Daniel Coldstar #2, page 4
“Equinox, please . . . ,” Daniel begged, his voice broken.
Ninety-three more miles? How in all the galaxy were they going to run ninety-three miles in the next ten minutes—
FFFFRRRRROOOOOOMMMMMMMMM!
Every molecule in the air shook as though the very atmosphere around them wanted to rip apart.
A shadow, massive and dark, slid over Daniel and the children.
The roar of mighty engines grew deafening. Daniel’s ears began to ache.
And then—
A ship descended right in front of them. Like a giant silver starfish, cargo pods retrofitted to the ends of her long arms instead of her usual complement of Spitfires. The scars of galactic strife etched into her skin.
The Equinox had come for them.
8
THE REFUGEES
“Mr. Coldstar,” Truth Guardian Alioth ordered, gesturing with his finger. “Come here.”
Daniel gulped. He really didn’t want to go over there. Taking one reluctant step after another, he forced himself to do as he was told.
All around the Sphere, the Equinox’s impressive command center, ships and blasts crisscrossed through the REPIS view and targeting system. One by one, each ship in the humanitarian convoy jumped to Inspinity, while Truth Seekers who sat at stations on the upper level of the Sphere piloted drones and held the Oota Mheenish and Tarafand forces at bay.
A young Truth Seeker glanced up from her station. “They made it, sir,” she said. “All ships have been evacuated.”
Alioth seemed satisfied. “Good. Now thread the needle and get us out of here.”
Daniel watched the stars streak and tumble as the Equinox entered light speed.
“Message ahead to Orpheus Core,” Alioth added. “Mark Oota Mheen off-limits to all Truth Seekers. Let it be known these two star nations are now free to continue their bid to annihilate one another unencumbered by the truth or any sense of humanity.”
The young Truth Seeker, her face ashen, nodded when she had sent the message.
“You wanted to see me, sir?” Daniel asked quietly.
Truth Guardian Alioth was intimidating enough with his broad shoulders and the peculiar humidifier under his nose, expelling gases that the people of his world had evolved to rely upon. But he was not alone this time. Other Truth Seekers and Guardians stood with him. They had been huddled for some time in heated discussion over the events on Oota Mheen, the state of the galaxy, and what the Guild of Truth’s next move should be.
“You’re a very lucky young man, aren’t you, Mr. Coldstar?” Alioth remarked in a tone that might have been related to humor. It was difficult to tell.
“I don’t feel lucky,” Daniel replied. What he felt was their eyes all burning into him. What else was he supposed to say?
“Really, Mr. Coldstar?” said Alioth. “You just happened to get lost in one of the most dangerous forests in this part of the galaxy, and you just happened to find refugees, children no less, who were facing an impending life of misery under the Sinja, not unlike the one you yourself once lived? I don’t believe in coincidences. Do you, Mr. Coldstar?”
How was he going to answer this one? “No, sir” just didn’t seem adequate.
“I wasn’t lost,” Daniel corrected. At least that was the truth.
It was clear from their faces that no one had been expecting that response.
“I went to see that ship,” he explained.
“Why?” one of the others asked.
Daniel recognized her instantly. Master Skyrider Hella Phad, with hair like fire, and her fists on her hips. He’d seen her dart in and out of the clouds like a lightning bolt over the Fortress of Truth many times.
Daniel had never seen Ionica so excited to take classes with anyone before. Ionica was the first skyrider he’d ever known. She knew how to control her Aegis and fly better than anyone. Daniel could leap and bounce around, but he couldn’t do that. When he’d first met Ionica, she’d boarded the ship he was on without a space suit but with a bubble of air inside a force field. So for Ionica to be in such awe of Hella Phad spoke volumes.
Daniel considered his answer carefully. “I heard a rumor—someone told me about it.”
“Who?” she asked.
“I don’t know their name,” he answered.
Alioth folded his arms. “Why would somebody just decide to tell you about a crashed ship in the middle of nowhere? And why would they think you would be interested?”
“Because it has my name on it. It’s called the Coldstar,” Daniel admitted, aware that although nothing he had said was a lie, it also wasn’t the whole story. “I just wanted to see if I had any connection to it. I thought maybe it could help me find out who I really am,” he added desperately.
He braced himself for an angry response, but Guardian Alioth just nodded. “I understand,” he said. “I may have done the same thing if I were in your position.”
Daniel felt the tension melt from his shoulders.
“However,” Alioth added forcefully, “your actions put lives at risk. Your friend Ionica, your friend Ben. Every Truth Seeker who went out looking for you was put at risk! Every refugee looking to us for protection was put at risk because we were distracted! Searching for you. Do you understand?”
Daniel gazed down at his feet, shame washing over him. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice barely audible.
“The only thing saving you from an official reprimand and being held back a year are these refugees you uncovered,” Alioth explained. “And that, Mr. Coldstar, is why you are very lucky. Do you understand?”
Daniel nodded. “Yes, sir, I understand.”
“These children are now your responsibility,” he added. “Camp Five informs me they have room. You will arrange their accommodations, clean clothes, food, and water. You will get them entered into the logs so they can begin looking for their families. Are there any questions?”
Daniel shook his head. “No, sir.”
The Equinox burst out of Inspinity at Orpheus Core, a little farther out than normal. Any closer and there was a serious risk of a collision.
In recent months, so many refugee ships from so many worlds had moved into orbit around the Truth Seeker base that the War Guild had stationed ships nearby to protect them. Ships of all shapes and sizes crowded the skies over Orpheus Core. There were passenger ships, converted freighters, and caravan haulers.
Across the planet’s surface, evacuation camps now sprawled like tented cities radiating out for mile upon mile, filled with millions of families who had lost everything.
It was a cruel galaxy, and these camps were only a temporary break from it. The refugees would be moving on in time, following the promise of permanent new homes. Yet as one family left, three more arrived to replace them, and the camps continued to grow.
Swooping over the Fortress of Truth, which sat encircled by the hollowed-out mountaintops of the Seven Summits—the living quarters of the Truth Seekers—Daniel set a course for the southern continent and Camp Five. He placed the cargo pod on autopilot once he received his landing instructions, and sat back in the pilot’s chair.
From the air, the refugee encampment was less than inviting. Rows of joyless shelters hugged the landscape. A light dusting of snow had settled on the frozen dirt roads running in between them. The few refugees who were brave enough to venture outside wore thick layers of ragged clothing, making their movements awkward as they hurried to get to where they were going.
The cargo pod circled around to find a landing spot, passing low over the temporary buildings and rattling the communications towers. Eventually, it set down on an empty patch of ground where a pair of greasy old anatoms were clearing up trash.
Daniel sat in the cockpit, staring out at the desolate shantyscape, and listened to the ice tinging on the glass.
It would be Luminara soon; that’s what they kept telling him back at the Fortress of Truth, anyway. The galactic Festival of Light. He wasn’t sure of the significance, but decorations had started going up everywhere and there was talk of some great feast to celebrate.
Feeble strings of lights stretched from tent to tent outside, bathing everything in a multicolored glow.
Daniel’s stomach churned. He drummed his agitated fingers on the grimy controls. This was it? Dump and run? Put a hundred kids into a tent no better than the wreck of that starship and wish them a nice life?
Daniel wanted to fire up the engines and get these kids out of here, but what was he going to do with them? Put them in the Seventh Summit where there was no one to take care of them?
Outside, a couple of Truth Seekers stepped out into the cold, pulling their bloodred cloaks tightly around their shoulders. One of them flicked through a holographic camp manifest as they trudged up to the pod.
Daniel didn’t open the loading ramp until he heard them bang on the door. The servomotors whined as the metal slope lowered down onto the frozen-hard ground.
“You must be Daniel,” one of the Truth Seekers announced, stepping into the pod.
He recognized her instantly. The long silver hair and inquisitive eyes of Juro the Doubting, one of the more formidable guardians serving on the Truth Seeker council. He hadn’t expected someone so important to be here helping with refugees.
Regardless of her reputation, Daniel kept himself sandwiched between her and the huddled children behind him.
“Will they be safe here?” Daniel wanted to know.
“They will stay no longer than is necessary,” Juro responded, not really answering the question. “At least fifteen will be gone by morning.” She glanced over Daniel’s shoulder and smiled at the children. “We’ve found some of their parents.”
“Already?” Why did he have trouble accepting that?
Juro the Doubting squeezed the top of Daniel’s arm. “You have done a great good today, Daniel. It’s time for us to shoulder the burden now. If you’ll let us.”
Daniel swallowed hard. It didn’t feel like he had done any good at all. It felt like he’d just given everyone a headache. He glanced back to see Tillowil and Kember and all the other children, shivering in the cold, uncertain of their future.
“I’m never going to see them again, am I?” he said.
“Who knows? One day perhaps, under happier circumstances,” Juro replied warmly.
Daniel nodded and stepped aside, letting the two Truth Seekers shepherd the children down the ramp and onto ground that glistened with frost.
“Everyone stay together,” Juro urged.
And they did.
9
SECRETS OF THE ORIGINARIUM
The hollowed-out mountain peak of the Seventh Summit appeared hunched against the starry night like a giant huddled around a campfire. Windows and construction lights twinkled at the ground levels—the sparks and embers at the giant’s feet.
Once, this place had been left untouched, serving as a monument to the many Truth Seekers who had died in some terrible Sinja attack that had occurred years before Daniel’s birth, when Tor Torin, the Keeper of Truth, had been a pupil here. Now life was returning. Anatoms and enginoids worked around the clock to restore the Seventh Summit to its former glory. And all because Daniel and a handful of other grubs had slipped the clutches of the Sinja and needed a home.
Six floors above the dormitory, inside an unfinished wing, Daniel followed the sound of bickering all the way to the doors of the room they called the Originarium, a place where the grubs gathered every clue to their origins and to the lives they must have known before the Sinja snatched them away and wiped their memories.
“I told you not to hook it up yet!”
That sounded like Henegan Rann.
Daniel stepped inside. Yes, it was Rann. Snatching one of the Coldstar’s data cores out of Fix Suncharge’s hands before he could jam it into a receptacle, Rann snapped, “If we hook it up with power still running through it, we’ll fry it.”
Fix threw up his hands. “Sarree! Sarree!”
“It’s ‘sorry,’” Rann fumed, tinkering with the switches on a bunch of jury-rigged core readers he had looped together. “The word is ‘sorry.’ Saw-ree.”
It was obvious Fix was really putting in an effort to speak Koin, the main language of the universe; he just couldn’t get the hang of it. He’d mastered a few words but he couldn’t string a sentence together. Koin was an odd language. It had evolved over thousands of years to serve as a common language between worlds, mostly for trade. It borrowed words and phrases from just about every language out there, but unless someone grew up with it, it was hard to make sense of the rules.
That was a clue in itself though, for Fix. How many planets were there where Koin wasn’t taught from birth? Not many.
Rann rubbed the back of his neck.
“Give him a break,” Daniel said. “At least he’s trying.”
“Oh, look who showed up, the boy in the sparkles,” said Rann.
The metal hexagons of Daniel’s armored uniform definitely had a certain shine to them.
“Can you step away from the light, you’re blinding me.”
“You want a set of sleeks so bad? Join the Guild of Truth,” Daniel retorted.
“And give up my freedom all over again? No thanks, pal,” Rann scoffed.
Out of the four of them, Daniel was the only one who had become a Truth Seeker. Nails went back and forth on the idea. No one was sure what Fix thought. He knew he had the option, but he never talked about it.
All four of them had grown so much since their escape. Emotionally. Physically. Heck, Rann was now the tallest of the bunch; he’d sprouted almost overnight. Fix was at least two hands wider, and his legs were starting to look like they belonged on Alice. Even Daniel had changed. His skin had grown darker over time. He no longer had that unhealthy, pasty look of a life spent underground; his body had responded to even the merest hint of sunlight by turning a bronze color, somewhere between brown and olive.
But despite their emerging differences, they all shared an experience that bound them to each other in ways that most people didn’t understand. Taken as children, snatched from their families, their minds wiped clean.
Now they had the Originarium and its assorted collection of clues. A room where genetic data hung in the air like holographic decorations, where routes from planet to planet had been traced along the walls, revealing, for example, that only about five million people scattered throughout the galaxy had fingernails for hair. Each one of them could trace their ancestry back to a single family about two thousand years ago. They called themselves Yashkanars and didn’t belong to one particular planet or star nation. They wandered endlessly. Most of them were geniuses with unparalleled technical skills in the sciences and mathematics, thanks to specially designed sections of DNA that the Yashkanars owned and would not sell to anyone outside of their clan. Their services were highly prized and they were paid handsomely for them. But they bored easily, and when they lost interest in their latest puzzle, they would move on.
“Where is Nails?” Daniel asked.
Bang!
“Ouch!” Nails cried, his voice muffled. “Jasper, watch where you put that flipper.”
The penguin hummed a tune that sounded like an apology.
Rann nodded toward the computer array they had cobbled together at the other end of the room.
A gigantic hologram fizzed into existence; the wreck of the Coldstar nestled in the jungle on Oota Mheen. The three-dimensional image rotated slowly at the center of the room, right in front of them, the map Daniel had used to find it aligned perfectly.
“There!” Nails announced triumphantly. “I think we got it.”
Daniel studied the projection of the ship as though seeing the Coldstar for the first time. “It’s bigger than I realized,” he said. It had broken in two when it crashed. The second piece sat a few miles away from the section Daniel had explored. “I wonder what I missed in that other half.”
“Not much,” said Rann, still tinkering with the data cores.
“I sure hope so,” Nails remarked, climbing out from under the computer array. “Because he can’t go back.”
Rann fired up the first core. “There are star charts on here,” he said. “And passenger logs.” He eyed Daniel. “I wonder if you’re listed.”
It hadn’t occurred to Daniel that he might have been a passenger aboard this ship. What an odd thought. And if he had been aboard, had his parents been there too? Were there security files tucked away somewhere with pictures of them?
A heavy weight pressed down on Daniel’s shoulders, threatening to crush him. He shook his head, trying to clear it. “I wonder why it crashed?”
Fix held up a finger. “Pirates,” he explained. It was only one word, but his pronunciation was pretty good. He brought up a holographic display of news reports that he had uncovered. The words floated in the air.
The Coldstar, owned and operated by the Neutron Star Line and flying the flag of Caresta, had been hosting a ten-day scientific symposium. Some of the brightest minds in the galaxy had gathered to share their latest discoveries when, about midway through its journey, it was attacked.
“It jumped to Inspinity,” Daniel said, reading the reports aloud. “But its engines were badly damaged. It lost control and came down on Oota Mheen.”
“About a thousand people died,” Nails added.
“When did this happen?”
“About seven or eight years ago,” Rann added.
Seven or eight years ago? Daniel would have been about five years old.
Fix nudged Nails. They chatted rapidly in Jarabic for a moment before Nails explained what was going on. Daniel really hated not knowing how to speak Jarabic.
“It gets weirder,” Rann said. “The ship didn’t even used to be called the Coldstar. It started out as the Orion—over fifty years ago. Fix says every time the ship was sold they changed its name.”
“How long was it the Coldstar?”
“About a year.”
Daniel shook his head. “I don’t understand what any of this has to do with me.”
Rann rubbed his chin. “Whoever sent you that map seems to think it does. I wish someone would send me a map to my past.”
