Daniel Coldstar #2

  DEDICATION

  For my mother, Maureen

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1A Map of Hope

  2The Mysterious Ship

  3Showdown

  4The Hidden

  5Dark Skies

  6The Loronoh Run

  7Jaranjars!

  8The Refugees

  9Secrets of the Originarium

  10The Devil in the Detail

  11How to Start a War

  12Being Watched

  13Torin’s Plan

  14Twilight on Juba

  15Nobody Expects the Lux Inquisition

  16Under the Stars

  17Unexpected Guests

  18The Light of Luminara

  19Pursuit!

  20Best-Laid Plans

  21The Bowels of Traders Wharf

  22Secrets Revealed

  23Shadow of the Sinja

  24The Sinja Strike!

  25Sisterhood Is Powerful

  26Azul Flats

  27Outflanking the Enemy

  28The Chamber of Infinite Doorways

  29The Battle for Juba

  30Trapped!

  31Through the Hypercube

  32On the Backs of Giants

  33The Wandering Village

  34Night Vision

  35House of Soto

  36Fortress of Lies

  37Infiltration

  38A Dissemblance of Sinja

  39Going So Soon?

  40Massif Attack

  41Homecoming

  42The Twelve

  43Order of Axiom

  Glossary

  About the Author

  Praise

  Books by Stel Pavlou

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  A MAP OF HOPE

  Nobody came here by choice. Now Daniel Coldstar knew why.

  In the steamy Death Jungles of Oota Mheen, fifteen species of plant were poisonous to the touch. Thirty-seven types of bug could either sting, bite, or burrow their way into his brain. In every direction, massive tree trunks stood twisted together, while creeping vines strangled them, reaching all the way up to the branches overhead and forming impenetrable walls of black vegetation. Vicious eyes bored into him from creatures who sat crouched, hidden in the dense foliage, waiting to pounce.

  Everything was out to get him.

  Daniel waded ankle-deep through lead-colored water, struggling to pull his feet from the sucking mud, when he heard a heavy splash!

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw something slug-colored slither out of a nightmare and into the swamp.

  What was that?

  Waves rippled out toward Daniel. Poisonous algae swirled around his legs: akahana, toxic to humans and the best way to get blood to squirt from your eyeballs if swallowed. A minor inconvenience compared to fighting off an attack, but if that thing pulled him down into the water?

  Maybe better to avoid a fight altogether.

  Daniel held his breath. He stood perfectly still and waited for the creature to pass, sweat trickling down the back of his neck. The thick, heavy air burned in his throat—

  Roaaar-kha-kha . . . ! Roaaar-kha-kha . . . !

  The howl of a Jaranjar, what the locals called tiger-apes, echoed through distant treetops. Daniel sure hoped it wasn’t coming this way, because that was all he needed right now.

  Where did that thing in the water go?

  There, its back arching as it surfaced. It headed in the other direction.

  Daniel let himself take a breath.

  “Maybe Nails was right,” he said to himself. “Maybe this is a trap.” He glanced around, wondering what options he had left. If he went back now, Ben and Ionica and all the other Truth Seekers would never know he’d been gone, but he’d never get his answer.

  Waving his hand in an arc in front of his body, Daniel called up his holographic display. A map quickly projected out in the air around him. Ahead and behind, a series of glowing orbs snaked their way through the undergrowth. Red, showing where he had been; blue, showing where he needed to go.

  He trudged on, making his way up onto drier land where brittle twigs snapped underfoot; oblivious to a small metal flipper silently reaching out from the bushes.

  It tapped him on the leg.

  Daniel instinctively pulled his hand up, readying his Aegis—the weapon of a Truth Seeker. Ancient and powerful, a relic crafted by an unknown alien intelligence and forged from a single starflake, a crystal formed at the heart of a sun. The weapon vibrated faintly on his chest, listening to Daniel’s thoughts, eager to bend all matter and energy into a powerful shield around its master.

  But it was a false alarm.

  “Will you stop doing that?” Daniel snapped. “I could have blasted you to pieces.”

  A few feet away, a nervous mechanical penguin bobbed from one webbed foot to the other. Its tritanium beak snapped shut like a steel trap while its crest of yellow light-wire feathers twitched disapprovingly over each eye.

  “Don’t give me that look,” said Daniel. “It’s not my fault Astrid didn’t program you for speech.”

  The anatom, a cyborg fusion of machine and artificial life, puffed out his chest and extended his neck.

  “Jasper . . . ,” Daniel said, “I’m warning you—”

  Jasper tilted his head, then gagged.

  “Ugh, that’s revolting!” Daniel agreed, cupping a hand over his nose. “I think something died.”

  Jasper waddled off in search of the source. Humming.

  Great anatom design, Astrid, Daniel thought. Can’t speak Mendese, but can hold a tune.

  Astrid Always. Always Astrid, always right. That was how she described herself. Constantly. She had a truly brilliant mind wrapped in an irritating personality. No doubt she had good reason for how she had programmed Jasper. She had just neglected to tell anyone what that reason was.

  Daniel hadn’t known it at the time, but the first moment he met Astrid, she was already hard at work building Jasper aboard the Equinox. Of course, Daniel had had other concerns back then. Like his damaged traveling companion, an anatom named Hex. The rat had needed an entirely new exosuit and wound up wearing a mishmash of spare parts.

  In retrospect, Daniel wished Hex had remained a rat. Maybe it would have made it easier to identify him as the betrayer he had turned out to be. Daniel hadn’t quite trusted anatoms since then. Not even Jasper.

  “I’m not sure this is a good idea,” Daniel warned, reluctantly tagging along behind the penguin until their way was blocked by a dense mesh of leaves and vines that seemed to come in at least three different shades of black.

  Daniel had never stepped foot on a planet that orbited a red dwarf before now. Here on Oota Mheen, the vegetation had evolved to absorb every ray of the star’s weak sunlight by turning black instead of green. It looked as though shadows had become living things. It took some getting used to, not only because it looked so strange, but because—

  The leaves rustled. Something was coming toward them. Something big, something so huge that it didn’t care one bit about the supposedly impenetrable barrier of dense foliage.

  Please don’t be a Jaranjar. Please . . .

  Its muzzle emerged first, a gigantic mouth set wide beneath wet, twitching nostrils. Forcing its way through, the rest of its gigantic head soon followed. Its face contorted as though it was uncomfortable. Then it farted.

  “Eww, really?” Daniel now had both hands cupped over his nose. “This is where you went? What did I teach you about going downwind? No wonder that thing back there decided to go for a swim. Thanks a lot!”

  For his part, Alice the Hammertail looked very pleased with himself.


  Daniel tugged on Alice’s reins, coaxing the massive trabasaur out into the open. Trabasaurs came in all sorts of shapes and sizes. In class, Daniel had learned that these work beasts were originally genetically engineered to resemble the dinosaurs of olden times. Alice had a gigantic spiked hammer on the end of his tail, perfect for smashing things.

  Alice liked to smash things.

  “You couldn’t go a little farther away? I told you to drink more water, but no, you had to get backed up for three days.”

  Jasper angrily raised a flipper, eager to chop Alice in the knee. Alice raised an irritated foot, ready to crush the annoying little robot.

  “Cut it out, the pair of you!” Daniel scolded. “We’re not done here yet. Come on!”

  They trekked on for another hour, listening to the buzz of insects and the chirp of things that kind of looked like birds. They had wings but they didn’t have feathers. They had what looked like beaks, except they weren’t; they were teeth all nested together, and Daniel only found this out when one of them dived at him and snapped at his face.

  Though Daniel would never admit to it, having Alice here was a comfort. Not even a fresh mind wipe had managed to break the bond the two of them had formed back in the Sinja’s relic mines.

  The relic mines. Where he’d unearthed the Aegis now attached to his chest, and won his freedom. That was over a year ago—had it really been so long? So much had happened since then.

  Daniel took what he thought was going to be another careful step, but Alice gently nudged him out of the way.

  The unfurled drab green petals of a trap-bloom lay stretched out on the forest floor. These plants were carnivorous, sitting openmouthed on the ground for as long as it took for something tasty to wander through and then—snap! Lunchtime.

  Daniel gave the Hammertail a thankful pat on the shoulder before checking the map one last time. “This is it,” he said, “right over there.”

  He took a deep breath and hesitated.

  Either he was about to uncover the first major clue in figuring out who he was and where he came from. Or he had been lied to. Again.

  The trees parted like curtains as Alice forced his way through. Cautiously, Daniel kept one step behind him, and Jasper behind him, picking their way over the warped stumps until the three of them emerged together into a clearing bowled at the foot of a steep hill.

  It took a moment for Daniel to truly grasp the enormity of what he was seeing. At first it looked like a natural formation, a rocky outcropping covered in growth. But looking closer, he could see gaping black holes that used to be windows. Trees grew between exposed metal ribs, tall enough to hide much of the hull. Moss cascaded down the letters emblazoned across its bow.

  This was a starship, lying on its broken back, engines in the air.

  This is it! This is really it!

  Whoever had sent him the map had been telling the truth.

  There was a crashed ship on Oota Mheen, and its name was Coldstar.

  2

  THE MYSTERIOUS SHIP

  Muscles rippled along Alice’s back as he heaved at the vines Daniel had tied to the trabasaur’s saddle. Thick festoons of vegetation slowly peeled away from the ship to expose its rotting hull.

  The starliner moaned miserably from deep within as though the creepers had been the only thing holding it together. Daniel was going to find a way inside this ship even if he had to tear a hole—

  Alice lurched forward and the aging metal screamed.

  The great tangle of vines snapped taut. Then a large strip of twisted hull metal tore away from the wreckage and tumbled to the ground, leaving behind a gaping hole big enough for Daniel to climb through—if he could get up there.

  “That works,” Daniel remarked, chopping the vines from where he’d tied them to Alice’s back. He pulled a tasty treat from his utility belt. Tawanga, a type of dried fruit and fried bugs shaped into chewy sticks that he’d picked up on his travels, had quickly become Alice’s favorite snack.

  Daniel peered up at the hole in the side of the wreck, which sat two or three floors up. An easy jump with his Aegis, if only he knew what he would be jumping into.

  Jasper had the same concern. Protectively blocking Daniel’s way with his flipper, he opened his beak and shot a grappling hook up to the branch nearest the opening. The whir of a tiny motor was the only sound the anatom made as he respooled the microwire line and rose up into the air, mouth first.

  Dangling in front of the hole, Jasper shone a light inside.

  “What do you see?” Daniel called up, which was dumb, because no matter what Jasper saw he couldn’t tell Daniel about it. He couldn’t talk! “Never mind . . . !”

  Jasper swung back and forth for a moment, building momentum until—click! He disengaged the grappling hook and leapt into the dark.

  A loud clank echoed out from the opening. Followed by more clanks, a squawk, and a couple of bat-like things flying off to find a new home.

  Moments later an F-light went on.

  Then Jasper’s familiar humming started up again.

  “I guess that means it’s okay,” Daniel said, heading back to Alice to retrieve his backpack. He gave the Hammertail a scratch around the ear. “Don’t wander off. I’m going to need you.”

  Daniel turned back, took a running jump, and—

  Whompff!!!

  Daniel’s Aegis burst into action, creating a controlled wave of iridescent energy that propelled him up and into the opening ripped into the side of the Coldstar.

  He’d gotten good at controlling this thing.

  Daniel landed on one knee and scrutinized his surroundings.

  The metal hexagons on his Truth Seeker uniform glinted in the dim light.

  A short maintenance passage of some type stretched out before him. The buckled floor had weeds growing up through the grilles. At one time this floor had been the ceiling, but with the ship on its back everything was upside down. Pipes lined either side of the passageway leading down to a heavy pressure door where Jasper was already tinkering with the mechanism to get it to open.

  “Stand back,” Daniel ordered.

  Jasper shook his flippers, trying to indicate that he almost had it, but Daniel didn’t feel like waiting. The anatom searched for cover while Daniel reached out his hand. His Aegis swirled, generating a power blast that crushed the lock. The door shook and creaked before sliding open.

  Daniel activated his own F-light and tossed it into the area beyond. He didn’t really know what to expect . . .

  . . . but this wasn’t it: An opulent-looking hallway, wide and deep, ran perpendicular to the maintenance passage. Thick carpet lined the ceiling. It had rotted now, and hung down in sheets like the creepers outside. It must have looked magnificent back in the day when it used to be the floor. Ornate golden patterns lined the walls, and pictures hung at steady intervals along an endless line of doorways, each one marked with a number.

  “What kind of ship is this?” Daniel wondered. It reminded him of the hotel in Loronoh, Oota Mheen’s capital city, where the Truth Seekers had set up a temporary headquarters for the impending invasion. “This isn’t a military vessel,” he said. “This is a passenger ship.”

  Other than the name Coldstar, what was his connection to this starliner? The questions multiplied. Why had it crashed? Why did somebody want him to come here and see it? Who was that somebody?

  Daniel beckoned to Jasper to keep up. “Come on. We need to find the bridge,” he said, leaping down onto what had once been the ceiling.

  Jasper waddled along the vertical wall as though it were the most normal thing in the world to do, humming an oddly cheerful little song.

  “We’re looking for the databanks,” Daniel explained, assuming that that was what the penguin wanted to know. “If they’re intact, they’re my best hope of finding some answers. Think you can copy the data from them?”

  Jasper made a rude grunting noise and shook his head.

  “Well, why not?”

 
The anatom ceased his hum and switched to some tuneless funeral dirge.

  “Can we at least retrieve them?”

  Jasper shrugged. Maybe.

  Daniel glanced around, trying to get a sense of the layout. “Any idea where the bridge is from here?”

  Jasper looked for an answer, zeroing in on a data port halfway up the wall. His yellow light-wire crest glowed briefly as each feather extended out into the receptacle, probing for a connection. A moment later the light-wire feathers pulsed brightly as the data transfer began, faster and faster until—

  Sssnappp!

  An arc of electricity zipped out of the port, showering the anatom in a cascade of sparks.

  Jasper lost his grip and fell to the ground with a heavy thud!

  Daniel held out his hands. “Well? Where do we go?”

  The flustered penguin shook his head before jabbing a flipper into the air.

  They needed to go up.

  Which of course meant down if the Coldstar had been right side up. It seemed that this class of starliner mounted its command center on the very lowest point of the vessel.

  Clink! Clink! Clink! Clink! Clink!

  “Hold it!” Daniel warned, listening to what sounded like distant footsteps scurrying around the abandoned wreck not far from where they stood. Animals? People? Hard to say.

  “Let’s go,” Daniel urged quietly, helping Jasper up. “Keep your eyes open. I don’t think we’re alone in here.”

  They climbed up through twenty or so mangled decks, before Daniel’s utility belt chirped. Someone was trying to call. Reluctantly, he ran his palm through the air, bringing up the holographic display. The call was coming from the Seventh Summit, his home with the Truth Seekers on Orpheus Core.

  Nails’s image popped up, floating in front of him. As long as he lived, Daniel was pretty sure he would never get used to seeing someone with fingernails for hair.

  “I told you not to contact me unless it’s an emergency. Anyone could be listening in,” Daniel said.

  Henegan Rann’s face briefly crowded into the picture. Rann, Nails, and Fix Suncharge; they were the only other grubs who had made it out of the relic mines when Daniel and the Truth Seekers had come to rescue them.

  “This is an emergency,” Rann said.