In A Universe Without Stars 1: Skyeater (30 page)

She
slides out and slams into a tan wall. She hits the ground hard.

“
Ow
,” she mutters. She just lies still head in her hands.
She doesn’t think she can take any more of this.

“Another
lucky one,” a man’s voice says.

Thora
looks up. There are ten other people with her. All naked and very much human. A
diverse group with a little boy hiding behind what looks like his mother.

In
what looks like a small rectangular tan room. It almost feels like a cage of
some sort. The hole she fell from is gone.

“Wait,
I can move,” she says. She squeezes her hands, she can move again.

“The
numbness wears off almost immediately,” a man says. She looks at a man who
leans against a wall with his arms crossed, he looks Mediterranean and in his
early 30s. It’s the same guy who told her how lucky she was.

She
touches the walls, it feels like pale leather almost as if it’s. “Human skin!?”
Thora yelps

“No
not human but some kind of animal,” the Mediterranean man says. She rubs her
hand against it.

“Where
are we?”

“We
have no idea, but we came to the conclusion that we were the ones who were
‘awake’ when we shouldn’t have been,” the man says. He’s the only one talking
to her, the rest stare down into the ground, defeated.

The
room jolts, Thora clutches hard on the wall as the rest slip and fall as the
room jumbles around, like rocks getting shaken in a jar. A turbine
like
sound is heard outside, lights sheen through
the cloth like wall. There moving, but where?

Thora
wants to find out. While everyone else struggles to stand, Thora peers into the
cloth, trying to see past the thin material.

But
they come to a quick stop.

They
can’t be heading to their deaths since the Eliite had a chance. Thora thinks on
it. But maybe they’re going to experiment on them since whatever was supposed
to keep them asleep didn’t work. Thora frantically looks around, the idea of
them cutting her open while she’s still alive becoming a bigger and bigger
possibility in her head. That’s the only reason they would keep them alive.

“We
have to get out of here!!” Thora screams.

The
floor suddenly gives out. They all scream as they fall into a glass windowed
room. Thora lands hard on the hay covered floor. She looks up, it was actually
a short drop. She struggles to her feet. She wiggles her toes on the hay, it’s
actually not hay but it looks like it, it’s covered in a soft hair like
material. 

She’s
in what looks like a giant hamster cage, plush like chairs are littered around
the hay like floor, there’s two giant bowls with what looks like food and an
exercise area with a giant wheel and dumbbells. The floor outside is filled
with other cages, with other ‘things’ in them.

“Hey
guys,” she says. Nobody replies.

“Hey!”
She finally looks toward the front. The rest just stare out the window.

She
finally looks up.

It
all hit her at once. Her mouth falls open.

“Oh,
my god…”

Past
their glass cage and out the giant window out of the large building their in.
They’re in a giant city, a city much like theirs, like New York City, except
everything is much
much
larger and oddly alien. Tall
skyscrapers pierce into the sky, dark ruby red and sapphire blue buildings
shine in the sky. A miniature star shimmers bright making the skyscrapers cast
a shadow down on the building she’s in. There is hundreds of them spreading out
she doesn’t know how long.

They’re
caged in a pet shop,
Eliite Pet Wonders
, cooped up like animals to be
sold off to some Serephin couple.

Out
the window, Serephins walk on the sidewalks and streets like it is a regular
day. Business men rush to their office jobs, parents hasten their kids so they
can make it to school on time, Cleaners pick up trash off the odd vehicle less
street and regular Serephins just going about their day.

An
entire advance society in a ship. Thora moves closer to the front and presses
her hands into the glass. She gets a better view. There’s another side, another
city floating upside down above them. She squints to look closer. The other
side has less sky scrapers and has more residential like buildings, houses, she
guesses. And parks and schools. It’s a suburb. A stark contrast to the city on
her side.

The
star floats between both sides, a yellow force field protects it. Small wisp of
clouds float carelessly in the sky as hundreds of ships populate it, personal
ships for Serephins who could afford it, business ships for booming businesses,
and with this economy
,
business is booming,
and a few faires doing their rounds. All going about their normal day as if
they’ve never even invaded another planet.

Thora
falls back onto the ground, the wonder of it all crashing down on her. This is
amazing, it’s another alien civilization. And she’s nothing but a prisoner of
war to them.

“No,”
she mutters.

She
brings up her knees and put her head in them. This isn’t a war to them.

It
never was.

A
young Kabus sits
at a white ceramic desk. It lies against a wall in his room. He’s only
seventeen human years old. A toddler in Serephin years. He leans back in his
chair and stares at a display tablet in front of him.

Complex
equations and quotations fill the screen. Complex for a human, but child’s play
for a young Serephin.

He’s
nervous, not about the written test he’s about to take, he’s got that one in
the bag, but of the test itself. The test to become a god.

The
television is on, he zones out, lost in his thoughts of what could possibly go
wrong. A siren echoes through the room. An emergency warning comes on the
television.

“This
is a red level warning. General
Ical
and the
Numenwolfe suggest staying in your households and activating your automatic
security measures. If you leave your homes, stay near emergency shelters. Our
intelligence officers have intercepted a message from the Jour race. A raiding
fleet is coming within the next few days. Expect contact any time before then”

The
warning turns off, his regularly scheduled cartoons comes back on.

The
Jours
. A rather powerful race, they were the second
strongest in the SE6 council. The Serephins were first.

But
that was before the betrayal and before the powers in play were shifted. They
match the Eliite in the number of ascended. He looks out his window.

In
a four-passenger ship flying over the ground, Kabus stares outside the window.
It’s a small craft, only as large as a minivan, but it only supports four
passengers. Kabus’s mom is in the driver seat. She doesn’t look too happy. But
besides that she’s a stunning Serephin woman. It’s
where
Kabus gets his good looks from.

“So
it didn’t get canceled?” Kabus asks her.

“No,
it’s not canceled,” she says, there is a coldness in her voice. No invasion is
going to stop it, it’s far too important.  No matter if the Jour are
trying to stop what they’re trying to do and no matter that they were a council
member.

She’s
worried.

He
is, too. In the back of his head he kind of wanted it to be canceled too, even
if he wants to do this. Because the price of failure is pretty high and
so are the
chances.

He
stares into the clear blue sky. Numenwolfe floats in the middle, giving off his
heat.

“Are
you sure you don’t want to become a Damon? Being an alpha isn’t as great as it
sounds,” she says, worry on her face. Becoming a Damon is easier.

“No.”

It’s
all or nothing, if his life is useless he wants to ascend to be the greatest,
if not, why
live
at all. He stares out the
window as his mother just stares ahead.

Kabus
and his mother walk into a large waiting room.
They're
at the Eliite military research base. The place where the newest of the Eliite
technology comes from.

The
room is a giant open space filled with chairs, there are a hundred other
Serephin kids with their parents. All are handpicked, based on their genes just
like Kabus, the most practical candidates. 

They
walk farther into the room and find seats. Before they can sit down a women in
a lab coat runs up to them.

“Kabus?”
she asks. She has his photo on a tablet she’s holding.

“Yes.”
Kabus replies.

“You
can sit over here.” She points to a small closed off section over in the
corner. There’s a sign that says Alpha candidates. There’s only twenty of them.

“The
other seats are for Damon candidates unless you’ve changed you mind?” she asks.
She looks at his mother, who just looks at her son.

“No.”

The
woman leaves to
greet
another person entering,
Kabus and his mother sit in their designated area. He looks at the Damon
wannabes. Cowards, all of them. The same candidates can attempt to become an
alpha, a true ascended, a god. But they
all
fear failure.

The
Alpha candidates are shuttled through a hallway. Kabus stops when he sees a
large metal circular door. ‘DO NOT ENTER UNLESS AUTHORIZED’ is printed on it in
large red letters. The rest of the candidates are going into a room right next
to it. Two Damon guard the door.

Inside
of the room there are twenty desks with computers laid out like a school room.
The women who greeted him stands at the front.

“Chose
a desk and we’ll begin the test, once completed we’ll chose at random who will
go first.” She waves to a single door to her side.

Kabus
chooses a desk near the back and sits. The others fill the seats.

“You
may
now
begin and good luck.”

It’s
an hour after the test. Kabus still sits at his desk. There’s only two of them
left. The women at the front looks grim while she flips through her tablet.

“Linus,”
she announces.

A
boy at the front stands up, the door in the front opens, there’s only darkness
behind it. The boy walks slowly through it. The door slams shut behind him.

Kabus
is now alone.

Nobody
has come out of that room. They all ‘failed’. He suddenly gets nervous. He is
going to survive. He’s going to be the first to ascend using this method. He
keeps telling himself that to calm himself.

Maybe
he should’ve became a Damon after all. Over five-hundred candidates since this
program has started and none have survived, while the Damon program has a
forty-five percent success ratio. And they don’t die if they fail. He should’ve
just waited to ascend naturally. Maybe somebody did pass it and the door is
somewhere else.

“Kabus.”

It’s
his turn. He walks up to the door. The door opens, there is only darkness. The
room of deconstruction. He’s lying to himself, he is afraid of death, looking
into the blackness of the room he’s starting to realize it. Nobody survives
this.

The
ripping apart of the consciousness. His heart drops and he steps in. He doesn’t
know what’s powering him forward. Maybe he can survive it, a small pointless
hope went through his mind.

This
is the price of trying to become a god.

It’s
hours later, deep in the blackness of space. A single small ship floats
millions of miles away from the Eliite mothership. But to the Eliite it’s like
it’s the neighbor next door. It’s the Jour, a scout ship; it watches as it
prepares to flee. The ship transmits to ships covered in darkness. Initiate
attack. 

On
Caelacis, alarms ring out over the city. “Invasion imminent.” Buildings
emergency alarms go off. Metal shutters covers every building on the Caelacis.
Rail gun turrets spring up on top of them. Civilians empty
the
streets and run to the buildings next to them
with an odd sense of efficiency. With a mission like the Eliite, they’re
prepared for almost anything.

In
a star system millions of light years away from earth, an unfinished Caelacis,
the Skyeater, orbits a giant desolate asteroid. Only a half dome cup with a
blue shield covers its top half. Hundreds of ships suddenly surround it.

In
a command room, General
Ical
stands watching a giant
screen in the front of the room. On the screen the Caelacis is being swarmed by
hundreds of ships. In a direct battle the Jour has the advantage.

“Release
the faires and contact Leif,”

In
the skies over Caelacis, the blueness is suddenly pierced with hundreds of
mirror thin beams ripping through the cloudless sky. The sky explodes into
flames.

Hundreds
of Jour ships cleave through the flames and down toward the ground. Faires fill
the air and intercept them. The jour fire and blue laser like pillars erupt
from their ships and rips into the faires, right through their shields.

The
turrets of the ground fires at them, but it just bounces off their shields. The
Jour raid the ground, houses are left burning in their wake. It’s a completely
one sided battle.

Leif
stands at his crystal throne, he watches the battle unfold around him. He is
unseen to them as he’s the star of this ship and its leader.

Ical
appears in front of him, floating
over the battlefield as well. “The Jour have vastly improved since our last
battle.”

“They
have not been standing still, they want our people dead and they will do
anything to stop us,” Leif says.

Ical
troops are getting massacred. The
single flaw that the Jour made was they didn’t send an ascended. “I’m going to
join.”

He’s
an
alpha he can change this battle quickly, they
don’t have enough forces yet after the betrayal, their mother ship isn’t even
finished and they’re forces are too spread out. Their defense capabilities are
impaired.

“No.”

“What?”
Ical
asks.

“Wait.”

“I’m
not going to wait while my men are getting killed. Unless you are going to stop
this I’m going to join
in.
We are the only two
ascended on this ship.”

Leif
looks at the research center, the only place with
it’s
defense mechanisms turned off. The rooftop splits
apart.

“They
are three of us now. Watch.”

Hundreds
of lights float up into the air. A single person flies up into it.

“Their
single mistake was underestimating what we
are
capable
of
doing
,”
Leif says.

It’s
Kabus, he lights up and every Jour
ship explodes in the sky.