Ghost Star

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Kindle Press, Seattle, 2017

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, Kindle Scout, and Kindle Press are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  Cover Design: Fredrik Rosado

  Contents

  Start Reading

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Epilogue

  Roger Eschbacher lives…

  “Family is everything.”

  Patty Eschbacher Heim (1966-2016)

  Chapter One

  Commodore Chemil Mohk, a pure-blood Nell, minor lord of the Imperium, stepped confidently into the cargo bay of the smuggler vessel Ghost Star, his mottled gray-and-blue skin glistening under the harsh work lights. Humanoid, muscular, and tall, the bulky commodore’s most notable features, the most notable features of any Nell lord, were the two razor-sharp foreclaws protruding from just above his thick wrists. He paused and inhaled deeply. There it is: fear. Fear of death. Fear of . . . me.

  Mohk smirked. Nothing made him feel more alive than killing. He would be doing some of that in a moment—the up-close kind, with the real danger of your enemy fighting back. Yes. He felt more alive right now than he had in months, months spent cooped up on a spacecraft the size of a small moon. His people were hunters by nature, and the long-distance battles of empire building—spacecraft-to-spacecraft fighting, planetary bombardments, and annihilation of sentient species through seeded diseases—although necessary, left him cold and uninterested. Shortly, he’d be seeing and smelling the blood of his prey. As it should be, he thought.

  A squad of marines, also Nell, snapped to attention, and Mohk’s small slit of a mouth puckered into a smile. Standards of careful planning had led, first, to the turning of a smuggling crew member, which in turn had led to the Ghost Star’s capture. Let no one ever say Chemil Mohk doesn’t know how to set a trap, he thought. Still, there was something about the ship that made him feel uneasy. Perhaps it was the captain’s reputation as a ruthless commander who fought without mercy. He shrugged off the thought. Get a hold of yourself, Mohk, he thought. In battle, you have no equal.

  “Please follow me, Lord Mohk,” said a Terran marine colonel who was shorter than Mohk by a head.

  The Nell followed the Terran down the long central corridor, surprised at how the well-maintained interior of the ship contrasted so sharply with its broken-down exterior. The inside was clean and uncluttered, obviously geared toward efficient use—a clue as to why this ship had been so difficult to catch. The outside resembled a typical outlaw vessel that operated on the margins of Imperium law—its hull plates looked shot up and dented, poorly maintained. Obviously meant to deceive, he thought. It’s a warship disguised as a freighter.

  “Colonel, does anything about this craft strike you as unusual?”

  “Unusual, my lord? No, my lord, it doesn’t.”

  Of course it doesn’t. You’re Terran. Mohk frowned. The Terrans had their uses, particularly as battle fodder, but of all the subjugated races, they were famous for being the least intelligent and the least observant. Back at the High Command, one was expected to have two or three “stupid Terran” jokes ready to tell. Here I am out on the edge of nowhere stuck with two Moon-class cruisers full of these dolts. “This craft stinks of your kind,” sniffed Mohk.

  “Yes, my lord.”

  Mohk stepped through the bulkhead into the common room of the ship and paused. Sitting before him, bloodied, with his head slumped and hands plastripped to the chair he sat in, was Nolo Bray, the notorious raven-haired captain of the Ghost Star, which, until today, had been the most elusive smuggler vessel in the Rex Cloud. The rest of the crew stood against the far wall under the watchful eyes of Imperium marines.

  Pulling up a chair, the Nell commodore sat in front of Nolo and stared at him for several long moments before slapping him hard across the face. “Wake up.”

  The smuggler lifted his head and made eye contact. His hard gaze caused Mohk to instinctively pull back.

  The smuggler grinned. “I’m awake.”

  “Good,” said Mohk, turning away as he struggled to recover. There’s no fear stink from this one. That’s coming from the others. Who is this fool that he should unnerve me so? “You have been a hook in my tail, a spike in my backside, for the past ten standards. That’s a compliment, by the way. You may thank me.”

  “And you may kiss my . . .”

  Mohk wheeled around and slapped Nolo again, instantly regretting it as the smuggler fell backward. He’d risen to the bait and momentarily lost control. “Pick him up.”

  The two guards set the chair upright as Mohk grabbed Nolo by the chin and examined his face. “Stim him.”

  A female Terran stepped forward and jabbed a small hypo into Nolo’s neck. He awoke with a start, eyes wild as he scanned the room before settling on Mohk.

  “You still here?”

  Mohk raised his hand to strike again but thought better of it. “You and this bothersome ship”—he paused, glancing around at the interior of the warship—“this bothersome ship pretending to be something it isn’t has eluded every other trap I set, every effort I made to capture you.”

  “What can I say? It’s what I do,” said Nolo.

  “It’s what you did. Soon you won’t be doing anything at all.”

  **

  Galen Bray awoke with a gasp in complete darkness. Every bone in his wiry body ached, but why? Regor, he remembered. He stunned me.

  Galen lifted his hand, his skin coming into contact with a cool metal surface. Feeling around, he determined he was in some kind of upright box. Regor’s locker. He carefully opened the door a sliver and looked out into Regor’s bunkroom. Detecting no movement, he pushed the door open and stepped out, noticing there was something heavy in his pocket. His fingers touched the hilt of a curved blade. Galen lifted the weapon, brushed the long black hair out of his dark eyes, and frowned. Father’s blade. What’s this doing here? His father had given him the ancient blade on his thirteenth birthday and begun rigorously training him in its use. Per Nolo’s instructions, the blade should be under Galen’s bunk pillow. “Always keep the blade close by, Galen. You never know when you’ll need it,” he always said. Need it for what? Now here it was in his pocket. Regor must’ve put it there. But why?

  Galen tucked the blade into his waistband. “Bartrice, report.” He waited a moment for a response from Bartrice, the artificial intelligence of the Ghost Star, named by his sentimental father after his recently deceased mother, but heard nothing. “Bartrice?” Still nothi
ng.

  What’s going on here? He crossed to Regor’s workspace and pushed several weeks of accumulated work to the side before taking a seat in front of the vidscreen. Dragging his fingers across the screen, he called up the communication and security hubs. “Hex? Are you there? Report.” All he got back from the bot was a low level of white noise. Galen sat still for a moment, unsure of what to do.

  Ship cams.

  A few commands later, Galen’s vidscreen was covered with views from every security cam on the Ghost Star. To his shock, many of the views included Imperium marines. Some were lesser Nell, most were Terrans, and each was fully armored and armed with a rifer, the lethal Imp projectile weapon. Not good.

  Motion near the bottom of his vidscreen caught Galen’s eye. Was that what he thought it was? No, it couldn’t be. Galen tapped the image and gasped. A Nell lord, made instantly recognizable by his bladed forearms, stood in the common room.

  “Not good,” he muttered. The Nell was saying something. What it was, Galen couldn’t tell until he remembered to turn the sound on. “Idiot!” he said to himself.

  “And so, with great pleasure, I place you all under arrest,” said the Nell.

  Galen sat back and ran his hands through his hair. He leaned forward and adjusted the camera angle. What he saw next almost made him vomit. His father, tied up and beaten bloody, sat in the center of the room.

  “Colonel, take care of the others. I shall deal with this one myself,” said the Nell.

  “Yes, my lord.”

  Galen watched the marines herd the five-member crew of the Ghost Star out of the common room and toward the cargo bay. A lone marine followed them, dragging a small girl with him. Trem. They’ve got Trem.

  His sister quite literally screamed bloody murder as she struggled to free herself. “I’m going to kill you all and rip off your heads and then pull you apart into little pieces!” Galen raised his eyebrows. Normally sweet and good-hearted, Trem would sometimes, but rarely, fall into fits of anger bordering on rage. Trem always unnerved Galen when she did this, but his father never appeared concerned by her outbursts. “Growing pains,” he’d say.

  “Trem! Control yourself. That’s an order,” said Nolo in a calming voice. Trem settled down. “But they’re on our ship, and they hurt you . . .”

  The Nell commodore grunted. “This one has spirit. Where was she?”

  “In the galley, my lord,” said the marine. “Hiding in a refrigeration unit.”

  The Nell passed through the frame of the vidscreen and paused near Nolo. “Perhaps I should adopt her instead of killing her or taking her to the High Command. What do you say, Captain Bray?”

  “I say you’d make an unworthy father.”

  The Nell frowned, then gestured for the marine to leave, which he did, dragging a now quiet but still uncooperative Trem with him.

  Galen flinched as the Nell grabbed Nolo’s hair and yanked his head back. “Now, how should I kill you, criminal? Quick and easy with a rifer, or slow and messy with my foreclaws?”

  Galen gasped, then frantically searched Regor’s room for a weapon before remembering the blade in his waistband. I have to do something. He made a move toward the door but stopped when Nolo started speaking again.

  “I am a man of action, Lord Mohk,” said Nolo between ragged breaths. “I ask you to accept my challenge of hand-to-hand combat.”

  The Nell closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

  He’ll rip you apart, thought Galen as he lowered himself back into the chair.

  “You know how you will die, don’t you?”

  “You’ll try to kill me by thrusting a foreclaw into my throat, severing my head from my body,” said Nolo.

  “Try?” said Mohk, clearly delighted. “Oh, this will be most enjoyable.”

  Mohk sliced the plastrips binding Nolo to the chair. What happened next was so fast and violent, Galen would be trying to sort it out for many a standard. The second the bindings hit the floor, a huge and shadowy figure appeared out of nowhere and in a dizzying blur of action—an impossible-to-follow tangle of teeth and claws, fur and skin—attacked the Nell lord.

  Then as soon as the chaos began, it was over, and the common room was consumed by eerie silence—the only sounds were of someone panting heavily. Nostrils flaring, Galen kept his eyes locked on the vidscreen. Then he heard slow, heavy scraping sounds, as though someone was dragging something heavy across the deck. For an unbearable moment, Galen watched the vidscreen until the Nell, this Lord Mohk, entered the cam frame and flung himself into the chair. Mohk had several large gashes across his chest and another above his left eye, the latter of which was bleeding heavily.

  The Nell kicked hard, his boot connecting to something just outside of the cam frame. “You almost had me, Bray. Almost.” Mohk tapped the comlink on his sleeve. “Colonel!”

  “Yes, Lord Mohk.”

  “Get one of your meds here. I’ve been injured.”

  “My lord! How can that be?”

  “Our Captain Bray was no mere smuggler. He was a Ruam Shre.”

  A Shre? Galen sat back, so stunned he was unsure if he would ever be able to move again. What’s a Shre?

  Chapter Two

  For the millionth time, Galen wiped tears from his eyes. He’d been crying on and off for the past day or so while he hid in a concealed smuggling vault and waited for the Imps to leave the Ghost Star. He still couldn’t believe his father was dead. That wasn’t how Galen’s life had worked up to this point. Nolo had always been there, looking after him and Trem—protecting them. Always.

  A series of loud noises reverberated through the Ghost Star’s hull. Galen did a quick systems check on a handheld he’d cribbed from Regor’s bunk. The readout confirmed the ship was now tethered to a Nell battle cruiser. Galen didn’t want to think about what would happen once they reached their destination.

  He slid the vault door open and peeked out into the passageway, which was dimly lit and empty. It was also cold. So cold he could see his breath. Odd. It never got cold on a space vessel. The Ghost Star’s interior was kept at a comfortable temperature. The biosupport must’ve been dialed way down or even off. Off? Not good. Space is a cold place. A deadly cold place. Galen knew he’d have to risk discovery and figure out what was going on before he froze to death or ran out of breathable air.

  He stepped into the passageway and moved quietly toward his own bunk, his flips doing a poor job of protecting his feet from the extreme cold radiating from the gravplate flooring. He was surprised to see the door to his bunk was open, then realized the Imps had probably searched every inch of the Ghost Star. Once inside the cramped quarters, Galen sorted through the dirty clothes strewn about the room, pulling on anything that might keep him warm. It was hard to tell if the Imps had spent much time here since he only cleaned when Nolo ordered him to do it. As far as he could tell, the layers of unwashed clothes, trash, and crusty food packets had not been touched. He kicked some of the pile over and found a pair of socks that didn’t smell too bad. At this point, it didn’t matter if the socks were clean or not. His toes were so cold they felt like they were about to snap off. He slipped into a pair of maintenance coveralls and some heavy synthfur-lined work boots, then dug a woven cap out of the pile near his messy desk. Not bad, he thought. He was at least warming up a bit under all of those layers of clothing. His hands were still cold, though. He could borrow some gloves from his father . . .

  Galen closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Nolo Bray was dead, and by Ruam law and custom, everything on the ship and the Ghost Star itself belonged to Galen. There would be no borrowing from now on. Everything was already his.

  Galen checked the blade in his waistband, then stepped into the passageway, cocking his head and listening intently for any biogenerated sound. He relaxed after several long moments, having decided all he could hear were the dull hums of the active mechanical systems. Reaching back into his bunk for a ramball stick, Galen made his way towar
d the systems node. Life on a space vessel made it difficult to pursue any kind of regular field sport activity, but the stick felt good in his hands, and Galen was glad he hadn’t sold or given it away once he got past his “crazy fan” phase of a few standards back. A ramball stick to the head was a powerful persuader in any context.

  Trem’s bunk was just a few steps away from his own. He paused at the open door, noticing scorch marks on the locking mechanism. Looks like it was forced. Galen poked his head in and let out a sigh. Even in the dim light he could see the room had been trashed by the Imps. Unlike him, Trem always kept her bunk ultra-neat. All the drawers had been turned out, the bed flipped, and the shelves knocked off the walls. Trem’s collection of geodes and rock crystals were scattered across the floor. She’d be so mad right now.

  His next stop was the captain’s quarters. Like his and Trem’s bunks, the door was open and the room had been tossed. Galen slowly made his way to the locker on the wall opposite the doorway, silently cursing each time he felt something snap under his boot. The locker was tilted on its side, door open, and its contents spilling out onto the floor. A quick search of the pile produced the gloves he was looking for and a framed stilpix of Nolo and Galen’s mother, Bartrice. The pix was a favorite of Nolo’s, taken shortly after the two had met. The background was a beach on some planet the name of which he’d forgotten. Galen gently set the stilpix down and slipped on the gloves, grateful for the immediate warmth they provided.

  Stepping out of Nolo’s quarters he continued on through the Ghost Star, taking careful note of which systems were still online and which ones weren’t. This was a lot easier than it sounded because everything—with the exception of the base system that did things like keeping the doors and hatches closed, the artificial gravity functioning, and the ship from flopping around on the tether—was off. The Ghost Star was in hibernation mode.

  He glanced into the cargo bay as he passed and came to an abrupt stop. On the floor were six bodies, the captain and crew of the good ship Ghost Star, bloodied and laid out in a row like pieces of firewood. All of the bodies were full-sized adults; some of them were missing their heads. No Trem. Galen breathed a ragged sigh of relief, then took a tentative step forward, his eyes fixed on the bloodied corpse of his father. Deep gashes and stab wounds from the Nell’s foreclaws were apparent on all of the crew, but special attention had been paid to Nolo’s body and head, and Galen had to fight the urge to grab a towel from the galley to clean up the now frozen blood. Not now, Father, he thought. I must regain control of your ship—my ship. Then I’ll tend to you. He backed out of the bay and closed the heavy doors, shutting his eyes for a moment before continuing on.