The Star Dwellers

Published by David Estes at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 David Estes

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal
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of this author.

Discover other exciting titles by David Estes
available through the author’s official website:

http://davidestesbooks.blogspot.com

or through select online retailers.

Young-Adult Books by David Estes

The Dwellers Saga:

Book One—The Moon Dwellers

Book Two—The Star Dwellers

Book Three—The Sun Dwellers (coming in
December 2012!)

The Evolution Trilogy:

Book One—Angel Evolution

Book Two—Demon Evolution

Book Three—Archangel Evolution

Children’s Books by David Estes

The Nikki Powergloves Adventures:

Nikki Powergloves- A Hero is Born

Nikki Powergloves and the Power Council

Nikki Powergloves and the Power Trappers

Nikki Powergloves and the Great Adventure

Nikki Powergloves vs. the Power Outlaws
(Coming in 2013!)

This book is dedicated to all the members and
moderators

of my Goodreads fan group.

Your kindness and support is beyond generous,
and I’ll always

value the way you make me laugh, cry, smile
and sometimes just shake my head.

M
y mom didn’t show
up for dinner tonight.

Come to think of it, I haven’t seen her all
day. Although my schedule was jam-packed—sword training all
morning, an interview for a silly telebox show in the early
afternoon, a painful two hours of “life lessons” from my father in
the late afternoon (where the President “his highness” imparted his
unending wisdom upon my brother and me), and barely a half hour to
myself to clean up and get ready for dinner—I would still usually
cross paths with my mom at some point. But not today. And now she
isn’t at dinner, which is very unusual, her designated spot at the
foot of the table empty save for the untouched place setting.

“Where’s Mom?” I ask from the center of our
mile-long table.

From the head, my father looks up from his
juicy prime beef. “She’s gone,” he says so matter-of-factly I think
it’s a joke.

“Gone?” I snort. “What’s that supposed to
mean?”

There’s no compassion in my father’s dark
stare. “Are you dumb, boy? Gone means gone. Vanished, disappeared.
She left you.” He wears a smirk, like the joke’s on me.

“She wouldn’t do that,” I say firmly. I know
she wouldn’t. She loves me. My brother, Killen, too, who sits
across from me watching our exchange with unreadable eyes.

“She would and she did,” the President says.
“Her handmaiden found her cupboard empty this morning. She packed
up as if she’s never coming back. If you’re ever going to be a man,
Tristan, you have to face the truth. She’s abandoned you.”

But that’s not a truth I can face. Not
now—not ever. She didn’t leave. She was driven away.

“You did this,” I growl. For a second my
father’s face is vulnerable, his eyebrows raised, as if I’ve struck
a nerve. A moment later, he’s himself again, unflappable.

“Watch your tone, son,” he says back, his
voice simmering with hot coals.

I know not to push him too far, but tonight I
can’t stop myself. “I hate you,” I say through clenched teeth.
Pushing back my chair, I add, “I’m going to find her.”

Before I can get to my feet, he’s up and
moving, barreling around the table, his face a swirling mixture of
wrath and fire and his idea of discipline. I’ve seen him bad, but
never this bad, and it takes me by surprise, so much so that I’m
frozen for a split-second, just enough time for him to reach
me.

There’s no hesitation in him as he towers
over me; despite my recent growth spurt, he’s still taller by a
head. And his frame is that of a man, chiseled from his daily
personal training sessions, while I, though athletic, still sport
the body of a boy. The strike comes so fast I have no time to
react.

CRACK!

My head snaps back as the vicious uppercut
lands just beneath my chin. Still half on the plush red velvet
cushion of my cast-iron chair, I feel my feet tangle with the chair
legs as I go down in a heap, unwittingly pulling the heavy seat on
top of me. Pain is shooting through my jaw but I don’t even have
time to massage my chin before my father’s vise-like hands are
clutching the top of my tunic, pulling me to my feet, and then
further, lifting me in the air, my legs dangling helplessly beneath
me.

I’m looking down at my father, and I feel the
warm trickle of blood from my mouth. I must’ve bitten my tongue
when he hit me. Out of the corner of my eye I see Killen watching,
his face that of a ghost, white and powdery. I look back at my
father when he shakes me, once, twice, thrice, a reminder of the
power he holds over me.

“You will NOT speak to me like that!” he
spits out. “If anyone’s to blame for your mother’s
disappearance”—another shake—“it’s you.”

He drops me, and although I land on my feet,
my legs are weak and rubbery, unable to sustain my weight as my
knees crumble beneath me. His shadow looms over me and I shudder.
Why won’t he just let me be, leave me to my own grief? Because
that’s not who he is. I suspect that his cold, uncaring shell of a
heart stopped beating years ago.

“You will not leave this house again until I
say so,” he commands, and despite the rebellion in my heart, I know
I’ll obey him. But someday, when I’m stronger, I won’t.

I never saw my mother again.

T
he thunder of
marching boots sends shivers through the rock and through my
bones.

When I was young my parents used to tell me
stories about monsters that roam the underground world we live in.
Serpents with glowing eyes the size of dinner plates, longer than
ten houses, slithering and slipping through the underground rivers
and lakes. Faceless boogeymen, walking the caves, searching,
searching…for a child to snack on. I now know my parents were just
trying to scare me into not going out alone at night, to trick me
into not wandering the outskirts of the subchapter.

These days there are worse things than
monsters in the Tri-Realms.

Tawni and I hold our breath as the convoy of
sun dweller troops pass us. When we heard them, we managed to
extinguish our lights, pull back into our tunnel, and duck behind a
finger of rock jutting out from the wall. We’re lucky—they’re not
in our tunnel. Instead, they’re passing perpendicular to us,
through a tunnel that intersects ours, shooting off to the left and
right, the first crossroads we’ve seen since leaving the Moon
Realm. Thankfully, they don’t seem to understand the concept of
stealth, or they might have seen us before we even knew they were
there.

It’s weird: even though he’s nothing like
them, the sun dweller soldiers remind me of Tristan. I guess
because they’re from the same place. The Sun Realm. A place I’ve
only seen on the telebox. A place I will probably never go.

Compared to the ragtag legion of star
dwellers we saw back in the Moon Realm, the sun dwellers are
polished and professional, with pristine red uniforms adorned with
medals and ribbons and the symbol of the Sun Realm on the
shoulder—a fiery sun with scorching heat marks extending from the
edges. Their weapons are shiny and new, their swords gleaming in
their scabbards, their guns black and unmarked. They have bright
flashlights and headlamps, which make it easy for us to see them.
If one of them aims a light in our direction, they will spot
us.

My muscles are tense, as line after line of
soldiers march past. Without counting, I know there are more of
them than the star dwellers in subchapter 26. If they were to
fight, it would be a massacre. But they don’t turn at our tunnel,
don’t head for subchapter 26. They pass straight through the
crossroads, moving somewhere else—I don’t know where.

Some of them speak. “Damn endless tunnel,”
one of them says.

“Damn the star dwellers for their rebellion,”
another replies.

“I’ve got to take a piss,” the first one
says, breaking off from the pack. He heads right for us, the light
on his helmet bobbing and bouncing off the rock walls.

“Well, turn your damn light off,” a guy says.
“We don’t want to see you doing it.”

“Shut your pie-hole!” the small-bladdered
soldier says, but reaches up and switches off his light, thrusting
him into shadow.

I feel Tawni grab my hand as the guy’s boots
scrape closer. We can hear his breathing, heavy and loud from his
long march. I am coiled as tight as a spring, ready to shove my
foot into his groin, or my finger into his eye, if he stumbles on
our bent legs.

He stops, and I know he is close, practically
right on top of us. Cloth scuffles as he gets his thing out. We
hear the soft
shhhhh
of moisture as he pees right next to
us. It splatters on the rocks, spraying tiny droplets of liquid
waste on my leg. Tawni is even closer so she gets the worst of
it.

He is so exposed I could hurt him badly in an
instant. As much as I want to, it would be suicide. The rest of the
soldiers would be on us before I could say
Pee somewhere else,
sucker!

I resist the temptation, trying not to throw
up as the tangy scent of urine fills my nostrils.

He finishes, scuffles his clothing some more,
scrapes his boots away. I breathe out slowly, and I hear Tawni do
the same. The guy flicks his light on and reunites with the other
men just as the last line passes through the intersection. Darkness
is restored as the torches disappear into the outgoing tunnel. The
thunder fades away.

We don’t speak for a half hour, barely move,
barely breathe. It could be the first of a dozen convoys for all we
know. I feel that if we stumble into the crossroads, a bunch of
lights will come on, a net will be thrown over us, and we’ll be
dragged away.

My legs are aching from lack of movement. I
feel like screaming. I am trying to outlast Tawni, but what she
lacks in toughness, she makes up for in patience. I can’t take it
anymore.

“You smell nasty,” I whisper.

“Speak for yourself,” she hisses.

“That was really gross.”

“It was worse for me.”

“True.” Silence for another minute. Then I
say, “Do you think it’s safe?”

“No.”

“Neither do I, but I don’t think I can sit in
a puddle of urine any longer.”

“Okay.”

“I mean, I’m sure there’s some spa in the Sun
Realm that claims urine has healing powers, or is good for the
skin, or something, and offers urine baths and urine scrubs, but I
just don’t buy it.”

Tawni snorts. “You’re nuts,” she says. “Thank
God for the modesty of the sun dwellers.”

“Yeah, we were lucky. If they were like the
guys in the Moon Realm I know, the whole platoon would’ve peed
against the wall, lights blazing full force.”

I pull myself to my feet and help Tawni to
hers. We don’t turn our lights on, opting to feel our way along the
wall to the intersection. When the rough rock gives way to empty
air, we know we’ve reached the crossroads. Tawni holds my hand and
pulls me across the mouth of the intersecting tunnel. A bead of
sweat leaves a salty trail on my forehead as my anxiety reaches a
fever pitch.

No lights come on. No net falls on us. No one
drags us away. Not yet.

We make it to the other side safely, and then
walk another five minutes to put a safe distance between us and the
intersection, before turning our lights back on.

Tawni’s white tunic is yellowed with filth. I
don’t look at mine.

“I don’t know if I can go any farther wearing
this,” Tawni says, motioning to her soiled garb.

“I’d prefer a hot shower before changing
clothes. Check the map and see if there’s a five-star hotel
nearby.”

Tawni smirks, but pulls out the map anyway,
one of the ones that Tristan’s friend, Roc, gave us before we left
them. I shine the light for her while she locates the
26
^th
subchapter in the Moon Realm. She finds it and nods
when she identifies the inter-Realm tunnel we are in. Using her
finger, she traces our path along the tunnel. The line ends at the
edge of the map.