Shattered Destiny: A Galactic Adventure, Episode One (9 page)

I had always loved Arteria. From her perfect
visage to her truly kind nature, she was my oasis from my
family.

If I were to marry her, all my troubles
would be washed away. I would no longer have to roam the galaxy
searching for the Zorv.

But there was one
problem
. A
problem that never went away.

She wasn’t my betrothed.

While Arteria could satisfy my heart, she
could never satisfy tradition.

I pushed away from her hand and began pacing
again.

Arteria watched me with a worried gaze.
“Xarin, everything will be alright. Trust me.”

My lips curled up into a
defeated smile at that. Not at the offer to trust her – as I’d do
that readily – but at the statement that everything was
alright
.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

“No matter what happens, I will wait for
you on the home world.” She dropped her hands and clutched them
reverently as she turned her gaze on me.

Her eyes were the deepest green color. They
were lit up like a constellation, and drew you in with the ease of
a hand around your wrist.

I found myself taking a hasty step
forward. “… Arteria, I have no idea how long I’ll be out here. The
Zorv—”

“Will be defeated soon,” she said without
pause. She spoke with such conviction I almost believed her
promise.

Then reality sank back in as an alarm blared
through my room.

I shifted over my shoulder and stared at a
screen that protruded from the nearest wall.

“…
I have to go.” I took another
forced step away from her.

“Xarin?” She reached out a hand to me, her
hair shifting over her shoulder as her eyes drew wide.

I swiped a hand to my left and the
communication ended, her hologram disappearing in a spark of light
like a star dying.

I stared at the spot her bare feet had stood
upon until another pitching alarm stole my attention away.

I closed my eyes for a brief
second and activated my communication implant. “On my way.”
I
spun
around and headed out the door.

I was on my own private deck.

No one should be here except for me, and yet
as I exited, I felt something.

A sudden surge of emotion that
charged up my back and sank through my
gut
with all the vicious speed of a brutal punch.

My eyes plastered wide open as I scanned
both ends of the corridor. My hand even went for my blade.

…
But there was nothing out
there.

Except the sensation that kept climbing my
back.

It felt as if there was some
kind of… presence out there
. A ghostly apparition.

Yet just as I sank my mind into that
terrifying sensation, it passed.

The com panel to my side beeped once more,
reminding me of the warning.

And I pressed on.

…

Shar

Mark was nice.

A part of me – the suspicious part that
always strove to keep me alive – wondered why.

What could a man like
Mark
hope to achieve by being nice to a woman like
me?

I was no fool. The years had not been kind
to me. I had no access to advanced genetic technology, and I could
not hold back the wrinkles or sun damage.

I’d
cut most
of my hair off years ago, and kept it trimmed save for two
thick, beaded, threaded
plaits
that grew along my
temples and hung down my back.

No one had ever described me as
pretty, and never would.
I
was gritty, less of
a woman and more of a survival machine.

It didn’t bother me, but again it made me
question what Mark’s agenda could be….

He continued to lead me through the
ship.

I had not been able to appreciate how big it
truly was. I had never seen anything on this scale, nor of this
sophistication.

The modern galaxy was a mix of
technologies, old and new. It all came down to what you could
afford, and as I strode through the clean, clinical corridors of
the
Illuminate
, I realized there was nothing the Arterians could not
afford.

“The primary operations room is this way,”
Mark continued, never dropping his friendly tone or countenance. He
was acting as if we’d been friends all our lives.

…
And it was having an
effect on me, however subtle.

I did not trust easily, and yet
I felt myself
warming
to him.

I even smiled.

I’d taken my armor off, leaving it in the
armory for a few final touch ups.

There was nothing to hide my expression.

Mark saw my smile, and his eyes lingered on
it for a split second. Then he brought a hand up and patted it
along his smooth skull.

I was momentarily taken in by the look in
his eyes.

Then we reached a heavy set of red doors.
Though the whole ship was impressive, there was something even more
imposing about these.

Mark straightened his back and nodded
towards them. “We’re about to enter the primary operations room.
You will need to be on your best behavior. Stick with me, do what I
say, and don’t touch anything.”

Though I wasn’t the dutiful type, for some
reason I snapped a salute.

Mark grinned.

I found my eyes locking on that grin as he
turned away and strode towards the doors.

They opened as he approached.

…
And I stared in at
an-awe-inspiring
sight.

It was a sprawling room set on three
different levels, packed with banks of consoles and view screens,
and completely teeming with crew.

The crew were so busy none of them bothered
to look up as Mark strode in.

He wasn’t wearing his
armor
. As I cast
around, I realized that apart from a
few security personnel, most people simply wore
fatigues.

Obviously they thought this ship was
safe.

I doubted that. I couldn’t shake the feeling
this place was cursed.

I kept on my toes as I followed Mark. He
said very little as he walked around and completed a few tasks.

I watched him, and though I had a hard time
understanding most of the systems he interacted with, it was
instructive.

It was when we were roughly on the far side
of the operations room that an alarm suddenly blared through the
room.

The scurrying crew stopped, backs snapping
so straight they looked like daisies popping out of a field.

“Shit,” Mark spat, eyes bulging wide as he
twisted and half-ran towards a man in the center of the
room.

From his attire and the stripes down his
shoulder, it was clear he was the captain.

With no idea what to do, I pressed as close
as I could towards Mark without getting in anyone’s way.

“It’s a civilian transport, non Arterian,”
the captain said.

Mark swore again.
“Is Xarin on his
way?”

The captain
nodded.

Mark turned and swooped his attention across
the room until he locked in on the lift doors on the far wall.

…
Xarin.

Oh god, I was about to see Xarin again.

That realization flooded through my heart
and bled through my chest as if someone had punctured my
ventricles.

Without my helmet, it was hell to control my
expression.

I kept telling myself there was no earthly
reason to react like this around the prince – I despised royalty.
The very idea of it was anathema to everything I believed in. The
Arterians and their traditions were responsible for most of the
inequity in the galaxy, inequity that had directly led to my brutal
life.

So I tried to harden my expression as the
doors finally opened and he swooped in.

He was not wearing his armor.

That point somehow stuck in my mind and
washed away my anger.

He was completely exposed.

Fear settled in my gut so quickly, it was as
if it appeared with the speed of a photon.

I even brought a twitching hand up and
locked it on my middle.

I wanted to be angry at Xarin –
he’d virtually kidnapped me and brought me
aboard
this ship. And yet all I could think about was how much of
an idiot he was for taking his armor off….

He may think his ship was safe, but life had
taught me over and over again that nothing in this universe came
without danger.

Xarin swooped across the room.

He came to a stop before
the captain and
Mark.

Suddenly every crew member in the room
straightened, tucked a hand against their chest, and bowed low.

Every crew member, except for me.

I looked around confused.

All eyes locked on
me
, and for the first time since entering the room, Xarin
deigned to look at me.

“Bow,” the captain said through stiff
lips.

Though I really didn’t
want
to
, I could read the captain’s mood. If I
chose not to bow, it would be the final move I’d ever
make.

I flicked my gaze to the side and locked in
on some crew members who were still bowed, and tried to copy their
posture.

The prince extended a hand at me, the
fingers wide. Without looking at me, he muttered, “Don’t bother,”
through stiff white lips.

Then he turned his full attention on the
captain, practically shunting his back in front of me until all I
could see was his broad shoulders.

“When will we intercept,”
Xarin
demanded
.

The captain
straightened up from his bow.
“We have not yet altered
our
course.”

“Alter it now,” Xarin’s voice became dark.
“We have no time to waste.”

The captain
briefly shared a look with
Mark. Though I tried to stare around Xarin’s shoulder, I couldn’t
see exactly what that look was.

“We do not technically need to intercept,”
the captain said carefully, very carefully. “It is not an Arterian
transport.”

Anger suddenly punched through
my gut as I realized what
the captain was getting at.

Sure, there were 2000 people on that
transport, but they weren’t Arterian, so who cared.

I could no longer control my expression.
If it weren’t for Xarin’s broad form blocking me off, I would have
locked my mutinous glare on the captain.

Xarin brought up a hand.
The
move
was even more swift and hard than the one
he’d used to dismiss me minutes ago. “We will intercept. I don’t
care who’s on that transport. All that matters is the Zorv are
about to attack it.”

I wanted to keep hating
the
prince –
but in that moment, for just a single second, my thoughts aligned
with his.

Perhaps he was doing this for his own
benefit, but he was still going to save those people.

As my chest swelled with an odd sense of
pride, my gaze flicked to the side.

For some reason it locked on a crewmember
pushing forward.

Slowly, with measured movements.

Their expression was….

I acted. No, my body did. It rounded my
shoulder and shoved it hard into Xarin’s back, knocking him off
balance just before a blaster bullet could slice him through the
middle.

It sliced through the top of my shoulder,
instead. It didn’t drive down to the bone, but it took off a chunk
of my flesh, and blood splattered over the floor by my
feet.

It should have been enough to send me into a
deep sense of shock.

Instead I punched forward, thrust right
past the captain, and locked my hands on the rail that separated
his small circular raised platform from the rest of the operations
room.

It had been barely a few seconds since that
officer had tried to shoot Xarin – still, a few seconds was enough.
Before the guards scattered around the room could get to the
officer, he brought up his gun to fire again.

I had no intention of letting him pull the
trigger.

I slammed my hands on the rail and vaulted
right over the top of it, kicking out at the same time, pressing
both feet together and snagging the guy on the back of his
shoulder.

How I managed to reach him, I
didn’t know, but w
e both went down.

The guy still had the blaster in his grip,
and he tried to shunt it against my face as he fired again.

I jerked back just in time, the white-hot
blast searing the skin along my cheek.

He managed to lock his hand on my damaged
shoulder, and he dug his fingers in.

I screamed, but I also brought up my good
elbow and plunged it into his gut. Just as it sank against his ribs
with the force to crack bone, I extended my hand and slammed the
back of it into his nose.

His nose broke with a satisfying crack, and
blood splattered his cheeks.

I brought my foot around, kicked him in the
gut once more, then punched him in the face.

This time he went down. For good.

Xarin’s guards flooded towards
us, whipping their guns out and fixing them on the
man.