The pilot, p.1
The Pilot, page 1
Copyright © 2025 by Hidden Gnome Publishing
Book and cover design by Patrick Foster
Cover painting by Simon Carr/www.scarrindustries.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval without permission in writing from the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either 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.
Ebook ISBN 978-1-970475-00-5
HiddenGnome.com
1025
CONTENTS
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Space Bloopers 4: A New Bloop
Crew Data
The Zenith Devices
Common Knowledge of the Galaxy
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About the Author
Also by Will Wight
PROLOGUE
At the edge of the Visiria system, Aila hunted giant insects.
The spawn of the D’Niss were only tiny from the perspective of a starship. Or when compared to the titanic creatures that spawned them, but those greater D’Niss had all been destroyed.
In that battle, many of the lesser spawn had died too. But not all of them. When she came face-to-face with a ten-foot mantis lurking in an abandoned refueling station on a barren planet, she found calling them “giant” was perfectly warranted.
The creature sprang out from behind a fuel tank, spreading rainbow wings that radiated the hypnotic madness of Subspace. It struck with its bladed forelegs as the prey was stunned.
Aila cackled as she cut off the striking arm.
“Bad little bug!” Aila chided. She gave it a broad, mocking grin. “Let this be a lesson to you.”
She stepped forward as if she meant to attack, though her Combat Art didn’t actually allow that. If it fled instead of striking back, she would have to stab it the old-fashioned way.
But the cornered mantis slashed its remaining arm in panic, and Aila moved according to the Watchtower Stance. Her blade intercepted the attack again, slashing off the other arm. Her force-blade broke under the strain, so she tossed it aside and pulled another one from a pocket of Subspace.
She didn’t need it. The fight had gone out of the enemy with its blood.
Aila dropped the Combat Art, breaking her stance, and stood over the bug as it bled out. Her Aethertech eyes scanned the creature, searching for transmissions.
The bugs had a psychic link to one another. It was supposed to be broken with their masters dead, but Aila had to see for herself. She didn’t trust much about the Subline reports.
But the bug only chittered as its wings faded and it fell to the ground.
No cry for help.
A red glow lit the concrete floor around her as a handful of Visiri landed nearby. They weren’t military or even security forces, but they looked dangerous enough as they settled down from their levitation. Their energy shone in strong red auras around them, and they all wore patchwork clothes covered in slashes and blood.
Each one clutched at least one weapon, which ranged from Alliance-issued automatic rifles to steel rods that looked as though they’d been torn from a wall.
The man in the lead cleared his throat. “Why torture it?”
“Why not?” Aila countered. “That’s what they deserve.”
She hadn’t been torturing it, really. She’d been testing it, but why bother explaining? The misunderstanding was more fun.
Several of the Visiri murmured agreement or approval. One said, “You’re lucky there was only one.”
Aila grinned in his direction. “Not that lucky.”
“Stick with us,” another said. “We’ve sent out a distress signal. Help should be here soon.”
They assumed she was one of the refueling station staff, stranded on-planet by the battle. Well, they assumed wrong.
“Here I am!” Aila spread her arms. “And here I go. My work here is done.”
As the shadows reached out to grab her for a micro-dive through Subspace, she caught a glimpse of a Visiri in the back of the group nudging open a door. He stepped back with a shout.
Aila chuckled to herself as she was embraced by the shallowest layer of Subspace, the zone of pure darkness. She knew what he’d seen inside.
The dozens of bugs she’d already killed were strewn across the halls. It had been a long day, and her job was just beginning.
There were many other distress signals out there.
She emerged onto the bridge of her personal starship, picked the closest call for help, and shot off to answer it.
Aila was an experienced Combat Artist and her Aethertech augmentations gave her significant advantages, but that didn’t make her an expert in fighting the D’Niss. Sometimes she cleared out a station with her sword and delivered the survivors to safety, but sometimes she was overwhelmed by an unexpected swarm or got caught in an exploding starship.
Each time, she pulled herself back together and went back to work.
People were in danger. Saving them was just the right thing to do.
Especially considering she could walk away from anything.
The days added up until she’d spent a solid week on the front lines of the Visiria relief effort. She didn’t bother counting the number of bugs she’d killed or people she’d flown to safety.
But each time she saved someone, she asked them their story. They all had something to say about The Last Horizon.
“They killed the big ones, but where are they for the small ones?”
“The Zenith Starship didn’t fight. They brought the bugs here.”
“I was in the Prime Arena. I heard the Captain threaten to drown our planet with my own ears. They’re no friends to Visiria.”
The perspective of the Visiri varied widely, from faith that The Last Horizon had fought to save their system to certainty that the Zenith Starship was out for blood.
Aila had formed her own opinion. In her view, The Last Horizon was reckless and irresponsible. They had started a fight, dragged a populated star system into it, and failed to properly clean up after themselves.
Besides the Visirian Navy, the most significant force in the relief effort was a fleet of strange, unaffiliated starships crewed by androids.
Aila first saw them while she was hovering in space, slowly cutting away pieces of a damaged starship cabin to free the people inside. A blue-green shuttle flew up next to her without a word, opened a hatch, and dumped dozens of ramshackle androids into vacuum.
She’d prepared herself to fight, but the robots ignored her. Each singular purple eye was focused on the job, and they’d cut open the cabin and freed the people in seconds.
She didn’t know where they came from, but those ships had saved thousands of lives.
Then again…
The ships did vaguely resemble The Last Horizon. She knew the Zenith Starship was somehow associated with the Rebel Queen, but she wasn’t certain if it had a fleet of its own. Maybe she should check.
She tapped into her personal console, which was beneath a plate of false skin in her left forearm.
Yellow sparks flickered across the console as she accessed the Subline.
Aila’s eyes widened. Her console shouldn’t malfunction. Certainly not with visible sparks. But she didn’t feel anything, and didn’t detect a problem.
She’d need to get a Technician to take a look. If her augmentations were failing, she was about to have some serious problems.
The first reports she saw from the Subline weren’t what she expected. She’d tried to search for a connection between the unnamed ships of dark metal and the Zenith Starship, but what popped up instead was an article about the presumed crew.
Strange, but still interesting.
Varic Vallenar was the Captain, but everyone knew that. She glanced over his publicly available profile: an Archmage of sealing and binding with access to various other kinds of magic.
Nothing new there, and certainly nothing that would answer her questions about the ships. She flipped ahead to the Engineer.
Mell D-One-Twenty-Five. Unusual
Aila inspected her profile. Mell could very well be the one responsible for the robotic crews of the relief ships, but there wasn’t enough detail to tell. That was the problem with publicly available Sublines.
Well, if The Last Horizon had helped save the victims of the battle, she would think a little better of them. Not that it mattered, ultimately. They had nothing to do with her.
Before closing the article, she idly flipped to the next page.
Unknown Role. Possibilities: Pilot, Gunner, Chief of Security.
The words didn’t grab her. The picture did. A brown-haired human man with a horrific grin and a gleaming orange Aethertech eye.
Stunned, Aila stared for far too long.
“Ship,” she said, her voice strained. “Call Jak.”
The generic AI in her starship responded in a neutral voice. “The distance from Visiria to Zykaros might result in low-quality audio, or an interruption of—”
“Chatter, chatter, chatter. Do I keep you around to talk? Make the call.”
A flash of light caught the corner of her eye. It resembled a single yellow spark, but rather than flying from her console, it was rolling across the ship’s console.
Aila didn’t notice immediately. She was still staring at the familiar picture.
Only a second later, the call connected. That was quick. And Jak’s voice came through so clearly that she could even hear the strained panic he was trying to suppress.
“Hey, Mom,” Jak said. “This isn’t really the best time…”
“Jak, Jak! Isn’t it always a perfect time to talk to your mother?”
He forced a laugh. “I’m in a meeting, and everything’s going well, I swear, but I’ll have to call you back later.”
Jak was almost fifty, and he’d insisted on inheriting the company, but he was still a kid.
“Sure, why not?” Aila said casually. “First, put your grandfather on.”
“…I would. I will! He’s around. But like I said, this meeting—”
“I’m looking at a Subline report that says he’s flying around the Visiria system in a Zenith Device. Is that true, Jak?”
She could practically hear him sweating for several seconds before he broke. It didn’t take long.
“It wasn’t my fault!” Jak cried. “He didn’t give me a chance to stop him! His contract with the Starship broke our hold over him, and I haven’t been able to get him back home! I’m not happy with it either, I’ll tell you. Do you know how many times I’ve almost been shot?”
Aila glared at the monitor, though it was an audio-only call. “Quit. Better yet, sell the company. Or burn it, that could be fun.”
“I’m the president of a galactic corporation, Mom, I’m not going to quit. And it has our family name on it. I won’t let it go that easily.”
Sprouting several hands to manipulate the controls, Aila input some coordinates and primed her ship’s Subspace Drive. “You can do whatever you want with the company, but the Grave Hound needs a leash. I’m headed back to Zykaros.”
“No! Why don’t you stay on a colony? I’ll bring the kids to visit you, like last time!”
“Jak!” Aila shouted. “It’s safer to fly a ship with a faulty drive than let your grandfather loose on the galaxy. He’s dangerous, do you understand?”
There came another pause before Jak sighed. “That, I never forget. See you when you get home.”
Aila hung up the call as the Subspace warp bloomed in front of her ship like a shining rainbow flower.
As it did, a handful of yellow sparks flickered over her controls. It was impossible to miss them.
The Aethertech in her eyes scanned the phenomenon and found nothing. That meant it was either nothing or a serious threat.
And ‘nothing’ didn’t repeat itself three times.
Aila slammed the ship console, initiating the emergency abort. Nothing happened. She hit the brakes again and again, but her starship continued its Subspace dive uninterrupted. Shutters slid down over her forward viewport and her trip continued.
She considered leaping out herself.
For most people, getting stranded in Subspace was the worst way to die, but Aila had an internal Drive of her own. But it was hard to justify abandoning her entire starship.
Even if it exploded around her, she should be fine. Her reserve of mass had been depleted by her recent regenerations, but there was still enough left.
Aila spent the next few hours checking everything in her ship she could reach. She found nothing wrong.
But when she emerged from Subspace and the shutters folded back up, she didn’t recognize her surroundings.
It certainly wasn’t Zykaros, her home planet. Not enough smog for that. She was headed toward a small, frozen world with little sign of civilization.
She tried to pilot away, but her controls ignored her. She was on her way into the atmosphere whether she liked it or not.
Whoever the yellow sparks belonged to, they obviously wanted her on this…nowhere ball of ice.
As her ship started atmospheric entry, another strange thing happened. This time, she saw no sparks, but something popped up in her eyes nonetheless. A message.
Would you like to compete for control of the Zenith Blade?
YES – NO
Her optical feed wasn’t so easy to break into. Her body was almost entirely made of high-grade Aethertech.
But the mention of a Zenith Device explained everything. Her expectations went soaring. She wouldn’t have expected the Zenith Blade to have the ability to hack into her processor or take over her ship remotely, but who knew what the most powerful creations of ancient humanity could do?
Without hesitation, she selected ‘YES.’
Her vision vanished.
She found herself standing on a featureless stone platform floating in an endless void. A sword hovered point-down in the center of that platform.
Aila had expected to see a force-blade, but it was instead an actual, metal sword. Made all from one piece of steel, or so it seemed. A flat, double-edged blade with a sharp tip that gleamed as it slowly rotated in place.
A voice echoed from the sword, but it didn’t start with words. It began with a sigh.
“I’m not giving you a chance just because Prism sent you,” the Blade warned.
Aila adopted an expression of exaggerated confusion. “Who?” She didn’t stop moving toward the sword.
“Don’t lie to me,” the Blade said with another sigh. “I don’t have time for it.”
“Hmmmmm, I won’t say I’m not a liar, but I don’t know a Prism.” She considered that for a second. “I don’t know anyone named Prism. I know some prisms.”
The sword stopped its gradual rotation and drifted over to her, floating around her body as though examining her. “Somebody brought you here, right?”
“That’s very, very interesting. I thought it was you. Yellow sparks?”
“My brother, Void Prism. The Zenith Processor.” The sword flew around her. “Well, at least he didn’t send me someone unqualified.”
Aila gave him a grin and extended an extra hand. “Sounds like we have a deal.”
“Slow down, there. There are fifty more Combat Artists on this planet, and you’ve got to show me you’re the best one.”
Aila stretched as though warming up, but her joints bent unnaturally far. “And how do you want me to do that?”
“How do you think?”
“Excellent.”
“One more warning: I don’t like Prism. He sent you here as part of some complex plan, but I don’t care about all that. If you and I end up working together, we might find ourselves fighting him.”
