You are quite the carnival ride, Kirby,” Vort cried from atop her cockpit.

  The Jockey grimaced as she continued fighting, then heard an unfamiliar sound to her left: a deeper and throatier rendition of a Rabisu’s squawk. Kirby groaned as she realized she and Vort were the first members of Dread Naught to have to battle En-Rabisus.

  Every bit as twisted and lithe as their smaller brethren, they each stood two-and-a-half meters tall. The creatures’ proportions gave them a long reach, and the two claws on each hand measured a sickening fifty centimeters each. The armor plate on their chests and the gnarled, lava-like texture of their skin suggested they could take a far superior amount of abuse. Normal Rabisus stood only slightly above their superiors’ waists, and in their presence the smaller creatures seemed substantially less threatening.

  Previously, Kirby held the advantage of superior reach. With the En-Rabisus that was not true, and her armored hide would not be so resistant to their claws.

  She extended her second gauntlet blade as the three En-Rabisus rushed forward. A pair of auto-cannon shells from a Shala caused the rear En-Rabisu to fall to one knee, but it forced itself up and continued forward despite its notable wounds. Vort braced himself atop Kirby, then gushed forth a column of fire. He struck the center En-Rabisu dead on—to its credit, it held up an arm and continued to exist for a moment before resolving into ash. The already injured En-Rabisu was winged by Vort’s assault, and fell as the fire consumed half of its body.

  The third, however, managed to leap aside and hurl a large fireball as it came within melee distance of the jockey. Vort dove off the back of Kirby’s cockpit and took flight once more, as Kirby leaned to try and dodge the projectile. She felt a hit and registered damage to one o
f her torso plates—the En-Rabisus clearly packed a far superior punch.

  She assumed a tight fighting stance with her blades pointed upward as the creature closed in, then tested the foe with a pre-emptive swipe. The En-Rabisu deflected her blade with a backhand before sweeping its other hand around for a strike of its own. Kirby intercepted with her other blade, leaving a gash on the En-Rabisu’s palm.

  It recoiled, stepped back and began to circle her. Kirby’s flak cannons slid back up her arms—she was unable to fire them without a risk of hitting her own blades. The En-Rabisu took this opportunity to lunge forth for another attack, but while Kirby specialized in vehicles she was as well trained as any Marine in close combat—she knew the creature had over-committed.

  With a neat sidestep she moved outside the En-Rabisu’s attack. Turning about with as much grace as she could produce, she brought a blade around and with a growl of machinery cleaved the En-Rabisu’s head from its shoulders with an angled chop. The beast collapsed without a further breath, and Kirby deployed her auto-cannons.

  She sent a set of coordinates to the orbital monitors above as she pounded shells into The Dreaded before her. Twenty-five meters out, Vort obliterated a column of Rabisus and Gugalannas with a flurry of lightning bolts. Seven seconds after Kirby sent the coordinates, a pair of slugs touched down halfway up the island at a natural choke-point in the landscape. The impact shook the ground even at this distance, a thick plume of dirt and rock jetting high into the air in the wake of the furious projectiles.

  Inside the complex, the other three members of Dread Naught made swift progress with few enemy contacts. They now stood at the threshold to a set of living quarters spanning the gap between Warehouse 4b and Storage 3C. Once they passed through 3C they would connect through Isolation Storage 2A, and then finally rendezvous with the remaining guards at the corridor to Secure Storage. However, Bryluen had enough experience with strike operations to know the monster-haunted corridors would pose their greatest challenge once Dread Naught had acquired the stone and had to make a swift exit.

  She stood on one side of the door, with Nicadzim at the other. Runner was leaning out of the nearest corner with his weapon aimed toward the entryway. Bryluen slapped the door stud, causing the entry to the workers’ quarters to hiss open. Inside was a long row of bunks with small chests and wardrobes of belongings at close intervals. The uniforms of the Qual-Ex workers were scattered about, left behind as the workers fled the facility. Some others had apparently tried to hide and wait out the assault, their rent and twisted bodies bearing witness to their failed endeavor. A scattering of Rabisus were clustered among the bunks as well as a pair of En-Rabisus, their emotionless plant-like visages leering with jagged teeth as they strode among the beds. Bryluen supposed they had entered from the side corridor halfway up the length of the room.

  Runner’s first shot struck the nearest En-Rabisu directly in the head, the plasma blowing off a chunk of one of its petals. The creatures instantly wheeled on them and charged. Bryluen splattered the two nearest Rabisus while Nicadzim sent several glowing orbs into the hurt En-Rabisu as it charged. Runner’s next shots removed the two Rabisus at the creatures’ flanks with effortless head-shots. The En-Rabisu’s long legs carried it at an alarming speed toward the door, even as Bryluen removed a section of its torso with another blast. The monster began to duck and reach through the door to swipe at Nicadzim, but he stood straight and swung his glowing baton upwards, striking the underside of the En-Rabisu’s head. With a flash, yet another petal was torn from the creature in a spray of soot. It rocked back as its head was jogged from side to side for a moment in the wake of Nicadzim’s assault. He stepped through the door to follow through with a two-handed torso strike that knocked the En-Rabisu to the ground.

  Runner smoothly popped off a pair of shots past the blue-armored man to strike Rabisus packed behind their leader as Nicadzim wailed on the prone En-Rabisu. After a trio of head strikes—though for Nicadzim this resulted in many more impacts than at first apparent—The En-Rabisu twitched and died, its body torn and split by the man’s strength and the energetic effect of his weapon-construct. A wayward claw left a rent in one of Nicadzim’s torso plates, but he was otherwise unharmed. However, the second En-Rabisu was hot on the tail of the first.

  Bryluen slid next to Nicadzim as Runner’s covering fire downed the last Rabisu atop one of the bunks, causing its body to limply slide and fall to the floor. Bryluen neatly fired her shotgun into the side of the remaining En-Rabisu’s head, causing its course to falter and maiming half of its ’face’ into a ragged mass seeping black fluid. It crashed into a bunk, causing an ugly squeal as it scraped along the concrete floor. The physical endurance of the beasts was impressive: even with most of the head petals removed and much of the body mauled, the En-Rabisu seemed to heed no pain or fear. The Dreaded appeared to only preserve themselves to a degree that allowed them to do as much damage as possible against their target, and would gladly run into enemy fire if it was their best chance.

  Bryluen had seen such behavior in T’hròstag "Chemzerkers" or Ly Aulth cartel serfs—the type of mindless, violent impulse contradictory to all forms of reason or advanced intellect. Such things were almost always temporary states due to the lethality of a narcotics overdose, which begged the question of how The Dreaded functioned. They seemed to lack formal technology, so if these beings were not simply controlled by the orbiting Sjorthursar, they could potentially possess technology advanced enough to make an organic/inorganic designation irrelevant.

  Though the creature almost immediately resumed its course, the moment provided by Bryluen’s forceful misdirection was enough. Runner, his aim unerring, struck the creature three times past his companions: once in the head, and once on each shoulder. This caused the creature to again stagger as chunks of its shoulders and yet another petal were torn from its body. Bryluen dashed in, swinging her nanowhip at the creature’s nearest shoulder. She rolled under a desperate swipe, hearing the creature’s claws whistle through the air above her. Rising to her feet, she pulled on the whip. The wire was neatly wrapped around the creature’s shoulder, and with a solid tug, produced a brief pop and hiss as it cleanly removed the creature’s arm. The appendage fell to the ground, its fingers clenching one final time as whatever nerves the En-Rabisu possessed were severed.

  In the moment it turned toward the woman who just deprived it of a limb, Nicadzim stepped forward and struck the back of the En-Rabisu’s remaining shoulder with a harsh downward stroke, causing it to fall to its knees. Nicadzim grunted and crushed the remains of the creature’s head against the frame of a neighboring bunk. The rest of the beast slumped to the ground, air pressure causing a momentary gurgle of rapidly drying fluid from the stump of its hideous head.

  Runner joined his companions, moving his hand as if to run his fingers through his hair. “W-well those are tough, the-en.”

  The others simply nodded. Bryluen led the group forward, stopping at the side entrance through which The Dreaded had entered. She opened a compartment on her belt and removed a small capsule. She twisted the capsule in the center and slipped it into the manual override notch used to access the door mechanism during a power failure. The hole flashed white and the surrounding metal melted inward, sealing up the mechanism and disallowing the door from being opened. She had done this to every door she could on the way into the facility to help secure their intended escape route. Satisfied, she nodded and waved Nicadzim and Runner forward.

  15. Struggle for the Stone

  Vort swooped down, watching another column of enemies vaporize under his harsh ministrations. He pulled up at a sharp angle, adjusting his wings to pull a tight turn. In the brief moment his body was spun about, he caught a broad view of the enemy army and it was clear that the majority of the enemy was ignoring the Shalas and Kirby. The fact they were continually embattled spoke to the sheer number of the enemies present. He worried what would happen once his teammates acquired the Stone, and knew their ext
raction would be harrowing even though Bryluen had summoned the Marines.

  He considered what similar experiences his people must be facing. His kind were not only unaccustomed, but outright averse to warfare, having suppressed their own destructive capacities ages ago. Vort’s current situation—existing outside the civilized presence of the Peacestone—was considered an abomination to be corrected as soon as possible. Individuals might forsake Peacestone and go on journeys in order to fulfill vital oaths, or to redeem themselves for crimes. He wondered how strongly such a taboo held in the face of an enemy such as The Dreaded. His people’s technological weapons were nowhere near so sophisticated and powerful as those of Humanity, and were mostly intended for crowd control or other non-lethal applications.

  His hope is that his people prioritized survival over cultural mores. If any attacks near this scale were occurring, then it would be the largest conflict they had engaged in since the First War of Division. He was chilled by the very thought, a lifetime of stories and warnings making the horrible nature of such a conflict one of his most ingrained history lessons. Deep in his gut he simply felt his people were not prepared for outright war. Their cities were for art, literature, and music, not sieges and street-to-street combat. Even if they survived, how much would be lost?

  As he dove to make another attack run against a cluster of Gugalannas approaching the Shalas, he continued to contemplate such heavy matters. He did not yet know how to open his heart to his friends in a way they would understand. His application of Human languages was still fairly shallow and his emotional impulses were different enough to make it difficult for Vort to communicate many nuances to his companions. Additionally he was incapable of many of the visual signals Humans used with one another—he had once seen Bryluen handle an entire conversation with Runner using only her eyebrows. He practiced using wing motions for expression, which his team-mates seemed to pick up on well enough. He felt he could learn enough to eventually communicate the depths of his heart, but it was hard work.