The Secrets of Zothara, chapter one
A sword and planet adventure story told in four parts.
Captain Tren stood on the foredeck of his astroship, gazing out through the grey-blue blur of its atmoshell into the star speckled void beyond. Far below, the shadow moon, Zothara, awaited.
After years of searching, he’d finally found it. The lost moon. The legendary capital of the ancient Herazor in the days of their glory. The other captains in the Spacer’s Consortium had called him a fool, chasing after legends and fairy tales. Yet here it was.
Harsh whispering flooded Tren’s mind. The treasures of Zothara were right there, within his grasp. All he needed to do was reach out and take them.
“Er, Captain?” a low voice said from behind.
Tren blinked. He was leaning over the railing with the blackened orb of the shadow moon filling his vision.
He righted himself, trying to appear casual, and turned to his wizened, wart-ridden first mate. The old man’s rune-etched staff was topped with an orb of glowing quartz and his long crimson robe hung loose over his hulking mutant body.
“Yes, Angara?”
“The quanta jets are refueled and the light orbs are fully operational, sir. We’re ready to begin our descent.”
“Very good. Double check the power couplings. If the light orbs give out before we make it through the atmosphere, we’re dead.”
Angara nodded and began to turn away, then hesitated.
“Is something wrong, Angara?”
Angara tugged at his grey beard nervously, then took a step closer to Tren and spoke in a low voice, “are you sure about this, Captain?”
“Of course. don’t tell me you’re having doubts now.”
“Not as such, sir. It’s just there’s been talk amongst the crew, ya see, and–”
“What have they been saying?”
“That this voyage is cursed. That your obsession will be the ruin of us all. You know the legends of Zothara better than most. To go looking for it is one thing, but to try to land on it… The gods hid Zothara in the darkness for a reason.”
“Is that the crew talking or you?”
“Well I–”
“Angara, we’ve found it. The legendary lost moon of Heraz, right where the starmap said it would be. The Oral Lore speaks of such wonders from the First Age, and this…” Tren took a deep breath and turned to gaze upon the shadow moon. “Zothara… the capital of the Herazor Empire. Imagine what wonders await us below.”
“But is it worth your soul, sir?”
“Don’t tell me you buy into that superstition. I would expect such talk from the crew maybe, but you?” Tren rounded on Angara, his eyes sharp. “I took you for a man of reason.”
“Aye, sir. But I’ve seen enough of the Twelve Worlds to know superstition is usually based on something.” Angara shook his head. “After that freak slag storm just beyond the Giedi Frontier, or the power stone cracking as we were leaving Aro. It’s too much misfortune to be a coincidence, sir. What if the curse is real? What if something is trying to keep us away?”
Tren sighed. He’d sailed with Angara for well over a decade. The man was like a brother to him, but regardless, Tren was captain, Angara presumed too much. Still, at least Angara had sense enough not to raise his concerns within earshot of the crew. They were unsettled enough as it was.
“If we turn back now, do you think we’ll ever get this chance again? The Banking Clan was right behind us on Aro. How long till they follow us here? We have a once in a millennia opportunity to be the first to land on Zothara since it was lost. But that opportunity will not stay open to us forever.”
“But, sir. Is it–”
Tren raised a hand for silence. “I will hear no more, Angara. I’m sorry, my old friend, but this is too important. You have your orders. Now go.”
Angara nodded. “Aye, sir.” Then he turned in a swish of robes and scuttled away.
Tren watched him go, then looked past him, down the length of the ship. The A.S. Ternius was near forty feet long with sleek moonsteel decking and a rune-etched cobalt hull. Its open deck was shielded from the void by the blue energetic membrane of a mark-three atmoshell. Unlike the clumsy photoyachts of Ty, with their unwieldy masts and flapping sails, the Ternius was propelled by a trio of the finest Vryshian quanta jets: enormous gyrating rings carved from pure Kariq crystal, humming and alight with green flame. A true masterpiece of spaceflight engineering. A vessel worthy of her captain.
Angara descended onto the main deck and began bellowing orders. The crew scattered to their stations. But… was that a moment’s hesitation? Did the dissent run so deep?
Much of Tren’s crew was human, handpicked from the cream of the Twelve Worlds. They’d sailed and bled together for the better part of a decade. But interspersed amongst his veterans were the newcomers. Perhaps a third of his crew were Rel, hunch-shouldered and scaled reptilians, with dark, cold eyes. He’d been forced to recruit them quickly on Aro after that accursed slag storm had claimed thirteen of his best men. Time had been against them and the Rel had been quick, even eager, to sign on.
They’d been on Aro less than a day before they were ready to depart again. At the time, Tren had thought it a stroke of luck, but then the troubles had begun.
The Rel were good sailors, of that there was no doubt, but they were a superstitious lot. Through his officers, Tren’d heard snatches of the rumors the Rel’d brought aboard. Tales of the breaking of worlds and the imprisonment of dark gods, of the cruelty of the ancient Herazor and a terrible war which brought their empire into ruin, of the fall of Heraz and the curse of Zothara. All the disparate peoples of the Twelve Worlds had their own versions of many of these legends. Some saw it as a lost golden age, others as a time of darkness. Over the course of his life Tren had heard them told in endless variations; none painted as fearful and sinister a picture as the Relish legends. A fear now infecting his usually stalwart crew.
Tren descended the stairs to the main deck, nodding to crewmen as he passed. Most nodded back differentially, although in some… Was that reluctance? Resentment? Tren set his face and rested his hand on the bone handled wand in his sash. Let them fret and worry. So long as they remained loyal, the artifacts and treasures they were about to discover on the moon below would remind them of their captain’s wisdom. An especially large Rel with red mottling and pronounced spines running down his back watched as he walked towards the aftcastle. A faint shiver tickled Tren’s spine, but his face betrayed nothing. The Rel tasted the air with a flick of his forked tongue before returning to his duties.
Tren ascended the aftcastle and nodded to Bak, seated in the helmsman's chair before the control console. Then he turned and looked out past the ship’s prowl. The pointed figurehead was dipping towards Zothara. Here and there the blackness of its surface swirled with jagged slate clouds and flickering forks of white lightning.
Tren gave Bak a sideways glance. The squat helmsman’s body was a mess of etherite filled scars. Half his face and one of his arms had been completely replaced by the silver metal. Sweat beaded on the human part of his head and the knuckles of his human hand were white with the tension of gripping the throttle.
“Keep her steady, Mr. Bak,” Tren said.
Bak swallowed before answering. “Aye, sir.”
“Do you remember when we were transporting that shipment of Gronar across the Giedi Frontier, Mr. Bak?”
Bak absently rubbed a metal hand over the etherite part of his face. “I’m not like to forget, Captain.”
“When that Gronar escaped its bonds and you stood alone before it… I’ve never seen such bravery. If not for you, the whole ship would’ve been lost.”
“Er, thank you, sir.”
“No. Thank you, Mr. Bak. We all owe you a great debt. How’s the extra cut of the profits from the Gronar run treating you?”
“Well enough, sir. The wife’s had a new wing built onto the house back on Turris and we’ve managed to put enough aside to send the boy to the academy next turning…” Bak cleared his throat and looked away.
Tren smiled at him. “As is only right.”
Bak nodded, although he looked less than convinced. “Thank you, sir.”
Angara shambled up beside him. “Quanta jets are refuelled and the light orbs are online, Captain. Everything’s ready.”
“Thank you, Angara.” Tren stepped forward and rested a hand on the cobalt railing.
“I know you’re all afraid,” Tren called out to the gathered crew. “You fear the judgement of the gods and the curse of the Herazor. You fear the unknown and the darkness.” Many of the crew shifted uneasily. A few of the Rel licked the air with forked tongues. “To fear such things is to show wisdom. The gods know I fear them too. But to plumb the depths of the unknown, to go beyond what is safe and comfortable, however terrifying that may be, that is the path to riches and renown.” Many of his old, trusted crew were listening attentively, their postures straighter, faces firmer. The Rel remained as implacable as ever. “Taber!”
“Aye, sir!”
“How many times have we stood side by side against overwhelming odds, facing down pirates, and mind worms, and even chaos wizards, only to spit in the face of death and prevail?”
“More times than I can count, sir.”
Tren nodded. “And Hamus?”
“Aye?”
“Has sailing with me not kept you flush with drink, and whores, and the finest Vikuri spices in all the Twelve Worlds?”
“That it ‘as, Cap’in, that it ‘as.”
“And dear, Jarria. How fares your sweet grandmother?”
A heavily scarred woman with two etherite arms answered, “well, Captain, the Alchamist’s Guild has raised the price of her medicine twice in the last turning but thanks to you, I’ve never struggled to afford it.”
Tren nodded and smiled. “I’ll readily admit that sailing with me is not without danger. All of you know that I take you into peril. But you also know the glory and the riches to be won in my service. Well my friends.” He gestured towards the swirling darkness out beyond the ship’s prowl. “I give you the greatest adventure yet. Glory, wealth, and renown unlike anything any of us have ever imagined is within our grasp. All we need to do is reach out and take it.” From some far off place, a harsh voice whispered encouragement.
Many of his veterans cheered as Tren knew they would, and even those that didn’t seemed more certain, less anxious. The Rel simply watched him with their lifeless eyes. Several at the back were talking to the bigger, spined Rel.
“Keep an eye on the Rel,” Tren whispered to Angara. “We can’t have any mishaps.”
Angara nodded.
“All hands to your stations!” Tren called to the crew. “Prepare to make planetfall.”
The assembled crew, even the Rel, burst into motion.
“Mr. Bak, ignite the quanta jets!”
“Aye, sir,” Bak barked.
“Angara,” Tren called. “The light orbs if you please.”
Bak engaged the throttle and the whirring hum of the quanta jets rose, sending ripples through the atmoshell. The Ternius accelerated smoothly. Around the hull, the crystalline orb-shaped light orbs burst into life, adding their own high-pitched drone to the song of the quanta jets and surrounding the ship in a vast plain of sharp, white light.
Within moments the first thin wisps of smokey cloud reached out to them, rolling over the atomshell with a faint hiss. Then the darkness was all around them, pressing in close, sizzling against the atmoshell, pushing the light of the orbs to little more than a hazy glow within a few feet of the ship. The craft shuddered. The turbulence built. The quanta jet’s hum rose to a pitch Tren’d never heard before.
“More power, Mr. Bak!” Tren called.
“I’m giving her all that she’s got, sir. This cloud cover is giving us too much resistance.”
The atmoshell wavered, rippling and flickering. Were those faces pressing against it?
“Sir!” Bak called. “The atmoshell, she’s… she’s failing.”
“What? That’s impossible.” Tren stepped back to the helm chair, reading the display over Bak’s shoulder. The blue orb representing the atmosphere was… shrinking. “Impossible,” Tren muttered.
In nine hundred years of open deck space shipping, no atmoshell had ever outright failed. So far as Tren knew it just didn’t happen.
“Cap’in!”
Tren looked up. A towering, vaguely humanoid mass of darkness and shadow writhed upon the main deck. The moonsteel smoked beneath it. A tendril of darkness lashed out from the shadow’s depths, curling around a nearby Rel, engulfing it in purple fire. The Rel gave a shrill scream and was gone. The crew scattered, falling over one another in their haste to give the demon room. Only Angara stood firm, crackling staff held aloft, bellowing an incarnation.
Tren surged forward, drawing his wand in one hand and his shimmering vibrosword in the other. He leapt over the railing of the aftcastle and landed on the main deck beside Angara.
The shadow grew to tower over them, its arms splitting into masses of writhing, groping tendrils.
“Stand strong!” Tren called to his fleeing crew.
Green lighting arced from Angara’s staff, but the shadow only took them into itself and grew larger, cackling hideously. Tren flicked his wand and uttered a word of power, buffeting it with a wave of concussive flame. It wavered but stood firm. He stepped forward, brandishing his vibrosword. It lashed out with a sweeping tendril. Tren pulled back, slashing at it. It recoiled before Tren’s blade.
Several hands emerged from below, white tipped voltspears in hand. They formed up, keeping what distance they could and thrust at the shadow. It lashed out with a flurry of tendrils, weaving around the glowing voltspear tips. They scattered. One was too slow. He screamed, disintegrating into a cloud of ash and smoke.
Tren glanced at his own glowing blade. It avoids the light.
“Keep it busy!” Tren commanded. “Angara, we need to get a light orb, quickly!”
Tren dropped his sword, ran for the railing, and vaulted over the side. For a moment he fell, the great swirling darkness below reaching up to embrace him. Then Angara caught his leg and he swung, hanging suspended against the hull. Right beside him, a headsized light orb radiated blinding white light. Below, a contorted face pressed against the wavering atomshell.
Tren pressed his wand against the orb. “Kamon-Teras.” The tip of his wand pulsed with light. The light orb clicked and came free of its socket. Tren reached for it, fumbling for a moment. He dropped his wand but caught hold of the orb. The wand vanished into the darkness below. His heart sank.
“Pull me up, Angara!”.
Disconnected from the power systems, the orb’s light would fade, but even so, it would last him a few minutes at least. Highest willing, that would be enough.
Angara effortlessly hoisted him up, setting him on his feet upon the deck. Of the hands that’d come forward with voltspears, one still lived and he was rapidly giving ground. Only ash remained of the others. Several more hands had formed up on the fore and aft castles, peppering it with volts of red lighting from grey arc rifles. The shadow was unphased. Of the Rel there was no sign, fled below deck to hide no doubt.
Tren held the orb before him, directing its already waning beam of light at the shadow. It shrunk beneath the glare, both melting into thick pools of sludgy liquid shadow and evaporating into plumes of sooty smoke. With a shriek, it rolled over the railing and disappeared from sight.
The turbulence eased off and an uncertain cheer rose from the surviving crew.
Tren allowed himself a quiet sigh of relief. “Goodwork everyone,” he said with all the calm confidence he could muster. “Braydin, get the light orb reattached.”
“Aye, Cap’n.” Braydin, a lanky sailor with an etherite eye, moved quickly to take the orb.
“Angara, give me a tally of the dead and wounded.” He paused, glancing at the deep burns scored into the moonsteel decking that spoke of the shadow’s passage. “And we need to take stock of the da–”
A bolt of silent white lighting struck the atmoshell above their heads. The atmoshell flickered as a score of twisted shadow faces rippled outwards from the point of impact. A violent shudder rocked the ship, throwing unprepared hands from their feet. Tren stumbled, bracing himself against the railing. Angara stood firm.
“Mr. Bak!” Tren cried. “How long till we’re through this damnable cloud?”
Another bolt of lightning struck the atmoshell. The ship lurched sideways. The atmoshell flickered again. Great pillars of smokey shadow poured through the momentary gaps. One struck the forecastle, engulfing the panicked crew positioned there. Another struck aft directly over the helm. For a split second, Bak’s shrill scream filled the air before falling silent. A nearby crewman cried out in despair. Tren threw himself off the rail towards the aftcastle stair.
The Ternius banked sharply starboard, twisting and rolling as the whining drone of the quanta jets rose to a deafening screech. The deck jerked out from beneath Tren’s feet. He flailed for something to grab, but there was nothing. Then he was over the rail, spinning through the air with the wind whistling around him.
From somewhere far off, Angara uttered a word of power and a warm cocoon of yellow energy engulfed Tren. He fell past the ship into darkness.
Thank you for your time and attention.
Wow a lot happening here!
I’m lovin’ the “Space Pirates” vibe.