Shattered Destiny: A Galactic Adventure, Episode One (4 page)

It was obliterated in a hail of sparks.

I ticked my head to the side
and activated the internal communicator within my armor.
“The last Zorv bot
has been dispatched,” I informed the primary operation
room.

“We thank you, Prince Xarin,” the captain
said.

My jaw hardened at his tone. He wasn’t
dismissive, just the opposite – too respectful.

The Arterian Royal Family
was
founded
on tradition. A tradition we forced upon
all those who served us.

While it fit the rest of my
family, I often found myself drowning
beneath
it.

I set my jaw even harder as I jerked my
teeth open. “Have you dispatched the remaining Zorv
vessels?”

“Yes. The battle is over.” I heard those
four words echo through my skull. They couldn’t sink in, because it
was a lie.

The battle would never be over.

I twisted on my foot, marching through the
singed, broken corridor until I reached one of the superfast
lifts.

I went straight to the primary operations
room, wasting no time.

When I reached it, I was met by the blare of
several warning alarms.

The captain
rose from his seat, and went
through the full rigmarole of a traditional greeting, locking one
hand against his stomach, leaving the other pressed straight
against his leg, and bowing low for five seconds.

It was such a waste of time.

I strode past him, stood by his command
seat, and looked up at his personal view screens. “How much fuel
did we lose?”

He snapped to his feet. “Over
half of our
reserves
.”

I swore. Perhaps I should have showed more
dignity around my subjects, but I couldn’t.

Dignity
would get me
nowhere.

As I continued fighting this fruitless,
unwinnable war, every tradition I had once held dear fell by the
wayside. Because traditions, no matter how important they had once
been, could not keep me safe, nor could they save the rest of the
galaxy.

I pressed forward, and waved my
hand to the left, instructing one of the captain’s holographic
floating screens to scoot towards me. It stopped in front of my
face, and I commanded it with several
gestures
of my hand. Soon it showed our exact fuel
supplies.

“We have enough to make it back to
Arterian space using priority transport routes,” the captain
informed me.

I ignored him as I continued to scroll
through the data. Soon enough I found a better option. “No,” I said
as I brought up a hand and tapped it into the holographic screen,
the light shifting and eddying around my fingers as if I’d thrown a
stone into a pond.

“Your highness?” the captain
questioned.

“There is a fuel refinery plant in this
sector,” I continued to tap the hologram.

I had heard
a
tale
that
before
the great fall that had wiped out the
previous universal empire, they had possessed holographic
technology so perfect you could not discern it from
reality.

Our current holograms were far from
perfect; they flickered and shifted, and simply could not keep up
with reality.

I had also heard
tales
that the previous Great Empire had possessed ships
that did not require constant injections of fuel, but were rather
powered on specialized wormhole drives.

To think, you could traverse the galaxy
without stopping off every few weeks to refuel. You could explore
the universe without ever having to return to your home base. The
galaxy and beyond would open up to you.

My mind became distracted by
that
huge
thought.

The captain
cleared his throat.

“We have to refuel,” I said, tone dropping
low and becoming serious. “We have no idea when the Zorv will
attack again. Though it is unlikely that they will come after our
ship on primary transport routes, we can’t take that
risk.”

I could tell the captain
thought I was overreacting. His crew would think I was a
fool
, too.

They had not fought the Zorv as much as I
had.

I turned and locked my imperial gaze on
the captain. “Make it so,” I snapped as I turned on my foot and
walked from the operations room. I was still wearing my full armor,
and my boots slammed and rang out against the floor.

Before I reached the bank of lifts that
would take me down into the center of the ship and my own deck, a
man in white and silver armor peeled off and followed me.

Once we were
safely
in the lifts, I turned to him and smiled. “Where
exactly were you during the fight?”

Mark, my personal guard, tipped his head low
and mumbled through an apology.

I brought a hand up and slammed it on his
back in a friendly move. “There is nothing to apologize for. You
are protecting the rest of the ship, this I know.”

Mark straightened up and grinned.

I had known Mark for years, back on the
Arterian Royal planet, in fact. Before I had been thrust into this
impossible war, and given the responsibility for ending it, Mark
had been a friend. Back then, I’d had very little responsibility,
and had developed a reputation for being a somewhat infamous
playboy.

Mark had followed me into space, to take
up the position of an imperial star guard, and now – and hopefully
forever – would stand by my side. For at least it was a window back
into that old life, back into a time when I’d never known
war.

The grin dropped from Mark’s face as he
looked at me seriously. “What is it?”

I chose not to answer as I locked my gaze
on the door. It took around 10 full minutes for the lifts to
traverse this enormous vessel. It was around 3 km², and in many
ways was a floating city.

It had to be. It took a lot of
technology to traverse interstellar space
. A lot of crew, too.

Mark continued to frown at me, that
knowing look playing in his gaze. He tipped his head back and
locked a hand on his chin. “You’re worried,” he commented
knowingly.

I half turned and locked a hand over my
face, letting it slide down slowly until it dropped to my side.
“We’re low on fuel reserves. The Zorv attacked us out of nowhere.
And in the past few weeks, their attacks have become increasingly
more brazen. Of course I’m worried.”

“Not about that. About her.”

Electric nerves shot down my back. I
couldn’t stop from twisting my neck around and staring at him.

Mark gave me another knowing look. “It’ll
happen. Don’t worry.”

I didn’t answer. There was no point.

Instead I waited until the lifts stopped and
the doors slid open.

I strode out of them without another word.
But before I could walk away, I stopped, twisted, and inclined my
head towards him. “It is taking too long,” I found myself saying
through clenched teeth.

Though Mark was a friend, there were some
things I should not discuss with him.

This was one of them.

It wasn’t just personal – it was
dangerous.

My betrothed was more than the woman I would
marry. She was my sanctuary. The greatest force who would ever
stand by my side.

Without her, I was a target. Not just to the
Zorv, but to certain members of my own family.

The Arterian Royal Family were not all
related. There were over 5000 members of it, all with different
statuses.

I was a prince to one of the most powerful
houses – the Fays.

There were other families greedy for my
power. If I failed tradition and did not find my betrothed, they
would turn against me and depose me.

Mark’s gaze flicked between my eyes. That
knowing look was still pressed over his brow. Mark had an almost
preternatural ability to put people at ease. Even the most
suspicious would grow to trust him in time.

And share their secrets.

Mark remained in the lift, never taking a
step forward to join me in the corridor.

It was, after all, forbidden. This entire
deck was my realm. Others could only enter with my permission.

He continued to look at me with an even
stare. “You shouldn’t let this stop you, though. Princess Arteria
is still waiting for you,” his tone dropped.

My heart rate went up. Doubled, perhaps
tripled.

“You’ve told me yourself, there’s nothing
wrong with having a real relationship beyond your betrothed.
They’re nothing more than tradition. You can tick that box and get
the rest of your family off your back, but you can still be with
Arteria. Don’t keep her waiting forever.”

I couldn’t answer.

So I walked away from the doors, and they
closed automatically.

Mark would not be able to follow to continue
the conversation, and sure enough, with an electronic beep, the
lift disengaged from the deck and continued down the shaft.

I stood there staring at the door, thoughts
a thunderous mess.

Arteria….

Yes, she was waiting for me. But she would
have to wait a little longer.

Shar

I was lying on my bed,
wrist pressed over
my forehead as I stared between my fingers at the ceiling. There
was a crack in the metal, a couple of inefficient perimeter shields
in place around it to stop the persistent sand from pushing its way
through.

My room was right on the edge of the
compound. It was one of the few with a door back into the compound,
and one into the world outside.

Despite the ferocious weather of this
planet, I often kept the door open, a few scraps of old canvas and
fabric in place over it to stop the majority of the sand from
scattering through.

Through a
small
break
that I had put
in the canvas, I
could always swivel my gaze and lock it on the sky above. At night,
I’d even be able to see a few scraps of stars, twinkling in and
out, always partially obscured by the
relentless,
marching sand clouds.

Now I frowned as I swore I heard an
unfamiliar noise. It sounded like the soft constant shudder of a
large ship coming in to land.

Sure enough, as I pushed up off my bed, a
general alarm rang through the compound.

“Emergency refueling operation,” the
electronic voice of the refinery’s main computer said.

“Emergency refueling operation?” I mouthed
as I pushed up, lurched down to my knee, and grabbed up my dusty,
well-worn boots from beneath my bed. I crammed them onto my feet as
I ticked my head to the left and tried to see through the gap in
the canvas.

I saw a huge body of metal suddenly
obscure the view. It had to be a massive ship coming in to land at
the primary refinery building. Though the building was a good 500
meters away, my canvas door started to flap and churn in the
wind.

I thrust towards it, catching
it with one hand as I used the other to manipulate the
controls of the
structural shield.

I increased them to maximum,
and soon enough a flickering blue sheet of energy blinked into
place beyond the canvas, protecting it from the buffeting
winds
.

I twisted to the side and grabbed a sand
scarf from the empty desk to my left.

I crammed it around my neck, looping it
several times until I secured it over my mouth. Then I pushed
through the canvas and structural shields until I jumped down to
the sand below. It scattered around my boots as I tipped my head
back and whistled through my teeth.

Though I’d already figured out a big ship
had to be coming in to land, I hadn’t been prepared for the sight
that met me now.

It was massive, easily the
largest ship that had ever docked at the refinery. I’d never seen
anything on this scale. As my enquiring gaze darted over the girth
of its slim line, silver-and-black hull, I wondered what the hell
it was. It was too fancy looking to be a transport or a
cargo
ship
. It was also too well-armed.

Though I could only see the underside of
the hull as it loomed above the refinery and outbuildings, I could
still discern the gun turret ports dotted at even
intervals.

By now a few other refinery workers were
pushing out of the main habitation compound and walking out towards
the refinery, just like me. And just like me, they all tipped their
heads back and stared in astonishment at the ship.

“What the hell is that doing here?” I
heard a Narin ask his friend. “Isn’t that a Royal Arterian war
cruiser?”

Something raced down my back and sank into
my coccyx at that. It took a stiff cold pressure pushing through my
chest until I realized it was nerves.

The Narin’s friends tipped his head all
the way back and whistled through his fat green lips. “What in
Farick’s name are they doing this far out? The Arterians patrol the
central sectors.”