Voyage of the Sanguine Shadow 1: Shadow Galactic
Read Voyage of the Sanguine Shadow 1: Shadow Galactic Online
Authors: Erik P. Harlow
Tags: #Science Fiction
SHADOW GALACTIC
By Erik P Harlow
SHADOW GALACTIC
Copyright © Erik P Harlow 2013
All rights reserved.
This book is protected under the
copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other
unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited
without express written permission of Erik P Harlow.
This title is distributed to the
book trade worldwide by Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing.
Cover art by Erik P Harlow using
GIMP, composited from images created by Nicole D. Harlow, used with her express
permission. Title font is Franchise Bold.
For Nicole, Dakota and Wyatt
Special thanks to:
Rob Horowitz, Melody Penter,
Mike Hori, Jacen Onda, Crystal Elliott, Erik Seeley, Ashlee Enriquez and Jesus
Christ, my Lord and Savior.
Contents
“If you want a happy
ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.” – Orson Welles
It was a small bedroom
with a bed, a wall-mounted computer console and a steel table. Upon the table
rested a holographic entertainment box that presently cycled through various
images of flowers, trees and trickling streams. Overhead, pale blue lights
cast dim illumination upon frosted metal walls, a grated floor, and a black
carpeted mat. Near the foot of the bed, a heavy steel door led to the
lavatory. At a right angle to it, a frozen door led into the halls of a mining
complex.
Francisco Santiago gasped awake. His fingertips
and toes were numb, his body chilled, and he sat bolt upright. His breath
tumbled forth in clouds as he gripped his shoulders, shivering, and he
attempted to warm himself. Beside him on the bed, he beheld his wife. Curled
on her side, her back to him, she was coated in a glinting sheath of frost. A
white blanket covered her to the neck, but it had more the look of snow than it
did cloth. It was stiff as he gingerly lifted it.
“Lily?” he whispered, but she didn’t answer. A
surge of panic set his heart to pounding, and he shook her with growing
desperation. “Lily! Lily, wake up!” He touched his fingertips to her neck,
but sensation was only starting to return as pins and needles. He exhaled into
his hands and rubbed them together.
“Frank?” she croaked and sputtered a quiet cough.
“Oh, thank God,” he breathed, and he watched her
roll onto her back, casting a disoriented gaze his way. “Something’s wrong
with life support,” he whispered.
She sleepily nodded. “Are you OK?”
He answered, “I’m freezing, but I’m fine. You?”
He was taller than average, with coffee brown eyes and snowy white hair. He
was in his forties, but gene therapy granted him a far more youthful
appearance.
Slowly, Lily sat up, her teeth clattering. “I can
move.” She was tall and graceful, with long raven hair, fair skin and green
eyes. “Can’t we just have a normal vacation, for once?”
Chuckling, Francisco said, “I’m telling you, what
we should really do is take the plunge and buy the cabin.”
Lily smiled. “What we should really do… is check
on the kids.”
Francisco nodded and fumbled for his loafers on
the ground beside the bed. Clumsily, he shoved his toes into a pair of socks
and got his feet into their shoes. He swatted frost from an orange jacket and
handed it to Lily before crossing to the hallway door. His hands still
quaking, he pushed the activation panel, and the door whispered into its
recess. A cool gust ruffled his hair, and he shook his head before stumbling
for his footlocker. He rifled through his clothing as Lily donned her boots,
stored her phone and shoved her hands into her jacket pockets. Francisco soon
joined her in the hallway beyond, wearing a gray peacoat.
They hurried along a steel passage, over a grated
floor, under a cord of hanging shop lights to a nearby door. Francisco tapped
it open and hurried inside with Lily at his back. He rushed to the bunk bed
where his son and daughter were supposed to be sleeping. “They’re gone,” he
breathed, and Lily clutched him.
“Where are they?” she asked, and she turned her
husband around on his heels. Gripping his coat she demanded, “Frank, where are
they?”
He shook his head. “Close by, I’m sure. They’re
probably in the break room, or maybe with your dad. You know how much they
love their grandpa.” Nodding toward the passage, he said, “Come on. We’ll get
the heat back on along the way.”
Briskly, they walked further down the hall,
stopping at a door marked, “Plant Security and Operations.” Francisco tapped
it open. With his head planted firmly on the security console desk, one of the
guards sat hunched over in his chair, his body covered in frost. Francisco’s
eyes darted around the room until they located a digital thermostat. He turned
it up and listened to the creak and whistle of heater turbines as they came
alive. With a slight smile, he returned to the guard and reached for his
shoulder to jostle him awake.
“How long have we been asleep?” gasped Lily,
stopping him short, and she pointed to the chronometer on the security
console. “That can’t be right!”
“Check your phone,” he said.
Lily tabbed open her device’s calendar display.
With growing concern, she muttered, “I don’t understand. W… We’ve been asleep
for three days?”
“What?”
She thrust the phone toward him as the guard began
to stir. “Look!”
With a deeply furrowed brow, Francisco muttered,
“How is that possible?” He glanced to her with grim determination. “Amanda
and Gavin probably woke up before us. I bet they’re in the break room. Right
this moment, I bet Amanda’s reconstituting some eggs and toast for her and her
brother.”
“I hope to God you’re right.”
“What happened?” muttered the guard.
Facing him, Francisco said, “Something went wrong,
and life support put us all in a deep freeze for three days. We’re going to go
find our kids. Maybe you should look into what caused this to happen, so it
doesn’t happen again.”
With a bleary nod, the guard said, “Yeah, good
idea.” He stretched in his chair, yawning, and he attempted to unclog his ears
as Francisco and Lily hurried away. They nearly stumbled into another woman as
she stepped out of her quarters.
“Hey, watch it!” she barked. Suddenly gripping
Francisco by his forearms, she demanded, “Have you seen my daughter?”
“I’m sorry, do I know you?”
She shook her head. “Probably not. I’m Jane
Sawyer. Sorry I snapped, but my daughter’s missing.”
“What does she look like?” Lily asked.
“She’s a little taller than you, and she has pink
hair. Her name’s Valerie.” Jane glanced along the passage Francisco and Lily
had previously traveled. She seethed, “That little whore snuck off again.”
Lily scowled. “That’s an awful thing to say!”
Jane snorted and narrowed her eyes. “You’d be
saying the same thing, if she was your blood. She’s a whore. I hope you never
have to meet her.”
“Look,” said Francisco, “our kids are missing,
too. We’re going up top to check the break room. If you can be civil, you’re
welcome to come with us.”
With a gleam in her eye, Jane regarded Lily and
asked, “He’s your man?”
Lily took Francisco by the arm. “He is.”
“Keep him away from Valerie.”
“Actually,” said Francisco, “maybe you should
check down
that
hall. I think the security station’s in that
direction. Good luck.” Without waiting for Jane’s response, he marched off to
the mining complex’s central elevator. Lily tapped the call button. When the
lift arrived, they stepped inside and traveled several floors up to the top
level of the facility.
The elevator doors pulled open, and they stood in
stunned silence. Instead of a quaint, domed retail center, they found the
inside of a massive alien vessel. Dark and vaulted, it was pyramidal and dimly
lit. Dozens of chambers had been affixed to the soaring inner hull, connected
by pathway tunnels and dense bundles of cable. Scores of dull, metal cubes
drifted up and down along magnetic shafts. Directly ahead at the end of a
marble path, a vast chamber beckoned, home to twenty beds that floated upon the
air, attended by a lone giant.
Lily’s eyes darted immediately to one of the
beds. “Gavin,” she breathed. “I see Gavin!”
Francisco swallowed visibly. “I see Amanda right
below him.”
“What do we do?”
The tall figure paused and straightened, turning
to regard Francisco and Lily directly.
Lily’s heart raced, and she wrung her husband’s
arm. “He’s looking at us!”
His throat bobbed. “I know.”
“Come,” boomed the tall figure, and he waved the
intruders closer. “Do not be afraid.”
“Frank?”
He nodded uncertainly. “He, uh, speaks English.
Of course he speaks English.” Drawing a deep breath, he stepped off the lift
with Lily beside him. “We’re coming!”
As they drew closer, details about the tall figure
became clearer. Dressed in colorful vestments, he stood almost twice as tall
as Francisco and bore many human traits. His eyes were sunken in, mottled blue
and white with irregular pupils, and his translucent skin was pale. Thick
orange hair sprouted from his spotted scalp, and he tilted his head as he
smiled. “You were not meant to awaken until after I had finished my work.” He
extended an enormous hand. “I am Doctor Voran Fhrul. Your language was not
difficult to master.”
It dwarfed Francisco’s hand as he placed it within
the other’s grip. “I’m Frank. Please give us back our children.”
“You are direct. I appreciate that. Fear not, I
shall return your children to you, but you must be patient. They will die if
the procedure is not allowed to complete.”
“Procedure?” asked Lily, her breathing suddenly
ragged. “What procedure? What are you doing to them?”
“It is difficult to explain in terms that you can
understand.”
Francisco squared his jaw. “Try us.”
Voran considered his words. “I am… unlocking
them.”
“What does that mean?”
“Allow me to frame it in context.”
With mounting dread, Francisco rasped, “Please.”
He cleared his throat. “Please do.”
Voran settled heavily upon the marble floor, and
he pulled his robes tighter about him. “As you may know, there are hundreds of
billions of galaxies beyond this one. However, I come from a neighboring
galaxy, though I am the sole survivor of my species.” His cheeks turned pale
blue as viscous tears gathered at the edges of his eyes, and he lowered his
head.
“I was part of a project dedicated to exploring
the latent potential inherent in all consciousness. I was on the verge of
revelation when the Ithiral Dominion came.” He practically spat, “In their colossal
warships, the ithirals came. Silent, without explanation or mercy, they wiped
out all life on my home world. In a matter of days, they had destroyed every
starship, every colony… every one of us, except me.”
Looking darkly into Francisco’s eyes, he said, “I
have been entrusted with a noble purpose. In six years, a fleet of ithiral stardrome
battle stations will reach the edge of your galaxy, and equipped as you are,
you will not survive. Not a sentient being in this galaxy will remain.”
“That’s why you’re un… unlocking our children?”
With a calm smile, Voran said, “When they awake,
they will bear gifts unique unto each of them. Extraordinary gifts.
Impossible gifts.” He glanced toward the beds. “That the light of life may
yet burn where the ithirals so arrogantly tread. That your people may survive,
where mine did not.”
With tears in her eyes, Lily hissed, “I want to
see my son and daughter.”
Voran slowly rose, waved toward a pair of beds,
and they drifted close. Gently, they set down. “I apologize for the damage
their bodies sustained during calibration. They were the first to undergo the
procedure, and some abdominal injury resulted.”
“Gavin… Amanda… My babies…” Lily traced the
peaceful faces of her children as they breathed deeply, evenly.
His expression fierce, Francisco asked, “How bad
is it?”
Voran answered, “Not bad. Slight.” A dull cube
drifted close, and he studied its surface. His face was abruptly severe.
“Now, it is time to return to your quarters.”
“Pardon?”
“The halls of your mining complex have begun to
stir, and I must not risk further discovery!” Leaning in close, he said, “Tell
no one of what you witnessed. Not even your children. If my intervention
should be revealed, the ithirals will accelerate their plans of attack.” His
features softened. “Frank, you must trust me. I know I have given you no
reason to, but neither do you have any choice in the events that are unfolding
before you. Your son and daughter will be returned to you, this I vow.”
He clenched his jaw. “Will we even recognize
them?”
With a reassuring nod, Voran said, “I have only
unlocked them. Who they become is up to you.”