Blood Siren (Chronicles of the Orion Spur Book 1) Read online

  Blood Siren

  Chronicles of the Orion Spur: Book One

  2nd Edition

  by

  Michael Formichelli

  BLOOD SIREN is COPYRIGHT © 2012 & 2014 by MICHAEL FORMICHELLI

  First Edition COPYRIGHT © 2012

  Second Edition COPYRIGHT © 2014

  Blood Siren is a work of fiction, any resemblance to any person, organization, or event is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this work or any part thereof.

  2nd Edition Cover Art, Back Art, and Logo Art by Michael Lam © 2013, 2014

  2nd Printing: February 2016

  To my beloved Ellie, I couldn’t imagine going through this without you.

  And a special thank you to everyone whose advice made Blood Siren the book it is today. Your support has been invaluable.

  Other works by Michael Formichelli

  Chronicles of the Orion Spur Series

  Keltan’s Gambit (Book 2)

  Eye of the Abyss (Book 3, coming soon)

  The Golden Mean (short story, Kindle only)

  For the latest updates on upcoming works visit:

  HTTP://WWW.CYGNUSORION.COM

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Cephalon Temple Complex, Savorcha

  Chapter One

  Keltan Arcology, Sol-III (Earth)

  Chapter Two

  Keltan Arcology, Sol-III

  Chapter Three

  Cronus Arcology, Sol-III

  Chapter Four

  Remus City, Sol-III

  Chapter Five

  Matre’s Glory System

  Chapter Six

  Ikuzlu City, Kosfanter (Matre’s Glory-V:a)

  Chapter Seven

  Ikuzlu City: Solan District, Kosfanter

  Chapter Eight

  Ikuzlu City, Kosfanter

  Chapter Nine

  Ikuzlu City, Kosfanter

  Chapter Ten

  Ikuzlu City, Kosfanter

  Chapter Eleven

  Ikuzlu City, Kosfanter

  Chapter Twelve

  Ikuzlu City, Kosfanter

  Chapter Thirteen

  Ikuzlu City: Solan District, Kosfanter

  Chapter Fourteen

  Ikuzlu City, Kosfanter

  Chapter Fifteen

  Ikuzlu City, Kosfanter

  Chapter Sixteen

  Queen Gaia Luxury Liner, Matre’s Glory System

  Chapter Seventeen

  Matre’s Glory System

  Chapter Eighteen

  Ikuzlu City, Kosfanter

  Chapter Nineteen

  Elmorus System

  Chapter Twenty

  Queen Gaia, Matre’s Glory System

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Sanakrat City, Elmorus

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Queen Gaia, Matre’s Glory System

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Queen Gaia Luxury Liner, Matre’s Glory System

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Lokhari Forest, Elmorus

  Cast of Characters

  Genealogy of the Houses

  Cronus, Keltan, Mitsugawa, Revenant, and Sordekaar

  Glossary of Terms in 25th Century Orion Spur

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Cephalon Temple Complex, Savorcha

  35:8:17 CST (J2350:18025)

  The bomb-blast kicked the air from Nero’s lungs and sent a cloud of millennia-old dust rising like a specter from the floor of the ancient building. He gasped and coughed, fighting the musty dirt-cloud for air. A few hours more of this crap and he was finished with Savorcha and this war with the Orgnan Empire for good. When he made it through this mission he would have a cold beer and a long conversation with Daedalus about trying to rescue crazy people who didn’t appreciate it. It figured that his last mission on this hellhole world would wind up being his worst of the whole war, and he longed to have it over and done with.

  Savorcha, how he’d grown to hate the name of this place.

  The planet orbited a brown-dwarf star that barely radiated light in the infrared spectrum. Fueled by massively active tectonic plates, thousands of volcanoes flared in the unending night with lava, ash, and toxic fumes on an hourly basis. Most of the planet’s surface was a barren crust of dried lava broken up by oases of sulfurous hot springs and a vast acidic sea. The air could melt human lungs in minutes, and the rain destroyed any unshielded equipment. Even powered combat shells and armored environmental suits had to keep their aegis fields up while operating outside or they would corrode within hours. Most of the life that evolved here was either bioluminescent, or relied on echolocation to navigate. The eerie glow of the native flora was a poor substitute for a proper sun, and after these last three years Nero would happily kill someone for just a ray of daylight.

  We should have taken backup, Prospero said into his thoughts.

  He rolled his eyes. Prospero was his Symbiotic Cerebral Computer—his SCC—and could get annoying at times, but its usefulness could not be denied. As an Abyssian Praetor, he was designed for the physical tasks like shooting and punching. Nero had no idea how to hack computer systems or fly a ship. It was left to Prospero to handle that high-brow stuff.

  “Backup? I can handle the extraction of a scientist and his family by myself, thanks—and I’ll do it in record time,” he muttered.

  By yourself? Really, Nero? What, do you think I’m just going to sit here and let you screw this up for us?

  “I expect you to sit there and let me handle this,” he responded in quiet tones.

  Oh, and who got you through the doctor’s security? Who’s going to contact the ship when you’re ready? Don’t forget I run your cybernetic implants.

  “Shut up,” he said out loud.

  The first part of the mission had gone off without a hitch. Nero gained entry to the ancient structure through the roof access and descended through the airlock the doctor set up to maintain a livable atmosphere inside the maze of halls within. However, not only did the Orgnan arrive hours ahead of schedule, but the doctor proved much more difficult to extract than Nero expected. He refused to leave, and even the shockwaves from the first Orgnan bombs which shook the building to its foundation could not persuade him to change his position. Nero had made it clear that with his C-37 aerospace lander parked on the roof a lucky blast could strand them here permanently, but even that had no effect. Even after applying “intensive persuasion” to the man’s face, the answer was still negative. The man was insane, and Nero simply didn’t have the patience to deal with his craziness any longer.

  Descending a short flight of stairs, he crossed half-way down a short corridor and turned into the doctor’s make-shift lab inside a broad, stone chamber. Three portable aluminum tables were pushed together in the center of the dusty room with several pieces of equipment hooked into a large superconducting battery beneath the table amalgam via thick, rubber-clad cables. A holographic projector hummed away translating the machines’ work into arcane symbols floating above the table.

  “I will not leave until my research is done.” The doctor, a lanky man in a white jump suit, clenched his fists, barely glancing up from his machines when Nero entered the room.

  Another blast sounded outside. The force of it thrust the floor up into the soles of Nero’s feet.

  “That’s it, Doctor Rega. We’re going.” He watched the doctor flinch under his gaze.

  There was a moment of fear in the man’s wide, brown eyes, and his hand rose to rub the rising bruise on his cheek. The nostrils in his crooked nose flared, and his thin, pal
e lips twisted in disgust above the narrow terminus of his long face.

  The doctor’s wife, a comely woman with shoulder length black hair and prominent cheekbones, sat in the corner opposite Nero with a little girl. The woman stared at the doctor with wet, pleading eyes, but the child seemed more interested in petting her large brown-and-tan cerberai than taking part in the drama unfolding around her. Cerberai were genetically engineered canines with twice the size and double the intelligence of the species they were derived from. This one looked back at Nero with obvious intelligence and concern in its big brown eyes.

  Doctor Rega’s attention flew from Nero to the holographic display lighting the small stone chamber with an eerie electric-blue illumination. It showed a running translation from arcane symbols Nero didn’t recognize, to the familiar Solan script beside them. He caught the words “nanoplague” and “disrupting mental process” as they scrolled by almost too fast to follow. For a moment he wondered what the hell this doctor was researching, but pushed the thought from his mind. Whatever it was, it had nothing to do with the mission he was on. His orders were to extract one Doctor Rega and his family from the alien facility, and that’s what was going to happen whether or not they liked it.

  When the doctor’s eyes met Nero’s again, the fear was gone.

  I told you he wouldn’t leave voluntarily, Prospero said.

  “You’re not helping things.” Nero intended his words for both of them. He brushed the right side of his coat aside and drew the black, angular gauss pistol from its holster. It was time for a new tactic.

  Holding it at his hip, he pointed the barrel at the floor. “I don’t care if you wind up a pile of bones in this place or an Orgnan slave, but I refuse to allow you to take your wife and kid down that path.”

  The doctor chuckled and ran a dirt-covered hand through his unkempt hair. “My wife understands how important this is, Abyssian.”

  Nero sighed. “Ma’m, I’ve got a C-37 waiting on top of this decrepit old temple. You don’t have to die with him.”

  The woman looked away, but the girl met his gaze. She was thinner than he expected from her description in the mission brief, her long face was accentuated by the large Roman nose she shared with her father. Her black hair hung about her wiry body in long, clumped locks. It took Nero a moment to recognize that she was wearing an environmental suit underneath the stains and acid burns scarring its surface. She was a picture of neglect and he had a pretty good idea why after interacting with her father, but the pity that began to swell in Nero’s chest was arrested by her large eyes. They glowed bright green in the dim room, pulsing as though an unearthly fire burned just behind their lenses. He was so stunned by the sight that he missed what she said.

  “I’ll go,” the girl repeated. Her voice was so steady and matter of fact that Nero began to wonder if there were such things as demons.

  Now you’re just being ridiculous. Her name is Kiertah Rega. It’s right here in the brief. She’s the daughter of the two doctors in the room. I’ll admit, there’s nothing in the file to explain those eyes, but it won’t matter if the Orgnan attacking this structure manage to collapse it on top of us all, now will it?

  Nero shook his head. Weird or not he had a job to do. “Alright, let’s go then.”

  The girl rose languidly to her feet, unaffected by the tremors of bomb blasts outside. The cerberai rose with her and waited patiently while she grabbed the scruff of his neck and pulled herself into a seated position on his back. Her mother moved to put an arm on her shoulder, but a glare from her unearthly eyes froze the woman in place.

  “Kiertah, don’t,” Doctor Rega said.

  Another bomb blast struck at them through the air in the chamber. The walls cracked, spraying dust into the air thick enough to dampen visibility in the room. Nero was nearly thrown off his feet and Kiertah’s mother was dislodged from her perch on the lab stool. Doctor Rega swayed but recovered quickly and moved towards the glowing holographic display.

  “I’m not going to leave all of this progress for drooling beasts like the Orgnan to exploit. I will go only after I know my research will not be stolen,” Doctor Rega said.

  Nero glanced down at Kiertah. She met his gaze and nodded at him as though she knew what he was thinking. He felt a strange sensation in his head followed by a feeling of rightness about his idea.

  “Fine, I’ll just have to hurry things up then,” Nero said.

  “What do you mean? You can’t speed up—” The doctor froze, staring at the object Nero produced from his belt.

  It was ovoid, about the size of an apple with a shiny metal skin. A single black button protruded from its surface. Nero held it up so that the doctor could see it clearly, and took a few steps backwards into the corridor outside the chamber.

  “What are you going to do with that?” Doctor Rega asked in a half-whisper.

  Ah, Nero, I would not recommend this course of action. I don’t think you’re thinking this through clearly.

  “Hurry things along.” Nero twisted the button, pressed it, and threw it down the stone hallway. It bounced several times in the darkness, then struck a stairwell at the far end and pinged down each step.

  Mrs. Rega gasped.

  Did you even look at how long you set the fuse for?

  “You idiot! This facility is powered by the heat of a magma flow directly under it! If your anti-matter grenade cracks the neutronium containment cap, the volcano is going to erupt!” The doctor’s face was turning purple. Veins bulged on his forehead.

  “Well, then, we better go, right?” Nero smiled.

  An explosion louder and more forceful than any Orgnan bomb turned the air in the corridor into a moving wall that slammed Nero off his feet. He twisted around, landing back-first against a curve in the hallway that preceded the ascending stairwell. The blow chased the breath from his lungs, and stars twinkled in his vision. Through them, he could see the opposite end of the corridor brightening rapidly with blue-white plasma.

  Oh, hell.

  White flame rimmed by rings of blue and orange filled Nero’s world. There was a rushing sound, like that of a massive waterfall in his ears. He felt himself lifted and thrown, and then a shock wave passed through his entire body, squeezing the last of the air from his chest and cracking his carbon-enhanced skeleton with a sound like a thunderclap. The world spun in shadows before the floor smacked Nero hard in the face and knocked him back to his senses with the smell of charred flesh in his nostrils.

  You have first-degree plasma burns all over your body, Nero. I’ve switched off your pain nerves, but you’ve got a cerebral hemorrhage. I’m activating our autonomic medical nanomachines, but I cannot guarantee you will remain conscious long enough to get out of here.

  Great, he thought. Cut off from his pain nerves he felt more annoyed than alarmed, though the latter outweighed the former when he discovered he could not move his right arm.

  Stay still, Nero. Your right side has sustained more structural damage than your left. Let the nanomachines work.

  Ahead of him the corridor was alight with orange flame. He could see a flood of lava crawling its way towards him and the open doorway leading into the make-shift laboratory chamber.

  The girl was the first to emerge riding her cerberai. The odd looking pair charged up to where Nero lay and the girl dismounted in a smooth, practiced motion. She knelt down beside Nero and put her small hand on his head while the cerberai sniffed around his smoldering body.

  Mrs. Rega stumbled out hauling the girl’s father by his shirt collar, coughing in the thickening haze of heat and toxic gasses. When she saw the flow of lava crawling towards them she screamed.

  “Get up,” Kiertah said. Her voice as calm as a reflecting pool.

  He tried, despite Prospero’s warning. He managed to get his left knee under himself and started pushing off the ground with his working arm. He got just about to a kneeling position when a rumble shook the corridor and the floor bucked beneath him. A deafening crack overwh
elmed Nero’s senses and the floor split open lengthwise down the narrow hallway. Superheated air spewed forth from the newly formed crevasse. Nero and Kiertah were thrown to the side while the cerberai was thrown in the opposite direction by the blast of scalding-hot air. Nero struck the wall and landed in a heap beside the girl.

  A scream pierced the roar of the volcano beneath them. Nero turned his blurred vision towards its source and saw Mrs. Rega clinging to her husband’s arms. Her hair and clothing were bright with flame while the two wrestled with each other as her gargled screams came again and again. The doctor pulled his wife towards him as if to embrace her, then shoved her with a violent thrust into the path of oncoming lava. She managed to stop herself mere centimeters from the lava, but stumbled backwards. She was oddly quiet when the molten rock touched her heels. Her body went limp and fell doll-like into the glowing flow of liquid stone.

  She let out an ear-rending shriek when fire flared about her body as bright as sunlight.

  Doctor Rega surged forward down the corridor, and for a moment Nero thought he might be running to save his daughter, but he was past them a moment later heading towards the stairway.

  Nero tried to move but his body was now totally unresponsive. A sharp tone filled his ears, swelling in volume to the point where he could not hear anything else. He saw the girl stir beside him, then another pulse of hot gasses belched forth from the crevasse and his vision blurred out completely.

  There was darkness for a time after that. How long, Nero didn’t know, but he returned to consciousness with a floating, detached sensation.

  Someone would like to talk to you, Prospero whispered in his mind. The tone was chiding, which he found odd but let it pass into the fuzz of his dreamy haze.

  He drifted in a direction that felt like downward and outward at the same time. He was curious about how this could be right up until the moment he hit a wall of pain.