Stellar fusion, p.1
Stellar Fusion, page 1
part #1 of Infinite Spark Series
Stellar Fusion
Infinite Spark Series, Book 1
E. L. Strife
Stellar Fusion
Infinite Spark Series (Book 1)
Copyright © 2016 Elysia Lumen Strife
All Rights Reserved.
Editor: Jeni Chappelle
Cover Design: Amy Harwell
Thank you for purchasing an authorized version of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not scanning, reproducing, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission.
Stellar Fusion is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
For the farmers
And the soldiers
Thank you.
“We give our blood to nourish the soil that feeds them,
And then we are nothing, discarded,
Sent to the stars and forgotten.”
Phases
Sergeant Atana
Eclipsed
Lighthouse
The Mission
Sergeant Bennett
Visions
Breach
Afflicted
Glitch
Ascent
Crux
Insight
Rift
Azure
Stolen
Grit
Steadfast
Axiom
Dust
Torn
Gold
Pronunciation Key
UP Code of Appropriate Actions
Shepherd’s Oath
Translations
Acknowledgments
Sergeant Atana
Chapter 1
BARELY COVERED IN SHREDS she’d stolen off the dead, she stared at the boy with the ashen skin and sunken cheeks, the muddled image of his face fighting at her side—a fizzling memory. His blue eyes burned like his home, eyes she’d stared at every night for the last thirteen years, eyes with no name.
His emaciated arms wrapped around themselves for warmth, despite the blackening scorch marks appearing on his skin.
“How could you forget me? How?”
Flaming debris ripped by her, sucking the breath from her lungs, before she tumbled into the billowing smoke.
The Earth trembled. Her eyelids fluttered. The screen strapped to her left wrist flashed, the speaker pelting her eardrums with screeching noise. A deep breath in and out processed the adrenaline from her blood stream.
Atana sat up on her sofa, brushing the loose waves from her face with a sigh. The alerts subsided.
She glanced out at the mountains of sand surrounding the city. Resting her elbows on her knees, she wrapped her hands around her neck, digging into the muscles. Massaging the tension away, she felt the smoother texture of the harrowing scars, the ones she longed to forget.
Looking down at her right hand, she palpated a few she had received before the crash, wondering. But it was a futile endeavor. Her memory-visions were what they were, her previous identity a ransacked lair.
Sliding open the security tab on her wristband, she tapped the Call Out button. “Frank, Joe, do you copy?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Frank’s weathered voice replied.
“What was that thundering a moment ago? It woke me.”
“Likely one of our transports doing a fly-by. Couldn’t see it from here.”
“Understood.” She planted her face in her hands. Something wasn’t sitting right in her gut. She trusted few people and, least of all, the skies above.
The calm words of her instructor’s repose voice floated through her mind. Sensei had told her not to fight her instincts. Our consciousness doesn’t always listen to what our subconscious detects. Clear your mind and you will begin to hear.
She took a breath. Wisps of spicy-sweet steam from her Marusa tea drifted upward, folding in layers from the mug on the glass table. Lifting the ceramic burned her fingers. But she held it nevertheless; the calescent sting dissipated. It was her calming drug—the natural replacement for the required shepherds’ serum, a mandated medication. Rio had refused to dose her, and only her, despite Command’s order two decades prior.
Personal emotions never conflicted with her responsibilities. To everyone else, Sergeant Atana was a merciless, unbreakable, effective shepherd. Only she and one other knew the night terrors, the voices, the conjured physical pain from the consternate memories.
The vibration that had woken her moments before wound through her thoughts. The pattern wasn’t right; the amplitude was too great, the frequency too spread. She stood and walked to the wall of windows facing the town’s perimeter.
Staring out through the clear panes at the sand clouds sweeping up and around her battered apartment, she listened. The granules whispered against the steel walls. Her ambuscaded irises patrolled the sun-radiated region, relentless and glacial cold.
A faint image entered her mind, not the rumble she had just heard. This was a set of footsteps.
Running. The tone, volume, and vibration pattern registered at five feet ten inches, weighing in at approximately one hundred sixty-five pounds.
She leapt over the sofa toward the door. Grabbing one of her Standard Issue weapons from the storage slot beneath the intercom, her index finger slid over the trigger. The SI rendered a faint peep, the igniter whirring to life, primed for execution.
The sound waves from a fist on the flat, hollow steel reverberated three times through the surface and into Sergeant Atana’s room. Kicking up the lock handle, she slid the door open with her foot and directed the weapon on-point at the stranger’s nose. A male, mid-twenties, met her gaze. His blue eyes opened wide, his hands lifting in a startled, defensive rush.
Hi, a little apprehensive voice spoke in her mind. Her heart stuttered and kicked into a sprint at the sight of his unnervingly familiar jaw line and cheekbones. His slender form, in a ratted, black sweatshirt and torn jeans, was out of place in such a torrid environment.
“Sahara?”
The young male yelled, his body launching sideways and to the floor. His rough-cut, blond hair shook as he wriggled, trying to break free.
“Stop! I’m Lavrion; she’s my sister!” The hood on his sweatshirt slipped down over his face. “I just want to talk.”
“Sorry, kid.” Joe held the intruder down, a knee between Lavrion’s shoulder blades, awaiting Frank’s arrival. “Restricted area.”
Sergeant Atana dropped her weapon to her side, gazing upon the stray soul at her feet, her heart rate subduing before the alerts from her wristband could manifest.
Frank joined the wrestling men. “Flew right past us, knocked me over.”
Pulling a cataloger out of his pocket, the tip flashed red when he scanned the chip in the left wrist of the jerking body beneath them.
Atana observed Lavrion’s cheek, pressed to the warm floor, purple already tinting his unusually fair skin. His focus jumped to the exposed wristband on her left arm. He now knew what she was. Shepherds were forbidden from interacting with the public. He would have to be monitored.
Standing, the guards faced him down the hall, the way he had come.
Her eyes wandered over the struggling man in their grip. His look of confused rejection didn’t register. “We are orphans, with no family remaining. What you say is impossible.”
“Orders, Sergeant Atana?” Joe asked.
“Detainment, H.Co.,” she replied, imperviously. “He’s clearly mistaken about who he’s searching for. Get his information and put him on the Pending-Restraint list. Then send him on his way. If he tries to contact me again, move him to Active Restraint.”
Catching the glint in her narrowed eyes, which looked at him like he was just another pesky crow at the market, Lavrion stumbled. “What? Human Cataloging? No! You can’t take me there!”
“Yes, ma’am.” Joe dragged the fidgeting man down the hall with Frank’s assistance.
Atana stood in the doorway until they disappeared, staring at the wall, searching her broken memories.
Do I know him?
A weighted sigh manifested from nowhere, vacating her lungs without her consent.
The steel rumbled again, underfoot, sudden trepidation breaking her trance. She scanned through her apartment, out the transparent walls to the sand, an unexplainable chill creeping down her spine. The pulses through the floor grew heavy with increasing amplitude, the source of the disturbance closing in.
No. Don’t let it be—
She ran across the room to the window wall, searching the dunes on the horizon. Several black specks tarnished the otherwise flawless sky. Before she had time to count them, they were blasting down the street-side of her trembling complex and into the town, stirring golden granules up into the air, and fell, an abrading rain.
Her world sank into the abyss. The thundering hum that had woken her was woven through her deepest, most repressed fears.
Her band screeched. She already knew what it said.
Threat Level Delta: Invasion Underway
Initiate Safe House Procedures
Return to Base ASAP
Frank and Joe were escorting the stranger across the soft road toward the Human Cataloging Office and dropped to the ground, cursing. Lavrion scrambled up and sprinted away, his heels flinging hot sand behind him.
She lifted her wristband. “Let him go. We have bigger problems.”
Frank and Joe got up, dusting off their clothes. With a crackling buzz, Lavrion was gone in a flash of coiled, green lightening. Her guards stumbled back in shock. For a moment, her heart leapt into her throat.
Her voice cracked with the force, “Bunker, now!”
Atana slid the SI into one of her thigh holsters, watching the two sergeants frantically hurry inside. Grabbing the gear bag she always kept packed beside her front door and her remaining SI from the storage slot, she flew down the stairs and out the front of her complex.
The sand beneath her boots jostled. She looked the direction of the wave’s origin to find a cylindrical vessel protruding from the earth, fifty kilometers beyond the end of the city. It loomed above the world, extending up into the sky—a ghastly pillar of angry gods. Its surface absorbed light, like a moonless night.
Atana spun around, slinging her bag over her shoulder.
Move.
Across the loose sand, at the end of the road, she scanned the horizon. A dark shape appeared in the hazing sky, the columnar structure plummeting toward the surface. Large panels peeled open, sending it spiraling like a drill bit into the land. Thousands of small propulsion engines sent out bursts, condensing the air into clouds, guiding the ship’s descent. It impacted the Earth, sending out another shockwave of leveling destruction, another pulse beneath her feet.
A thundering rumbled overhead, and she ducked between two buildings on instinct. A mother and daughter ran along the street. Atana tried to yell at them to hide, but the woman disappeared, slung up into the sky by a familiar, green coil. The shadow made another sweep, and the girl was gone.
She knew the chill of the breath-sucking lurch wrapped in a green ribbon and shuddered, pressing herself against a chipped, stone wall.
A horn sounded in the distance.
Atana looked at the first vessel to see the earth near its base sinking. Even at a snail’s pace, she could track it, the column burrowing into her planet.
She was numb inside, callous from her past and her designated duty as a base commander. But the shredded screams around her were the tick of a clock, counting down the time remaining to fight back, if it wasn’t already too late.
Taking one more look at the pandemonium, she followed her guards’ path into the bunker below.
This wasn’t a typical raid. This was beyond the topographical borders created after the world had destroyed itself with the Three Hundred Year War. The Shepherds United had sprung out of those smoldering ashes, a silent force of impartial and united law to restore order amidst chaos, protect all who were innocent, and punish all who were not. And they were effective—her, their top assassin.
But the unexpected hive, the pillars…
They were things above the shepherds’ training. Only she and handful of others might remember something, might have an idea how to save them—might.
Eclipsed
Chapter 2
NO TIME.
She lifted an arm and reared back, eyeing the glass. Leather, she’d discovered, was a suitable outer skin. Even the skin-squeezing corset protecting her marred-up spine beneath her jacket was made of the durable, cellulose material—her chosen color: dried blood.
Her elbow shattered the protective shield with the first strike. Grasping the lever and with a firm tug, she engaged the alarm. Every siren within Nilsa Sand District Eight sounded, directing civilians underground.
Out of the bunker, with guards at her heels, she hustled through kilometers of winding tunnel. Small lamps overhead periodically lit their way, the air musty and damp from the river they approached. She called out over her wristband, “Sand Base Eight, Tango Sierra One One.”
A female voice responded, “This is Dispatch. Go ahead.”
“Initiate Protocol: Safe-House 1.5.” She slammed to a halt at the edge of the Nilsa dam, a hydropower plant, and the desert city’s main lifeline. She could barely make out the dwindling creek at the bottom of the reinforced ravine. Small bits of rock tumbled down the riverbank, from the vibrations originating overhead.
“Roger. Protocol in effect.”
“Dispatch, initiate Utility Conservation Protocol.”
“Roger, initiating Utility Conservation Protocol.”
Sounds of turbines slowing and floodgates closing echoed through the hollow expanse. They were now on emergency systems: batteries and generators. The lights of the passageway went out and flickered on again, though dimmer than before.
They continued on to a seemingly dead-end in the rocky cavern. Atana slid into one of the alcoves, touching the cool rock with the tip of her nose. The scent of wet slate filled her nostrils. Her left eye fixed on a blue dot. A slam of steel bars to her right opened the wall to the comfort of her command outpost: Sand Base Eight.
Scanners in the doorway registered each passing member by their embedded H.Co. trackers and wristband codes, displaying their identities on the screens beside each of the two security guards on duty. The smaller desert base housed twenty-eight R2-level shepherds.
Frank and Joe stood inside the airtight door while it closed. Transparent computer stations hung from the ceiling before them, buzzing with a blur of people monitoring the tumultuous city.
Atana hustled over to Axel and Miranda at the central control desk. “What do we have?”
His fingers danced on the clear, glossy surface, pulling up diagrams of the bunkers and scrolling through shelter summaries. Tapping and sliding open the active video feed logs, his eyes flew through the screens flashing their facial recognition brackets before him with an effectiveness Atana respected.
“Twenty-one percent of the city’s population is inside and climbing.” His onyx irises sorted those remaining on the surface. “According to the information I’m collecting, we can account for approximately fifty-seven percent more of our people, at the moment, with many still disappearing. At the current rate of accumulation, I estimate we will reach a total of sixty percent. The rest are…” He paused, trying to think of the right word. “Being sucked up into the ships.”
“Understood. Miranda, there are two visible pillars from the surface, about fifty kilometers out the east and west sides of the city. I think there’s a connection between our new guests and our low water levels. I want a team to check it out.”
“On it.” Her fingers slid open a message board. “Team?”
“Sidewinder Thirty-six.”
“Roger.” A window popped up, blinking on Miranda’s screen. “Ma’am, we have a message coming in from Home Station.” With a swipe of her finger, she sent the feed to the main display. Only the peeps of the incoming data dared break the silence.
A clean-cut face appeared amidst a neutral palate, his voice similarly smooth and colorless. “Every shepherd able to mobilize is requested on site immediately for Assembly, 0900 hours. Ensure lockdown procedures are in order for the public and stand-ins are appointed as necessary. Set your transports to minimum visibility and low electrical priority. Keep your district links open, pending updates. Assembly will be broadcast live. Be swift in your travels. Home Station out.”
Joe looked at his partner. “No details about our situation?”
Frank’s sidelong glance at him displayed the typical emotionless sag of wrinkles from decades of clenched teeth. “They’re not ready. At 0900, we’ll know what they do.”
Atana returned her attention to Axel and Miranda. “You two are my strongest team. You’re in charge. Spread the remaining field teams to the safe houses and keep Home Station posted.” She spun around to address the rest of the base, directing their attention to the two at the front. “Any of you get any questions, they go through Axel and Miranda, both of them. Understood?”
The crowd acknowledged. Her stand-ins appointed, Sergeant Atana headed to the rear of the building, where their small transport bay was tucked away.
Frank ran up behind her in time to catch the door before it closed. “Atana,” he called. She paused, glancing back at him. “Be careful.”
With a sharp nod, she slipped away.
Tossing her gear into the storage space behind the seat of the personal transport pod, she sprung up and slammed herself into the stiff cushions. Streamlined with six curvilinear airfoils, three directional electromagnetic propulsion thrusters, and a main hydrogen propulsion unit at the rear, sectioned off in quadrants for extra control, the pod was one of the devices inspired by the first alien attacks. Donning the self-designed cranial communicator up and over her head, she flipped the transparent pupil location screen in front of her right eye.
