Dark Metamorphosis Read online

  To his credit, Mikkah intervened and vouched for Xttra’s record in the Stellar Guard and his character. He saved each survivor of the expedition to Earth from whatever dark fate brewed within the minds of the judicial officers. Now, it seemed as though Mikkah took personal offense at Xttra’s decision to change course.

  “Look, I’m not trying to be confrontational about this.” Xttra’s tone softened a bit. “I’ve done some soul searching and decided I need to consider what’s best for me and Calandra together. This is the way forward.”

  The elevator door opened. Both men stepped out. Mikkah stopped in his tracks, turned, and faced Xttra. His eyelids snapped shut and a curt nod followed.

  “Instructor, huh?” His eyes popped open again. “I hate to lose you in the field. On the other hand, I can’t think of a master pilot more qualified to train other pilots. Your experience is invaluable.”

  A relieved smile crept across Xttra’s lips.

  “Calandra will be thrilled to hear this news.”

  “We’ll make the switch right after you’ve completed your upcoming mission.”

  His smile vanished as fast as it appeared.

  “No. Wait a minute.” Xttra threw out his hands as he made his plea. “I want to make this change now. Today. Not after ‘one final mission.’”

  Mikkah shook his head.

  “It’s out of my hands. I’m sorry, Xttra. Your crew will meet with the Thetian delegation on Fengar as ordered.”

  “What do you mean it’s out of your hands?”

  Mikkah extracted a trique from his pocket. A small holoscreen popped up from the middle of the triangular gadget when he pressed a green-lit button to activate it. Lines of text appeared on the screen. Xttra recognized the Stellar Guard insignia at the top. The commander pulled up a report, but he had trouble deciphering all the words while only seeing the report from the backside.

  “I have direct orders from the Minister of Space Exploration and Defense himself. The chief sovereign wants you specifically to take on this mission.”

  Xttra knitted his brows together and drew in a sharp breath. This qualified as an unexpected revelation. An unwelcome one as well.

  “Why me?” he asked, voicing the first question that popped into his mind.

  Mikkah shrugged.

  “I just follow orders. I don’t analyze them.”

  Xttra could not allow himself to embrace a similar attitude. Experience taught him to keep his eyes open when a situation seemed amiss.

  This was one of those times.

  ***

  Bo’un crumpled his lips into a puzzled frown. His reaction only reinforced to Xttra that his own suspicions concerning what Mikkah said earlier were warranted.

  “Do you suppose the Earthian is right? It feels like much more is at stake here than tracking down a stolen shield emitter.”

  Xttra did not know what to think as he stared at a holoscreen tracking a life support system diagnostic. Nothing about this situation made sense in his mind. He could not imagine their chief sovereign insisting on him personally taking the lead on resolving a matter of such minor importance.

  Xttra glanced over at his longtime weapons officer and simply shrugged.

  “All I know, Bo’un, is Commander Mikkah ignored my request for reassignment until this mission is over.”

  Bo’un’s eyes widened. His fingers traced over jagged scars covering the right side of his jaw and he brushed back his deep brown hair.

  “Wait, what? You asked for reassignment?”

  “I did.” Xttra refocused his attention on the holoscreen. “The Stellar Guard granted my request. This upcoming mission will be our last one together.”

  A heavy silence permeated the scout ship’s bridge. Bo’un drew closer to the station where Xttra sat and knelt by his chair. He made no effort to hide a disappointed frown overtaking his face. Xttra gnawed on his lower lip while he searched for the right words to justify a decision that not only altered his life, but the lives of his crew.

  “When did you plan on telling the rest of us?” the weapons officer finally asked. “How long have you been planning to do this?”

  Xttra turned away from the holoscreen and faced Bo’un a second time.

  “It’s a decision I’ve been agonizing over since we escaped from Earth,” he said. “Calandra is struggling to heal from the trauma she endured there. I need to be with her. Help her. I can’t do that if I’m always in space and she’s alone on Lathos.”

  Bo’un nervously rubbed the same jagged scars again and his light gray eyes locked on a distant invisible point. If anyone understood Calandra’s pain, Xttra knew he did. Bo’un’s own survival bordered on being a miracle. No one aboard their scout ship genuinely believed he would ever come out of medical hibernation. A massive wild Earthian animal—which Kevin called a bear—inflicted so much critical damage while mauling him.

  “That place changed all of us,” Bo’un said, his eyes settling back on Xttra. “And not for the better.”

  Xttra answered him with an abrupt nod. He did not suffer any life-altering injuries like Calandra. Yet scars covered his mind and soul. Every moment from when their ship touched down amid the Earthian mountains until it blasted away from that wretched planet festered inside him like an open wound. Bleeding and oozing. Slowly infecting every part of him.

  Two sequential beeps signaling the diagnostic’s completion interrupted Xttra’s thoughts. Life support systems still operated within acceptable functional parameters. Xttra hoped the diagnostic would uncover a hidden problem, giving him a credible excuse to delay the mission. He had checked every scout ship system now.

  All functioned normally.

  “Why us? Why are we the ones designated to pursue our Earthian ally at all costs?”

  Xttra answered Bo’un with a blank stare. He had no clear answers. His official report did not include a mention of Kevin by name. Nor did he recount what Kevin told him concerning the former prime oracle.

  None of it added up in his mind.

  “We better dig a little deeper before we meet up with the Thetians,” Xttra finally said. “If there’s actual substance to Kevin’s claims, we need to know before we get ourselves mired in a dire situation.”

  He rose to his feet and walked over to the main helm console. Xttra snatched up his trique lying loosely atop the console. He pressed a button lit with blue light in a bottom corner on the triangular device. The trique holoscreen showed a detailed Stellar Guard report on the shield emitter prototype. Xttra pressed the blue button again to scroll past the report. A new holoscreen replaced the earlier one. This screen showed blank space apart from a long, empty horizontal box.

  Xttra pressed down on a second blue-lit trique button in the opposite corner.

  “Search for ‘Prime Oracle Valadius accident.’”

  A beep followed. Two words popped up on the holoscreen a few seconds later.

  Restricted access.

  Xttra scrunched up his face and shot a questioning look at Bo’un. Why would information related to a former prime oracle’s demise aboard a spaceship merit restricted access? If Kevin’s earlier revelation was indeed rooted in facts, such a turn of events only troubled him.

  Xttra was not alone in feeling that way. A stoic frown now graced Bo’un’s lips.

  “Is this some sort of trap?” he said. “Something about all of this isn’t connecting together for me.”

  Xttra nodded while continuing to stare at the holoscreen. He licked his lips and his heart raced faster. Bo’un’s suspicions made sense. A nagging feeling washed over him. Someone intended to set a trap for the surviving members of the expedition to Earth.

  Who was their next target?

  4

  Both eyes popped open unbidden. Calandra blinked a few times and sighed. Darkness shrouded her bedroom, broken in random places by faint
moonlight peeking from behind borders of the bedroom window shade. She felt a sharp tug on the blankets. Xttra tossed and turned, eyes still closed. Calandra gazed upon him for a moment, wondering if she should rouse him from his slumber. She decided against it and sat up.

  Calandra quietly swung both legs over the side of the bed and rose to her feet. She snatched up a robe from a nearby chair and wrapped it around her sleep clothes. Calandra peeked back at Xttra upon reaching the bedroom door. He now lay still, only partially covered by their Sapinoa hair blankets.

  Her destination was their kitchen. Calandra opened a transparent door to their chiller. A blast of frigid air from inside the narrow vertical chamber brushed across both cheeks. Troubled thoughts bombarded her mind as she retrieved a stout bottle filled with glacier water from an upper shelf. Xttra shared unwelcome news after returning home the previous evening. His efforts to get reassigned from his upcoming mission failed. Calandra did not conceal her disappointment when he recounted his conversation with Commander Mikkah. Still, she did not blame Xttra for how things unfolded. Her husband showed his willingness to sacrifice for her and for them as a couple. That meant so much to Calandra.

  A different nagging feeling kept her awake now. Why did the Stellar Guard push so hard for him to fulfill this specific mission? It made no sense to her. What was so important that they refused to consider sending any other master pilot out to the Fengar colonies?

  Calandra set the glass bottle down on the kitchen table and retrieved a small chalice from a nearby cabinet. She glanced down at her left arm. The artificial fingers remained rigid and lifeless. Calandra longed to pick up more than one thing at a time again. One simple activity, among many, she took for granted when she had two working arms. She sat at the table and poured water into her chalice. Calandra sipped from the chalice. Her eyes drifted over to her arm a second time.

  Those stiff unmoving fingers mocked her. Each one serving as a cold reminder of everything she lost.

  Her arm. Her innocence. Her former life.

  The Earthians bore sole blame for events leading her to this point. An Earthian doctor inserted pieces of metal in her arm, which Kevin called screws, to hold her broken bones in place. Those screws were supposed to stabilize her forearm while each bone mended. Instead, the tiny metal pieces caused a bone infection while she lay in hibernation during the return voyage to Lathos. The infection brought on a worsening fever soon after they landed in Luma.

  An image clawed into her mind. That single image hardened and sharpened as it ripped open old scars into fresh wounds.

  A bandaged stump.

  Calandra sank down against her pillow in her hospital bed when she first noticed the altered limb resting there by her side. She shook with sobs. Her clan doctor warned her they could do nothing to save the arm. If they did not amputate the infected part of the limb, she would die. Nothing he told her did enough to prepare Calandra to cope with a sudden loss of her arm.

  “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I’m so sorry.”

  She gazed up through tear-filled eyes. Tears also rolled down Xttra’s cheeks. Calandra’s lips trembled, and she extended her unaffected arm toward him.

  “Why would Ahm let this happen to me?” Her words grew choked with sobs. “With everything I’ve been through and with all I’ve endured. Why this? Why now?”

  She did not want to confront a hard truth. She hesitated to admit part of the blame rested with her. Calandra ignored her brittle bones in her zeal to go to Earth and it cost her.

  Xttra said nothing. He simply crouched down by her bedside and embraced Calandra. Her remaining arm circled his back, and she clung to him while they both shed more tears together.

  “Can’t sleep either?”

  Xttra’s question jerked Calandra out of her thoughts. She snapped her head toward him. His slight brown curls were a bit disheveled from laying on a pillow for so long. A small smile adorning his lips morphed into a concerned frown when he laid eyes on her face.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Calandra set down the chalice and brushed her fingers across her cheek. Tears greeted her fingertips. She quickly brushed them aside.

  “I’m okay. Well … as okay as I can be, I guess.”

  Xttra straightened out his sleeveless sleep shirt and pulled up a chair next to her.

  “What’s on your mind? You can tell me.”

  She gazed into his deep blue eyes and then let her eyes trail downward. His eyes drifted to the same spot, and then he quickly glanced upward again. Calandra did not need to say a word. Her husband discerned those same unwanted thoughts overtaking her mind.

  “We’ll find a way to get this new limb working like your old arm. I give you my word.”

  An annoyed feeling crept out from shadows lingering inside her. Calandra heard the same vow before. Making promises over a situation beyond his control did not soothe her feelings. Still, when Xttra grasped her right arm and caressed her forearm with his fingers, she understood he meant well. He only wanted to comfort her troubled soul. Calandra allowed a faint smile to appear at last. She nestled her head against his shoulder.

  “Sometimes I wonder if we’ll ever be allowed to gain lasting happiness. It seems as elusive as a shadow, forever out of reach.”

  Xttra circled his other hand around her shoulder.

  “We are masters of our own fate. No force on this planet or in the whole galaxy can take that away from us.”

  “I want you to be right. I want to feel something else again besides sadness and anger. I don’t want to worry about you not returning home.”

  Calandra closed her eyes tight as he wound his fingers through a lock of auburn hair that fell against her cheek. Being nestled in his arms felt so good. She did not want the feeling to end.

  “I want you to stay so much.” Her voice dropped to a near-whisper. “Thinking about you going to Fengar never filled me with dread in the past. Now I can’t break free from this awful sensation.”

  “I’m worried too. Something about this mission doesn’t add up.”

  Xttra’s tone perfectly matched the concern embedded in his words. Calandra popped open her eyes again, leaned forward, and turned to face him.

  “What doesn’t add up?”

  Xttra gnawed on his lip and cast his eyes at swinging lights hanging above their heads. Each fixture formed a teardrop shape and connected to a single black rod suspended from the ceiling. He stared at the lights for a moment before finally shaking his head.

  “I don’t know if I should share this. It’s technically restricted information. I never included it on my official mission report.”

  Calandra narrowed her eyes and tilted her head. Those cryptic words aroused instant curiosity.

  “What is it? You know you can always trust me. I won’t tell anyone else.”

  Xttra lowered his head and locked eyes with her a second time. Fear radiated from each one.

  “I chased an old model Cassian dart to Fengar on my most recent mission. My orders were simple. Intercept an unidentified saboteur fleeing with stolen technology. Then I disabled the dart’s secondary thrusters and spoke with the pilot. Everything I thought I knew about my mission turned out to be wrong.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Kevin was the pilot.”

  Calandra’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. Her heart began racing until it shook her entire chest. There had to be another explanation. Kevin Riley was no saboteur. He saved her life on Earth. He sacrificed everything to help them escape.

  “Kevin is no traitor,” Calandra insisted. “Nor a thief. He would never risk his freedom over some gadget.”

  Xttra answered her with a slow nod.

  “That’s just it. I’m convinced someone wanted me to believe we were chasing a common thief at all costs.”

  “Why? What do they have to gain?”

 
; “Kevin claims he found evidence that Valadius lives.”

  Calandra pressed her lips into a slight frown and shook her head. His claim was a mistaken one. What Kevin said could not be possible.

  “Our chief sovereign reported that he died,” she said. “A scout ship recovered the prime oracle’s transport, adrift along with his body. His burial rites were broadcast to every man, woman, and child in Ra’ahm.”

  “I know.” Xttra’s gaze shifted to a copy of the Book of Ahm in the adjacent room. It lay on a small table flanking a couch. “We both witnessed the same rites. We both heard the same tragic news about the flare.”

  Calandra was still a child when tragedy befell Valadius. Her family mourning his sudden death formed one of her earliest memories. A solar flare sent out a radiation burst that bombarded his transport’s hull. At the time, the prime oracle had set out on a quick journey to the Fengar colonies. He intended to minister to colonists belonging to the Order of Ahm.

  It shook citizens of Ra’ahm to the core when their spiritual leader died so tragically. Delcor urged the rest of the Council of Oracles to waste no time and ordain a new prime oracle. The successor to Valadius was a fervent ally of Delcor and his clan during the Separatist War.

  Calandra recalled how her grandfather, Janthore, stepped down as first minister only a year after the prime oracle perished. He never gave a reason for why he resigned from his high office. She suspected her grandfather could not cope with the tragic death of a prime oracle of Ahm he knew personally.

  “It must be a mistake.” Calandra said. “If he didn’t perish, an oracle taking his place would have been unlawfully chosen.”