Shattered Destiny: A Galactic Adventure, Episode One (3 page)

The Assassin inclined her head towards the
merchant. “Argoza sector?”

“A fuel refinery worker. Blaster is yours.
Take it.”

“The owner’s not here?” the assassin
asked, though she knew the answer.

Anger started to burn in her gut. She’d come
this far, but she would still have to crawl further….

“Argoza sector,” the merchant said,
gurgling through his words as fear constricted his
throat.

Bitter realization sank through the
assassin’s gut as she shrieked with anger.

Without even thinking of it,
she clutched the gun from her side,
spun
,
and without
even
locking eyes on the man, shot the
trader.

She shrieked, letting her full
anger punch from her throat. Then she clutched the scarf and gun
and
strode
from the room.

She would claim that woman’s body and burn
it to ashes.

But first, the assassin would have to head
to the Argoza sector….

…

Shar

I can’t tell you where I learnt
to fight. It just happened. My life had never been an easy one,
and
destiny
had somehow conspired to throw every
danger my way since the day I’d been born.

I had always fended for myself.
Belonging to a lower class of the socio-economic strata, there was
no one I could rely on
but
myself.

If I wanted to live, I had to fight.

So I fought.

As the breakers kept throwing
themselves at me, in a swarm of teeth and tusks and claws, I used
every weapon at hand. At one point I even locked my blaster on a
section of the door, blew it off, and used it as a ramp to push
several breakers right
over
the edge of the
rails.

I didn’t wait to hear their
bodies crash below, because in all likelihood, they wouldn’t. The
breakers didn’t just have an advantage in numbers, but they were
some of the hardiest enemies I’d ever fought. They could latch
those suckers on the ends of their hands and feet onto most
surfaces
. Sure enough, far below, down the base of the
tower, I heard more rattling thumps as the breakers latched onto
it. They, like the rest of their kind, would power up the side of
the tower to join the fight.

I knew I had one option. Get out of here,
get on my bike, and get back to the facility.

Though the breakers would give chase, they
would not pass the border and back into the primary facility
grounds. They weren’t that stupid. The perimeter was protected by
ion pulse cannons that could easily isolate the breakers and pick
them off through the sand. Why the facility engineers didn’t build
more ion cannons this far out, had to do with one simple fact – it
wasn’t worth the money. Losing the occasional refinery worker in
breaker territory was much cheaper than building and maintaining
sophisticated weaponry.

I swung to the side just as a
breaker pushed itself through the door, bolted towards me, and
stretched its yellow, glistening
tusks
towards my face. The tusks were not simply lodged in its
jaw,
but
rather could protrude on
stalks.

It meant the breakers could use them like
nunchucks. They could swing them around, the perilously sharp tusks
flying about their face and slamming into their prey with deadly
force.

I dodged to the side just as
a
tusk
whistled past my ear, slammed into the
meter thick glass behind me, and sent hairline fissures cracking
over it.

My foreman would not be pleased
if I trashed the sensor array. So I did an impossibly brave, if
extremely stupid thing, rounded my shoulder, and thrust towards the
door, firing with my blaster as I screamed with
an ear-piercing pitch
.

My blaster caught several
breakers just as they were pushing over the rails
alongside
, and my shoulder caught one more just before it
could
release
its tusks and slice across my
throat.

I let out another shriek for good measure,
then powered forward towards the ladder.

This would undoubtedly be the
most dangerous part of my plan. For it would leave me
very
exposed.

I
actually
had no other choice.

So I thrust forward, firing at a breaker
just as it popped its head above the railing. My blaster bullet
sailed over its shoulder, taking out a chunk of its neck. The thing
managed one final shriek until its suckers detached and it fell
back into the ever-growing dust storm.

I jerked my head up for a fraction of a
second and stared at the sandstorm. It roared around me, clutching
and grasping at my clothes as if it wanted to pull me apart.

I pushed forward, reached the ladder, and
clutched my hands on it. Then I began the truly perilous journey
down.

My mind became a blur, of action, of
desperation, and of grit.

Fortunately my blaster didn’t cut out. It
was my own personal weapon, and I looked after it as if it were a
child. Every night I pulled it apart and lovingly cleaned the sand
from its innards. Almost every scrap of spare change I had, I
worked on improvements. Because there was no point in earning money
if I’d never be able to use it. And down here, your weapon was
almost as important as your food rations.

My first day on this godawful
refinery planet, I’d had to sell a blaster and scarf to a Baryian
trader to buy my uniform. The second I’d scrounged enough money,
I’d bought another and
treasured and
preserved
it
as if
it was my own child.

So I had
supreme
trust in my blaster as it fired off white-blue rounds into
the swirling rust-colored sand.

As I desperately threw myself down the
ladder, it happened again.

…
I entered some kind of zone.
Some peculiar realm where my body almost felt as if it were being
controlled by an external hand, some ethereal force that reached in
and told me where to fire. There was something uncannily accurate
about each one of my shots.

I didn’t think about it. Just went with
it. Let my body do what it knew best, until finally, finally I
reached the base of the tower. At first I couldn’t believe it when
the ladder below cut out – it wasn’t as if I could see the ground
below through the storm. But then I took a leap of faith, let go of
the rungs, and a second later, landed in the sand, rolling and
punching to my feet immediately.

Somehow I still knew where my bike was, even
though every landmark was totally obscured by the sand.

I pitched towards it, shooting
two more breakers, until finally I threw myself
astride
.

Then I activated the engine. Or at least I
tried to. For several terrifying seconds, it refused to start. The
engine made some truly unwelcome clicking noises.

“No you don’t, you bastard,” I screamed,
voice screeching through the broiling, pitching storm.

I balled up my hand
and struck it into
the control panel. Once, twice, then three times.

Just as a breaker bolted
towards me, its glistening tusks snaking into my peripheral vision,
the bike gunned to life, and I shot forward. The breaker missed me
by mere
millimeters
.

I hunched over the controls,
keeping the blaster in one hand, and firing off in every direction.
To an untrained eye it would simply look as if I were laying down
covering fire, and yet what should have been potshots into the dark
were not. Every bullet
found
its
mark.

Because that force – that force that told
me how to fight, that told me where to turn – it was still
controlling me, still keeping me safe.

And it shadowed me, protecting my every
movement until finally I made it back into safe territory.

Prince Xarin

Contacts. The ship had encountered the
Zorv.

Though I expected a small battle, as there
were barely any Zorv strike ships on the sensors, I underestimated
them.

Again. For it seemed as if every single time
I fought them, they evolved.

Before any of us knew what they were doing,
they attached some kind of device to the underside of the ship.

All Royal Arterian war cruisers
possessed organic technology, with the ability to
self-repair
.

But the Zorv weapon, whatever it was,
managed to punch a hole right through the hull, and access one of
the cruiser’s fuel lines.

It e
mptied half of our fuel in a little
under five minutes.

Somehow Zorv bots managed to transport
onto the lower deck, too.

They were overwhelming my security
forces.

So I ran, in full royal armor, to the
battle.

Before I punched out of the superfast lift
and accessed the right deck, I brought my royal sword around. It
was an ancient weapon, a traditional weapon that harkened back to
the original founders.

The modern galaxy was built
upon a universal
empire that had fallen almost 2000 years ago.

We had little left from that time, for
whatever grand war had destroyed that empire, it had done such a
complete and thorough job, that every single planet had been
stripped of its technology.

Amongst the Arterian Royal Family,
however, a few weapon survived.

A
s I
released
the royal sword from the holster at my side, and it sprang
to life, I felt its unique power. For it too was from that
time.

It had belonged to the ruling elite of
that once great universal empire – the Illuminates.

My family were, according to secret legend
within the Arterian Royal Family, directly descended from the
Illuminates.

That was why we alone could use the
Illuminate weapons.

As soon as I sprang onto the deck, I saw
chaos.

My security forces were being ripped to
shreds.

The Zorv bots punched down the corridor,
extending their metallic claws and clutching hold of every security
guard in reach. They either tore them apart, pulling off their
armor one section after another, or they simply tossed them through
structural shields that were supporting hull breaches.

I wasted no more time. I
drew
my lips back and let a guttural bellow
punch
from my throat. I sprang forward, activating the
Illuminate sword. Light, true power, charged down the
blade.

It hinted at a force so great it simply
shouldn’t belong in this galaxy.

But it did, and I wielded it.

Several bots sprang towards me, swarming
around my position.

They were programmed to attack me. Because
the Zorv knew that if they could take me down, my ship would
follow.

I slashed forward, shunting one
of my armor covered feet against the wall, pushing off it, and
plunging into a tight
roll
.
As I came up, I swept my blade to the side, and it caught all three
bots
that were at the
vanguard
,
slicing them in half. Their electronic bodies were split apart and
struck the floor. They twitched as great pulses of energy
discharged from their remains and sank into the floor.

Several crackles of electricity caught
around my armor, but none could push through. For my armor too was
a vestige from the Illuminates. There was nothing as powerful as it
in the entire modern galaxy.

So it resisted as several bots
swarmed towards me and locked their metallic claws on my shoulder.
Where they had been able to pull through my security guards’ armor
with ease, they could not even dent my shoulder plates. Their claws
slipped off as the armor
shocked
them with bolts of
electricity.

It was enough that I could
swipe around
with
my blade and slice them in
half.

Another scream split from my lips as I
thrust forward.

The battle became a blur, of shrieking
metal, of my screaming guards, and of the constant red alert
blaring through the ship.

But with every bot
I sliced in half,
the threat diminished, until finally I faced off against the last
one.

I waited for a fraction of a
second as I stared right at it. Though the bot was nothing more
than a robotic security drone, I knew it would be streaming a live
feed back to the Zorv. And it was them that I now stared at with
all my anger, with all the rage that
erupted
from my heart.

They had cost me so much.

So I thrust forward, and
without another
second's
hesitation, sliced
the bot in half.