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  Shattered Silence

  Darkstar Mercenaries Book 2

  Anna Carven

  Copyright © 2018 by Anna Carven

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Also by Anna Carven

  Chapter One

  Enki Zakanin peered out through the viewing port at the vast expanse of the Universe, enjoying the silence. Millions upon millions of stars winked back at him, tiny holes of light in an endless tapestry of darkness.

  Such a comforting sight.

  For the first time since he’d left the infernally noisy trading station, Zarhab Groht, he was alone, and it was quiet.

  Blissfully fucking quiet.

  At last.

  On Zarhab Groht, the endless chatter of thousands of rogues, cutthroats, traders, and pirates had threatened to drive him mad. He already walked the line between sanity and madness anyway, so Nythian and Lodan’s retrieval couldn’t have come at a better time. He’d completed his mission—find and detain the Callidum-seller—throwing the entire trading station into absolute chaos in the process.

  Somehow, he’d managed to cause a massive freighter collision on the lower decks, had started a turf war between a group of Bartharran idiots and their equally moronic Plutharan cousins, and had accidentally destroyed half of the mid-level in a vicious plasma firefight that set off a hidden stash of frag-grenades.

  The entire time, he’d had Relahek Alerak in tow, having plucked him from the badly damaged Plutharan raider ship that limped into the lower decks.

  The irritating noble was currently detained in a holding cell on their stealth cruiser, Virdan X, bound for the massive Kordolian Fleet Station. This was the very same Fleet Station that General Tarak al Akkadian had stolen right from underneath the Empire’s nose. Now it belonged to their company, Darkstar Mercenaries.

  Later, Enki would go and interrogate the fool. He would retrieve the names of each and every one of the buyers, and then Darkstar would hunt them down.

  Enki had already taken back several of the rare and immensely valuable Callidum weapons from the selling floor on Zarhab Groht—knives, swords, even a fucking Aikun-made sikkor of all things—but Relahek had also sold Callidum to Ephrenian traders and Kaiin knew who else.

  Unacceptable.

  Nobody could wield Callidum except for Kordolians. Nobody.

  And if someone figured out how to actually replicate the dark technology that had been key to the Kordolian Empire’s dominance in the Universe…

  Enki uttered a soft string of curses under his breath. They could not afford to let it fall into enemy hands.

  What a hypocrite you are, warrior. Your kind suppressed the masses with these deadly weapons, but you cannot tolerate others having them?

  Quiet. Enki’s mental command was thunder in his own head. Burning with resentment, the other presence slunk away, disappearing into the dark recesses of his mind.

  Stupid Tharian. It had chosen the wrong fucking body to try and occupy. A First Division warrior? Ha.

  Give me peace, just for a siv.

  The reason he craved solitude so badly was that he had a problem. A big fucking problem. A parasite had infected his mind; an alien consciousness without a body, seeking a form of its own.

  A cursed second-stage Tharian. A phantom, a ghost. No Kordolian body in known history had ever played host to a Tharian before.

  Enki was constantly having to suppress the alien’s infernal chatter. Sometimes, the constant background noise grew tiresome. He just wanted the cursed thing out, but nobody had been able to figure out how to do that without destroying Enki’s own consciousness in the process.

  So for now, it stayed. Only the General and Zyara—and now Zharek—knew the true extent of his little problem, and despite that, the boss didn’t treat Enki any differently. He still assigned Enki the dangerous missions, still gave him no quarter in the training chamber, still expected him to be as ruthless and effective as the others.

  No special treatment.

  That had probably saved Enki’s brittle sanity.

  It will be so much easier if you just co-operate, warrior.

  Shut up.

  Enki closed his eyes and put his bare feet up on the console, leaning back in his chair. The chair’s dark Qualum fibers molded around his body like a cocoon, distributing his weight evenly so it felt like he were floating. Shortly after boarding the Virdan X, he’d dissolved the tough exo-armor that fit him like a second skin, washed the stink of Zarhab Groht from his body and donned a soft, loose kashkan robe.

  He almost felt like a real flesh-and-blood creature again; almost felt normal, whatever that was supposed to be.

  But unlike the others, he couldn’t sleep. His mission had been an endless sequence of watching, stalking, and fighting, with only micro-snatches of rest in between. Any ordinary mortal would have welcomed the prospect of a deep, dreamless sleep, but since being infected by the Tharian, Enki hadn’t been able to sleep properly—deeply—for fear the thing would take over his body.

  So he usually just rested with his eyes closed, entering a meditative state that was somewhere in between between quiet watchfulness and true sleep.

  The empty place.

  That was what he called it. Whenever he entered it, the Tharian went quiet.

  But this time, Enki had struggled to reach that state. Unable to tolerate the confines of his assigned quarters, he’d come up to the navigation room to watch the stars. Thankfully, Lodan and Nythian had retreated to their own pods, leaving him alone.

  That was how he preferred it. No conversation, no questioning looks, no tension.

  Just silence.

  He drifted…

  Zzzt.

  Until a soft, almost imperceptible buzz forced him to open his eyes and glance at the sylth—the ship’s navigation system.

  One of the holoscreens was awash with blue light. The screen flashed soundlessly.

 

  Someone was broadcasting a signal, and it was within the Virdan X’s range. That wasn’t saying a lot, because the ship’s transmission range was huge, but it was strange, to say the least.

  The Universe was so vast that traveling ships rarely crossed paths, and they almost never broadcast open signals, because that was
an invitation for disaster.

  He should just ignore it. Anyone stupid—or brave—enough to send out an open signal in the Outer Sectors wasn’t worth his time, and engaging with aliens was always such a hassle.

  But what if it was something else? A warning, a threat, or a distress call? Perhaps it wasn’t foolishness, but desperation.

 

  Enki closed his eyes again, hesitating to make a decision. The sylth flashed incessantly, its blue light bleeding through the thin skin of his eyelids. The Virdan X continued to move through space at impossible speed, soundless and undetectable, the perfect stealth vessel.

  At the back of his mind, the Tharian seethed, trying to break free of Enki’s mental bonds. As usual, its irritating flailing sent an electric tingle over Enki’s scalp and down his spine. A warning ripple of pain shot through his body as the nanites in his bloodstream seethed, ready to emerge at the smallest suggestion of danger.

  Do not disturb me, he snapped, desperately wanting to be alone inside his own head. Kaiin’s hells, the thing could be infuriating sometimes. It didn’t help that all Tharians wished eternal death upon the Kordolian race, his parasite included.

  It might be living inside his brain, but Enki never, ever forgot that this… being was his mortal enemy.

  How could he forget? He’d been on fucking Tharos when the entire Tharian civilization had been destroyed. He’d been there when over three-quarters of the Tharian species had lost their physical bodies and entered the second stage of their lifecycle.

  The phantom stage.

  And who had done the destroying? His people, of course. Who else?

  Ah, but you were also betrayed, weren’t you? Where is your anger, Kordolian?

  Be quiet. Enki sat bolt-upright, his eyes snapping open. Oh, he was angry, but he kept that particular anger tightly reined in, because releasing it would mean…

 

 

  The sylth was insistent now, and it wouldn’t stop until he gave it a command.

  Ignore.

  But he couldn’t. Despite his yearning for absolute silence, the sheer improbability of encountering another vessel in the sparsely populated Outer Sectors had stoked his curiosity.

  “Accept,” he said, the word dropping from his lips before he had a chance to think. He didn’t really understand why he’d just allowed the sylth to receive the signal, but all he had to do was listen, not respond. Perhaps he just needed something to focus on; something other than the Tharian and his own dark thoughts.

  If he couldn’t find peace here, then where? Fucking Tharian. Cursed insomnia. Infernal sylth.

  Suddenly, the navigation room was filled with the strangest sound he’d ever heard.

  A voice. Speaking a language he didn’t understand, but one he recognized. An Earth language. A human?

  A female.

  And she wasn’t exactly speaking. No, she was stringing together a series of strange melodic sounds, some coming from deep within her throat, others high-pitched and shrill.

  Kaiin’s Hells, she was loud.

  What manner of communication was this? Her incessant warbling was incredibly irritating to his sensitive ears.

  “Stop,” he snapped in Kordolian, and all of a sudden, the female did exactly that.

  “Wh-what?” She spoke Universal, her startled question punctuated with the faint crackle of static. Tinged with fear, her voice also carried a tremulous note of hope. “Who is this?”

  Enki said nothing, equally surprised that at the end of all that hellish noise, there was an actual person.

  “Please be real,” she begged. “Don’t leave me.”

  Something in her tone opened a tiny, tiny fissure in Enki’s black Kordolian heart. “Hm.” He let out a soft grunt in response, letting her know that he was definitely here, and that he was very, very real.

  She took a deep, measured breath, as if to calm herself. “D-do you speak Universal?”

  “Yes.” Despite himself, Enki was now curious. What was this frightened human female doing at the border of the Eighth and Ninth sectors? Even the passenger in his mind had gone quiet, as if bemused by this unexpected development.

  “Can you identify yourself?”

  “Perhaps,” Enki said coolly. “It depends.” Suspicious by nature, it occurred to him that this could even be a trap; some recording or AI-speech designed to lure in the unsuspecting rescuer. Space-pirates were becoming increasingly desperate, and he wouldn’t put such tactics past them.

  “Depends on what?” Her voice turned sharp with irritation. Rapid, shallow breathing and a faint tremble told Enki she was in some sort of physical distress. No, the creature on the other end of the transmission was no AI. She was definitely a living, breathing human being.

  “Who are you, what do you want, and why are you broadcasting on an open channel?”

  She took a deep breath, in the way humans often did when they were trying to calm themselves. “My name is Layla dela Cruz. I need your help.”

  “State your location.”

  “Uh…” There was a long pause, followed by a sigh. “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

  “Then your request is pointless,” Enki said flatly. What was this human playing at? Still, he kept the comm line open. “I need more information.”

  “I… I’m somewhere in the Ninth Sector. In a passenger transport escape-pod… drifting. The reason I can’t tell you my location is because I have no fucking idea where I am.”

  Ah. Now the open signal made sense. It was a distress call from a desperate, stranded human. Enki was no tech specialist, but he knew the sylth would be able to track the human’s location as long as she kept broadcasting the signal.

  But that would also make her a target for others.

  Why should you bother, soldier? It’s just a human. An insignificant creature to a powerful warrior like you. The Tharian’s tone was faintly mocking.

  Silence. It is not for you to decide whether she is of significance to me.

  Ah. It’s easy to forget that you Kordolians tend to lose your heads whenever you encounter these human females. Perhaps even you aren’t immune, even though you keep trying to convince yourself you will not take a mate.

  Enki decided that when he eventually figured out how to extract the pest from his brain, he was going to take great pleasure in causing it immense pain as he crushed it—whether physically or psychically, or both.

  “Please don’t leave me,” the female begged. “If you retrieve me and return me to Earth, I can repay you in Universal credits. A lot of credits.”

  “If I choose to retrieve you, it will not be for the sake of credits. Keep this communication open and wait.”

  “Y-you’re coming?”

  Enki didn’t give her an immediate answer. Instead, he opened his personal comm, alerting Lodan and Nythian.

  “Problem, Enki?”

  “What’s up, brother?”

  Their simultaneous questions cut through the silence like an iceblade. Enki had no idea whether they’d been asleep or not, and that was to be expected, because a First Division warrior never truly slept.

  Eternal vigilance was hard-wired into their highly modified bodies.

  “There is a problem,” he said.

  “Enemies in our airspace?”

  “No. A human. She is requesting a retrieval.”

  “A human. Deep in the Ninth…” Nythian sounded incredulous. “Are they mad?”

  “Evidently.”

  “What’s her location?”

  “Unknown.”

  Both warriors groaned.

  “I’ll comm the Fleet Station and tell them to expect a delayed arrival,” Lodan sighed. “We really don’t have a choice, do we?”

  Long ago, when they were still mindless servants of the Old Empire, they probably would have ignored the helpless human’s cries, leaving her to the mercy of the Universe
.

  But things were different now. The protection treaty the Kordolians had signed with Earth’s ruling Federation extended to all human citizens, no matter where they were. It was probably a good thing the General had put the treaty in place. It had become their unofficial rulebook.

  Insta-morals. Enki needed rules, because his own morals were dangerously fluid. Sometimes, he felt nothing at all, and ever since he’d been retrieved from the Ghost Planet, that numb feeling had become a hundred times worse.

  It made a killer like him supremely dangerous.

  And really, the only living being in the entire Universe who could enforce such rules upon him was Tarak al Akkadian.

  “If we don’t come for her, she will die,” he said bluntly.

  “You are coming, right?” Impossibly, her panicked voice caught him by surprise.

  Ah. He’d forgotten the comm was wide open. She’d heard everything.

  “We are coming.” The words felt strange as they left his mouth, partly because he wasn’t much of a talker, and partly because he’d never offered to help anyone before.

  And he realized this was the first time he’d ever spoken to a human.

  There was a first time for everything.

  Deep in the recesses of his mind, the Tharian chuckled, somehow finding Enki’s predicament amusing. Annoyed, Enki crushed its insidious laughter with a single thought, exercising the brutal self-control that had been drilled into every single cell of his body over countless sessions of excruciating training.

  Why the stupid alien had chosen to latch onto him of all creatures, he would never know.

  “Uh, Captain?” Once again she broke through his thoughts, and Enki found himself wondering what she looked like. In truth, when she wasn’t warbling, her voice wasn’t entirely… unpleasant.