In A Universe Without Stars 1: Skyeater (7 page)

He
brushes them off and takes a closer look.

He
lurches back, it wasn’t a statue. It is a couple clutching each other in their
last moments, frozen in the moment. Dust covers their dead bodies, bloody tears
on their faces.

Bermea
loses his smile. He hears something, the sunlight is cut off as a shadow comes
overhead.

A
monstrous looking ship, Cell, hovers down the hole. It doesn’t have a clear
shape, it’s a large black oval but it’s covered in weird misshaped ridges.
Hundreds of long thin black pillars stretch out from its nose.

Bermea
just stares at it, it inches closers to him. It hovers for an uncomfortable
amount of time.
I should try to run
is his last thought. Three of the
pillars shoot out and pierces Bermea. He screams as he falls limp and it hovers
out, carrying his body.

---

Kabus’s
body is still pierced with shrapnel. It opens its eyes.

“I’m
sorry…Leif.” It mutters. A light comes down. A seven-foot tall alien projects
from the light. It’s Leif.

“
It’s
okay, my child,” he says in an oddly calming tone. “You
shall be rewarded for your efforts.”

It’s
the same voice from the invasion warning and the same being from the beach.
Leif touches Kabus and both of them disappear in light.

Cole
opens his eyes.
He’s inside a circular empty room. He falls
to his knees panting. Is he in the ship? The lettering SE6 is imprinted in the
middle of the floor.

Behind
him in the wall is a giant curved window. They’re flying through the still blue
sky, away from the battle. The sky is the most beautiful shade of sapphire he’s
ever seen. Whatever those aliens did to the sky has turned night into day.
These guys have some serious technology.

The
room looks like it’s a perfect circle, the drab gray walls seem to absorb
light. The wall and window merge seamlessly at the half way point.

Cole
stays on his knees, he needs time to recollect what happened, to calm the rage
he felt. What was he thinking, how can he be so stupid?

“To
rip god from his heaven?” He lets out a pitiful laugh. It was stupid of him to
think he could stop them. Not like this, he’s done. He’s done caring about
everything.

He
stands when the door opens sideways with a hiss. The alien that took Thora
walks in.

“Hello,
Cole,” he says. Cole moves fast, he swings and shoots a projectile at him. The
alien lifts his hand and the projectile stops in midair.

“Stop,
Cole,” the alien closes his fist.

The
projectile collapses in itself, letting out a small blue poof.

”We’re
on your side,” he says slowly approaching.

His
stilt-like legs somehow move with the grace of a swan. Cole hesitates, he wants
to attack but he actually believes this thing. He must be the one who gave Cole
his power. How easily he stopped the attack. He also has Thora.

“Who
are you?”

“My
name is Jahum and I’m the leader of the Astrons and I’m the one who gave you
your powers.” 

His
mouth doesn’t move when he talks. It’s as if the air around them speaks, it
must be telepathy.

“Cole!”
Julio runs in and bear hugs Cole.

“Holy
crap, you’re alive!” Cole mutters. Julio lets go.

“How
in the hell did you get here?!”

“This
thing saved me, so I just went with it when he said he was on our side.”

That’s
just like Julio, to just
go
with it. Oddly enough, he doesn’t have a
mark on him.

Julio
pulls back and looks at Cole. “Why in the hell are you covered in blood?”

 “Where
is everybody?” Julio asks when Cole doesn’t answer. Cole’s face loses its
color. Julio wasn’t there when it happened, he doesn’t know.

“Erin
is dead and Arnold is missing.” Cole looks at the ground.

Their
deaths were his mistakes.

It
won’t happen again.

Julio’s
smile disappears.

“No,”
Julio mutters. “God dammit!” He steps back and slams his fist into the wall.
“I’ve should’ve been with you guys, I was so fucking stupid to run the other
way.”

Julio
looks down at his feet. Cole places his hand on Julio’s shoulder.

“It’s
not your fault, you couldn’t have stopped what happened.”

Julio
calms down. “You’re right. Here I am just mourning when we have bigger things
to worry about.” Julio looks at Jahum. “And I don’t mean that in a sarcastic
manner. We can hold a funeral and mourn after this war is over.” Julio
straightens back up.

He
recovers quickly. It surprises Cole, but other than comment on it he decides to
just nod, he really doesn’t want that to bring him down now.

There
is always later.

 “I’m
guessing Thora is fine?” Julio asks in a whisper. Jahum just observes them with
his lustrous eyes.

“Where
is she?” Cole states.

“In
a safe place.”

“Where!?”
Cole yells. Cole’s tone doesn’t falter Jahum.

“In
the District of Columbia. Your companions Arnold and Neil are with her.”

Cole
wavers.

Thousands
of miles away all the way across the country? How? Cole knew they were
thousands of years ahead of them but how advanced are they really?

“Washington,
D.C.? How?” Julio asks.

“By
teleportation. The same way we brought you two here.”

Cole
almost forgot, he takes a good hard look at Julio, does he have the power too?
Why else would Jahum save him? Julio’s body is just a little dirty, a few marks
of dirt here and there but there’s no bruises on his body.

“You
said you’re going to give me some answers when Cole gets here so I want them
now,” Julio demands. Jahum approaches them a little closer.

“I’m
the leader of the Astrons, The
Starmakers
. We are an
ancient race. Some of us have been in existence since the earliest
manifestations of this universe and have gained knowledge and powers no human
being has ever seen.”

He
spoke with an incredibly strong air and authority. His voice carries throughout
the room. Cole and Julio would’ve cowered back if it wasn’t for their new found
powers.

“Damn
man, you kind of scare me but I
wanna
see this power
you speak of,” Julio says.

“Powers
such as flight, telepathy, incredible strength and at the peak of our power,
the ability to surpass a physical form and some of us—“, Jahum puts out his
hand and opens it. A small ball of light appears and expands. “Have the ability
to create energy.”

The
blue orb spins like a miniature sun. Cole and Julio stare in awe, squinting
from the brightness. Julio more than Cole, as he hasn’t seen anything like this
before. Their shadows dance on the wall as the light fills the room.

Jahum
slams his hands shut, cutting off the astonishment.

“I
gave you all our power, but I hope we we’re not too late.” Jahum moves his
hands over Julio and Coles faces. “Remember.”

Cole
remembers, the road, the accident, the night Thora said she was going to leave
him.

…

The
world is frozen, a stop in time. Jahum stands in front of Cole’s car, on the
same dark forest road where Cole had his accident. A force field projects from
Jahum, he stands blocking the road. Everything starts to speed up, Cole’s and
Thora’s faces start to light up,
arms
slowly swing up
to brace themselves as they crash.

…

The
trees block the light from the stars above. The road is only a few meters up a
slight dirt hill with skid marks etched into it. Cole’s mangled car is flipped
upside down in the ditch. It’s a twisted mangled mess. It’s somehow in one
piece despite the small metal shards and glass scattered around the ditch.

Thora’s
bloodied body hangs out the car window. A huge gash bleeds from her head, the
blood coating the ground. Cole is knocked out in the driver’s seat still
buckled up, only a little worse for wear.

Jahum
walks through the wreckage. He stops in the middle of it all. Everything starts
to float, lifting off the ground. The car, the glass, every single piece of
debris float up until
it’s
shoulder height to Jahum.
The debris wavers a little, fighting with the gravity of the Earth but it stays
in place.

Jahum
walks to the driver side of the car. Cole’s watch unwraps itself from his arm
and floats toward Jahum through the window. Jahum grabs it, his hand lights up
and the watch beeps. He lets go and it floats into Cole’s pocket.

Jahum
turns to walk but stops. He turns and looks at Thora. Blood drips from a wound
in her chest. With her head and chest injured she’s going to bleed out. A
device appears in his hand, it looks like a remote but has no buttons and only
a small screen.

It
beeps as he moves it over her. A small image of her womb appears on the screen.
A small fetus shows up. She’s pregnant.

The
door explodes off and Thora is ripped out the seat by an invisible force. A
sleeping beauty, she doesn’t wake as she flies through the air. Dead. She stops
in front of him.

Jahum
turns her upright and his hands light up. He moves them over her chest, a large
piece of shrapnel ejects from it and the wound heals, leaving not a single
mark.

He
then moves his hand over to her head, crunching is heard as her skull bones
snap back in place. A siren is heard closing in. Jahum looks content.

Everything
gently floats back to the ground. Jahum looks at Cole one last time. He turns
and leaves as Thora’s eyelids fly open.

…

Jahum
removes his hand from Cole’s and Julio’s head. They both stumble back. He saved
her, he saved Thora. Julio pants and messes with the ring on his left index
finger. Cole wonders what he saw.

“She’s
pregnant
?...
Why did she…I’m a father…Thank you…” Cole
doesn’t know what to say.

It’s
because of this being that Thora and he are alive.

“So
I’m getting my powers from my watch?” Cole asks.

“You
won’t always need it, think of it as a link. Your powers are in their infancy and
in due time you will be able to do what no man has done before.”

But
at what risk?
What does he want Cole to do with it? Cole
doesn’t like where this is going but he has to repay him somehow.

Cole
and Julio glance at each other.

“Don’t
worry, I will brief you more on your situation with the others.”

“Others?”
Julio asks.

“You’re
not the only ones,” Jahum claims. He walks toward the window.

“We’re
here.”

Outside
the window, a monstrous ship appears. It’s has two giant appendages with a
small middle section connecting them both, like a giant H.

Its
dull magenta color seems to take away from the size of it. It has no markings,
it’s like
it’s
one solid piece, except for a small
sliver that opens on its unmarked hull.

They
head toward the sliver. Cole suddenly steps back. The window starts to expand
through the entire room, the walls pulling back like a linear tide until the
ends meet, collapsing into nothing. They stand as if the floor had never left.
The sky and clouds pass under them.

“Wow,”
Julio mutters. They fly through the sliver and land gracefully in a docking
bay.

…

Jahum,
Cole, and Julio walk through a hallway of the ship. It’s less grand than Cole
would’ve thought. The walls and ceiling are a dark, dirty-looking gray, as
though they are made out of concrete, its color sucking the life out of the
dimly lit hall. If Cole didn’t know any better he would say he’s in a prison.
It isn’t building his confidence in Jahum. Not after what he saw in Los
Angeles.

“No
offense, but I expected this to look a little more…I don’t know, epic,” Julio
says.

“As
our need for a physical form rose so did our means of transportation.”

They
turn down another bland hallway, it’s empty except for them.

“Just
a few millennia ago our ships where majestic and emotion inducing; when we
arrived to lesser planets our ships brought the inhabitants to tears and they
worshiped us as gods.”

There’s
nobody here in the halls. Not a single spec of dirt or dust ether.
It’s
haunting.

 “But
as we now strive to survive, we go for a more practical means instead of trying
to show off our power through architecture, not unlike the pharaohs of ancient
Egypt.”

Jahum
speaks with such assurance that Julio doesn’t answer back. It is too literal
for him, the aura and might that Jahum gives off.

“Where
is everybody?” Cole asks.

“We
are a dying race, they’re only a few of us left.”

They
walk to a long window in the hallway that overlooks a giant auditorium. There’s
training equipment littered throughout and the other chosen humans.
Ninety-eight of them to be exact, dressed in navy blue jumpsuits. They’re
training, lifting, sparring, team building, preparing for war.

Six
brown beings that look like Jahum watch over them: the remaining Astrons.

“We’ve
chosen two hundred people to lead the human race to salvation. These are the
ones we manage to save.”

Jahum’s
face seems to show a hint of regret.

“Each
of them have a device, like your watch and ring. Something close and personal
that they hold dear to this world that feeds them their powers.”

Julio
unconsciously messes with his ring again.

“
It’s
syncs our genome with yours to create what you would
call a super human,” Jahum says.

What
made Jahum chose him? Cole wants to ask him why. Why give this power to
somebody who doesn’t want it? Someone who wants to die with the rest? But Cole
doesn’t want to interrupt Jahum. He couldn’t if he wanted to.
The
intimidating tone that Jahum gives off.