Starshot Read online

  StarShot

  A.R. Knight

  Copyright © 2018 by Adam Knight

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN (ebook): 978-1-946554-20-8

  ISBN (print): 978-1-946554-21-5

  Published by Black Key Books

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters and situations within its pages and places or persons, living or dead, is unintentional and co-incidental.

  Black Key Books

  4209 Odana Rd

  Madison, WI 53711

  www.blackkeybooks.com

  Also by A.R. Knight

  The Mercenaries Trilogy

  The Metal Man

  Wild Nines

  Dark Ice

  One Shot

  The Riven Trilogy

  Riven

  The Cycle

  Spirit’s End

  The Rakers Saga

  Rakers

  The Skyward Saga

  The Spear

  Oratus

  Starshot

  Mind’s Eye

  Clarity’s Dawn

  Creator’s End

  Humanity Rising

  The Last Cycle

  To Nicole

  Contents

  1. Jungle Run

  2. Mission Prep

  3. Night Rituals

  4. The Order

  5. Meeting A God

  6. Flying In

  7. Ceremony

  8. Assault

  9. The Lion Warrior

  10. The Gateway

  11. Fireside Chats

  12. The Birthing Pools

  13. A Desperate Strike

  14. Separation

  15. Bury The Dead

  16. Training Ground

  17. Overlook

  18. Ambush

  19. The Great City

  20. The Deal

  21. The Task

  22. An Attempt

  23. Shopping For Survival

  24. Predator and Prey

  25. The Pits

  26. Dangerous Captives

  27. Trapped With Teeth

  28. Lights Out

  29. Bloody Night

  30. A Moment’s Respite

  31. A City By Torchlight

  32. No Hesitation

  33. Hold The Knife

  34. Teamwork

  35. To The Palace

  36. Gambit

  37. The Emperor

  38. Making an Entrance

  39. Becoming a Priestess

  40. The Traitor

  41. Making Magic

  42. Who Lives and Dies

  43. Desperate Remedies

  44. Secrets Kept

  45. Forward March

  46. Split

  47. Testing Miracles

  48. Infiltration

  49. First Strike

  50. The Guardian

  51. From the Ashes

  52. The Sevora

  53. Recovery

  54. An Opening

  55. For A Friend

  56. Rescue

  57. The Return

  58. The Next Mission

  59. Empress

  An Excerpt from Mind’s Eye - The Skyward Saga Book 2

  If you liked this story, please leave a review!

  Also by A.R. Knight

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  1 Jungle Run

  I watch her from behind the thick tree as she moves among the ferns and vines, yellowed now from lack of rain. A mosquito buzzes in front of me, but doesn’t land thanks to the sticky sap covering my skin, keeping me free to concentrate.

  Because she’s been getting better.

  My mosswrap slides with me as I move around the trunk, its rings of woven, soft green keeping me cool and quiet as I pad out behind her. She, on the other hand, is wearing a stained a ragged shirt, things she calls trousers extend down to her ankles where they meet thick brown - and now hopelessly scratched - boots. They break twigs, snap plants as she moves, making her easy to follow. She wears a shining gray tube tied to her waist, and I’ve never seen her use, but the shining gray tube is compelling all the same. Today, I’m going to get it.

  There’s a wild hoot from somewhere ahead - a startled bird, and she whips her eyes towards it, her arms tense, and I make my move. A one-two step over the branch, directly into the clear middle of a pile of fresh-fallen leaves, tapping the silent ground, and then, with a press of my right calf, I jump. I’m too far away for a tackle, but just right for the back of her legs. She manages to catch the moving air and half-turns as I fly into her, which only makes things worse for her balance, as now I’m pushing her sideways rather than forward.

  She crumples to the ground with a grunt and I’m on top of her, scrambling for the tube. I get my hand on the hilt when I feel something sharp against my throat.

  “Wrong target, Kaishi,” Viera whispers. “The knife is deadlier up close than the pistol.”

  I flick my eyes down to the simple leather hilt and shining metal blade - forged, so Viera says, back in her homeland beneath the mountains. If I ever get my own knife, it’ll be black-glass, and it’ll shimmer as it sucks in Ignos’ light.

  “You’ve never shown me how it works,” I say back, but I let my hands off her pistol.

  Only then does she take the knife away.

  “Not going to, either, unless things take a turn.” Viera waits for me to get off of her, and then she follows me to her feet, sighing at the new dirt stains on her clothes.

  “What kind of turn?”

  “A bad one.” Viera slots the knife back into the slit near the top of her boot.

  Before I can get more details, a mournful call rings through the woods. It’s haunting, and it winds through the jungle trees like the spirits of my ancestors. A hollowed caller. One of three we have, and they’re all prizes. Blow it from the top of the Tier and you’re going to catch its sound even in other villages.

  Father says it makes other tribes jealous. Mother says it sings a beautiful song. I don’t see why the hollowed caller can’t do both.

  I’m not waiting for the second blast. I flash a quick thanks at Viera for playing the game and check the vine-tie holding my hair together - there’s nothing worse than loose strands catching on branches while sprinting through the forest - and I’m running.

  Feet, bare and scuffed, pound dead leaves into dirt as I pad along the pathway back to the main square. Ferns tickle my legs. Trees make half-hearted swipes towards my head.

  My route isn’t the only way back home, and soon enough I’m seeing motion in the woods around me. Hunters, farmers, people moving because sitting in the village all day is a recipe for losing your mind.

  They’re all coming back now, and they’re not quiet about it. Whoops and calls ring out, greetings mingle with questions and answers about quarry, the weather, and what’s cooking. I join in, and nobody cares that the priest’s daughter isn’t at the ceremony yet.

  Because, mostly, I’m the priest’s daughter. Not the priest.

  Never will be.

  When I walk into my village, I see eight stone houses. Built flat, as if someone started out with cubes and then gave up when they realized our stone doesn’t play nice with right angles. We don’t have etchers, here in the jungle. Our stone comes by our hands. The mortar that binds it together is mixed with the power of our arms, and spread with rocks.

  But I’m not looking at the houses. I’m focused on the one thing that keeps our village going. The Tier, and ours is a big one. The largest that I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been to some other tribes on tours with my fat
her, seen their Tiers. Rocks dug up from the ground support logs and moss, which we’ve piled on top of each other to create a living mound. Wherever a slate presents itself, our people have carved their version of Ignos and his burning halo.

  Dusk makes for perfect viewing time: Ignos is kissing the far horizon, and plants his last lights right on the Tier’s top. On the altar there, a smooth stone slab pinned between twinned pillars bearing Ignos’ circle wreathed in shards. Anything put on that altar is centered between Ignos, making for an easy transition from this life to the next.

  Ignos isn’t alone up there now. My father stands in front of the altar with a trio around him. One is holding the hollowed caller - a yellowed stick of bamboo with spaced holes - and I recognize a boy not much older than myself.

  Normally he’s out hunting with the rest, but apparently he’s done something right - you don’t get to blow the caller unless you’ve earned it. The other two are what I call my father’s followers. They trail him around town and help him get whatever he needs.

  Right now, that’s a black-glass knife and a person, pinned with his back on the altar.

  “Kaishi!” Mother’s voice brings me away from the scene and over towards her. She’s standing outside our house with a look that promises a thousand punishments if I don’t veer her way this second, so I do.

  “I’m not late,” I say the words to kill the fight before it starts. I fail, and I know this by the measure of my mother’s right eyebrow and how high it rises.

  “Don’t presume to know what I’m about to say,” Mother scolds. “It’s rude, and childish.”

  “Aren’t children supposed to be childish?” I say, because I’ve so far escaped the rite of adulthood: getting a husband or a wife.

  Don’t get me wrong - I’m a fan of this. Plenty of nice, unattached hunters in our village, but there’s a resistance I have to destiny. Or rather, what others think is my destiny. But I keep quiet about that because I’m not suicidal.

  “Clearly,” Mother replies. I think Father loves her, in part, because she has this razor sarcasm and she’s not afraid to cut with it. “It’s not what you have done, but what you haven’t.”

  Now she points me back towards the Tier and I can trace that finger with the sense of a child being told just where their mistake lies. It’s the black glass knife, the one now held by Father. He’s raising it high to catch the Ignos’ light, so that it practically glows up there.

  And I know.

  “I forgot,” I say, which is the truth.

  Honest.

  “Yes. Your father cleaned it himself.”

  “We don’t usually have sacrifices every day.”

  “This isn’t a usual time,” but before Mother can continue the lecture, the hollowed caller blows again.

  This time it’s a staccato blast. If you’re not here now, it’s saying, you’re going to miss something good, so Mother closes her mouth into a tight frown, grabs my arm like I’ve seen six summers instead of sixteen, and we’re off.

  My tribe isn’t small, but we compress well into tight rows for the ceremony. There’s an aisle in the middle, where, in a few minutes, the body currently on the altar will be carried. My mother pulls me right between the gathered people. We’re all wearing our moss-wraps; emerald and brown mosses that we grow and weave together. Some tribes have fur, others use cotton, but we’re too deep beneath the trees for that.

  Any parts the moss doesn’t cover, and plenty that it does, we coat with various salves; stuff that helps keep the bugs away or helps heal cuts and bites. The smells mingle with burning incense, another village feature and the core of one of my favorite things: taking a sprint along the outskirts of the town and enjoying the scents. Right now it’s a spicy smoke, and at the edges I inhale the first hints of dinner: Pork, buried earlier in the day with hot coals.

  I’m not the only one thinking about food; we pass by a young boy, half my age or less, who, because he’s surrounded by his towering parents and other adults, can’t see what’s going on and is taking the loss of opportunity to stare back towards the cook fires. I seize a moment and tap him on the shoulder.

  Come with me, I mouth. The time for talking is past - Father has already started the prayers - but the boy gets it. Takes my offered hand and heads with us to the front of the crowd. The perks of being the priest’s daughter? A front row spot for every sacrifice.

  Blood spatters come free.

  You might think the offer on the altar would struggle. He’s likely a hunter, though I don’t recognize the tattoos on this one. He’s probably been taught to fight, to kill and take what he can to survive. Only here he’s being held by an older man covered in feathered bracelets, whose arm is bony and, while strong, is no more capable of keeping a man like our sacrifice down than I would be.

  Only the captive lies still.

  Honor.

  That’s what Father tells me the first time I witness one of these. The sacrifice honors Ignos and brings some glory to our tribe, but it’s also redemption for our captive. A chance for him to reclaim some of what he’s lost by getting captured in the first place.

  Go to Ignos in peace and accept your place in his home, and be glad of it.

  The argument doesn’t work with every sacrifice, though. Some fight to the end. Struggle and plead. Those are always the messy ones. I try to look away when those happen, but Mother forces me to watch. To witness the disgrace.

  Fighting when there’s no chance makes it all hurt more.

  Father goes through another set of prayers. He’s asking Ignos for water, for food, and for a healthy tribe. It’s the standard trio, and I don’t fault him for lacking originality. Neither does the rest of the village, and we all say our parts when we should.

  The next part is rough, but the captive makes it easy. Several quick cuts with the black glass blade and we’re looking at his heart. Father’s holding it up to Ignos’ last light as it touches the head of the carved altar.

  Then its done. No lightning, thunder, or earthquakes. If Ignos heard, he’s not making it obvious.

  When the crowd goes, the boy squirms away with them, leaving me alone with Mother. She doesn’t want to get started again with everyone here, and I’m thinking it’s partly because nobody has an appetite for fighting after watching someone get ripped apart, literally, right in front of them. So we stand and wait, because my one job is coming down the steps towards me.

  Father, softening the gesture with a broad smile, hands me the blood-soaked black glass knife with both hands. I accept it in the same way, and the warm liquid slips between my fingers. I try not to think that the red was, moments ago, inside someone and only succeed when Father starts talking to me.

  “You’ll have it cleaned this time, Kaishi?” he says the words without malice, with the hint of a joke, because Father knows I’ve already heard it from Mother. “We have been lucky. There’s another one ready for tomorrow.”

  “Do you think he heard it?” I ask. “Ignos?”

  “It’s not whether he heard our prayers,” Father replies. “But whether we deserve an answer.”

  2 Mission Prep

  He is described in superlatives. A living weapon. Death incarnate. The last thing you see before your eyes go dark. All of these and more, on a hundred worlds, have been used to whisper about his coming.

  More generally, and to himself, he goes by the name he has earned:

  Sax.

  A single syllable, because he is as of yet a three-letter Oratus. No ship under his command, no army at his beck and call. Not that he needs or wants those; each would take him away from the blood. From the visceral feel of his claws doing the work they’re made for.

  He’s looking at them now. Checking them in front of a broad mirror. All twenty of them. Five on each hand, and he has four of those. They’re attached to arms: two on each side, sprouting from a long torso that, due to his gray scales, shimmers like rippling water on a cloudy day. Twin legs, a tail and his head, thick and dominated by
his large oval eyes and wrap-around mouth, round out the limbs. Nearly four meters tall, Sax doesn’t come in a small package.

  As he checks his body’s weapons, Sax keeps an eye on the Oratus next to him. Same body, same height, only Bas is closer to rose gold in color. Sax looks at her with a mix of confidence and love, the sort of bond shared by a Pair.

  Bas doesn’t notice, because she’s already started putting on her mask. She presses her left foreclaw - the upper set of arms - into the mirror. At first, it seems like the claw might push through and shatter the thing. Send glass everywhere. Instead, the surface of the glass warps; sucks in her claw and then oozes out over it. Liquid metal.

  The mask flows forward over Bas’s claw, her arm and the rest of her. Once Bas is completely covered, eyes and all, the mask appears to sink into her skin. Becomes translucent, as though her pinkish scales were covered by a slight fog.

  Sax follows her lead. They all need masks; required for missions with a high risk of attack or exposure to vacuum, and this one has both. Behind him, he hears, or rather, through cavities in his skull full of tiny, vibration-sensing antennae, detects the other half of their set laughing. The usual for those two. Go back to the beginning of their fifty mission stretch and you’d find Sax seething at their hissing.