Caught in an interstellar war that has started up again after countless millennia, Commander Tyler Ryan Tor finds himself thrust into service once again by the last remaining guardian of a dead race. It is up to Tyler, along with his band of unlikely heroes, to give the universe a fighting chance by raising the ancient banners of Acrea and completing his original mission.
Caught in an interstellar war that has started up again after countless millennia, Commander Tyler Ryan Tor finds himself thrust into service once again by the last remaining guardian of a dead race. It is up to Tyler, along with his band of unlikely heroes, to give the universe a fighting chance by raising the ancient banners of Acrea and completing his original mission.
Shade cackled with glee as the tower exploded and rained down flaming rubble and what he hoped was a twitching corpse to the beach below. He no longer cared if Tyler died. He would find other ways to secure his hold on the Temple of Spero and the city of Moonlit Waters.Â
His footing slipped as the fighter roared past and strafed the transport with heavy weapons blazing. Most of the bridge had been destroyed, but a few charred monitors remained. The stream of information on one of the smoldering screens was grim. The ship's structure was severely compromised, and the engines were failing.
He had made his point.
The fighter hammered the transport again, and he felt the ship lurch to the side.
Shade paused for a moment.Â
Why did the fighter avoid targeting the bridge?
âAllen, get us out of here,â he shouted over the wind.
Shade felt the ship turn slowly and braced himself as the craft accelerated. He stared at the monitor again and clucked his tongue in annoyance. They would not make it to Teka in this condition.
âFind us somewhere to set down, preferably out of the weapons range of Arral,â Shade shouted as the wind became a shrieking stream of compressed air. He fought his way down the decking and entered the ship through the charred blast doors. He took a last look at the shattered bridge, wondering if any of his Immortal Guard survived, and hammered the hatch release with his fist.
With the wind and noise sealed away, he took a steadying breath.
âMaster, I have identified a chain of islands suitable to land on. I must inform you, it will be an unassisted descent. We will be out of range of the coastal defenses momentarily,â said Allenâs mechanical voice.
âGood,â Shade said, smoothing his wild, windblown hair. He could only imagine what Allen meant by unassisted descent, but he imagined it would be more crashing than landing.
There was no way Tyler could have survived the blast. Shade had witnessed and caused enough death in his millennia of existence. He had even died himself once or twice. Tylerâs horrified face would forever reside in his mind, and it brought a smile to his face as he strode down the corridor, making his way to engineering.
The once neatly maintained corridor had become a minefield of shattered deck plating, ruptured power conduits, and dangling wiring that sparked and smoked. The bombardment from the Temple of Spero, as well as the Golem, had gutted much of Croyanâs vessel. The image of Tyler slowly faded, and he was left with a troubling feeling. In his anger and haste, what had he really accomplished?
Judging by the empty corridors of the ship and what he had made out from the chaos on the beach, his army had not fared as well against the Acreans as he had predicted. The enemy had become far more potent with the VAST in the last several hundred years, but that wasnât what was bothering him. A lone woman on the beach, hair flying wildly, destroying everything that fell under her terrible gaze, nagged at him. The power she wielded was something else entirely.
Shade felt the ship lurch to the side, and this time, it did not right itself back to center. One of the stabilizers must have failed. He didnât want to lose this ship entirely. It would take him centuries to scavenge the parts necessary to fix other wrecks he knew about across the globe. The darkness within him was clawing at his insides, urging him on. He had the distinct impression he no longer had centuries.
The thought was terrifying.
He brushed the human emotion aside and quickened his pace to engineering. Several parts of the grated floor were missing as he walked. He could see the glittering ocean below but could not feel the wind. A thin, shimmering shield strained visibly, barely containing the atmosphere within the transport.
The ship lurched again, and he staggered, catching himself on an exposed piece of ruptured paneling. The panel was polished to a mirror sheen, and he looked at his reflection. He did so love his eyes, like chips of dark obsidian. This time he found green eyes staring back at him, and the reflection of his face twisted, and his own mouth sneered, and his voice bellowed, âYou killed my best friend!â
It had been nine hundred years since the pitiful wretch within him had wrested enough control to surface and command the body. Shade felt himself about to lose a power struggle against a presence he thought long cowed. He gripped the panel in both hands and closed his eyes, concentrating. The darkness roiled within him, and he heard the man he had once been scream in agony.
Shade wasnât sure how long he stood in the corridor, hunched over a broken panel. When he did open his eyes and stand tall again, the battle was most certainly won. The pitiful wretch was locked away again.
âMaster, beginning our descent,â Allenâs voice crackled over the badly damaged ship speakers.
âKeep us in one piece!â Shade shouted, his voice emerging from his lips with a croak. He coughed to clear his throat and hacked painfully into his palm. Green and black fluid covered his hand and dribbled down his lips.
He continued down the broken corridor and staggered again as the ship creaked and swung haphazardly from side to side. One of the thrusters must have been firing erratically. It took him far longer than he expected to reach engineering. The combination of damaged corridors, legs that felt like he was walking through a mire, and someoneâs less than optimal piloting further darkened his mood. When he finally tumbled into engineering and locked his gaze on Allen, he knew they were in trouble.
Appendages whirled in a frenzy as the suspended torso of Allen sloshed in a tank of foul liquid. The cylindrical, opaque housing that surrounded his body still bore signs of recent repair. The chariot that kept the engineer mobile spat smoke and sparks from various damaged sections. Battle had found everyone aboard, it seemed.
At the sound of Shadeâs entry, Allen turned and examined him with sightless eyes. His human eyes had long since rotted away, leaving the empty sockets bound tightly by a visor that glittered with an inner light.
âMaster, you are damaged,â Allen said, his voice modulator sounding like it had seen better days. âI am confused. The Master does not get damaged.â
Shade snorted and waved his hand in a dismissive gesture.
âHow many remain on board?â Shade asked. He couldnât be bothered to search the darkness for them himself.
Allen turned away and rapidly tapped his spidery appendages on several consoles at once.
âFive, including us, remain on board,â he said.
Shade paused for a moment, accepting the news slowly.
âThe survivors are Immortal Guard,â Allen said. He continued his task of keeping them in the sky while Shade took the only intact chair and sat heavily with a sigh.
âWell, that's something at least,â Shade said, his voice a hoarse whisper.
The ship lurched suddenly and began to lose altitude steadily. Allen was a blur of movement, tapping screens at inhuman speeds. Alarms blared, and the lights in engineering flickered and went out. Red emergency lighting clicked on just as all of the screens flickered and went dark. The hard-won core from the derelict vessel that Bulca and her brood had sacrificed themselves to obtain disappeared behind an automated blast door that slammed into place.
Shade raised an eyebrow. They really were going to land unassisted.
He sensed the ground approaching at an alarming rate and smoothed his dark hair with barely trembling fingers. He glanced down at his torn and dirty robes covered in stains of unknown origins. He must have looked a mess.
The ship impacted the ground in catastrophic fashion. To call what happened a landing would be like calling sudden and violent unconsciousness a lullaby. The darkness within Shade responded sluggishly as the chair he sat in shattered into shrapnel. He tumbled through the air and collided savagely with the far wall of engineering. Allen faired far worse.
Spindly appendages from Allenâs chariot bent and cracked as he bounced first off the ceiling and then against several control panels. Glass, polymer, and fragments of metal swarmed through the air like angry bees. Tubes that transferred life-giving fluids tore and spurted green ichor against the crumbling deck plating. The cables suspending Allen in his cylindrical prison snapped on one side, beating him mercilessly against the glass.Â
The swarm of airborne debris hammered Shade as the transport rolled repeatedly. A thin shield of darkness formed against his skin and turned anything that touched it to ash. The wall behind him smoked and groaned, and one final flip of the ship forced him painfully through the wall and into the corridor beyond. He bounced and skidded against the ceiling, which had rapidly become the floor. The transport was certainly upside down, and Shade howled with mad laughter as he shot down the long corridor like a bullet exiting the barrel of a gun.
Shade barely escapes with his life; leaving the beach in a craft that is barely held together. He doesn't care though, he's just happy that after millennia he's finally managed to put an end to Tyler.
Lieutenant Thomas is woken up from a cryogenic sleep by Morgan, the Spero's Artificial Intelligence. He's alerted to the events on the beach, and that Tyler is in serious trouble. He's lonely, having had no human interaction since the cataclysm when only one out of four habitation modules landed safely on the planet some nine hundred years before.
Commander Tyler Ryan Tor is barely alive after his battle with Shade, but he finds himself being beset by a mysterious woman named Crylona. Her colony, her cities are being besieged by creatures of the deep, and is no longer able to keep them at bay. She explains that the colony is one of the habitation modules, previously thought to have crashed with no survivors in the deep ocean.
With everything they thought they knew being turned upside down; the revelation that the habitation pod and it's passengers thought to have drowned, is actually a colony called Pelagos, has only made the threat from Shade even more palpable. Tyler and his ragtag group of friends have to save the colonies reactor before it's power source is depleted and the ocean and it's creatures crush them. There are ramifications for the reactor aboard the Spero, with Thomas the only human on board, and his possibly declining mental health, will he be able to ensure that the Spaceship he's on doesn't crash to the planet in a fiery ball.
While I quite enjoyed The Band of Starlit Waters, I found that I struggled somewhat with Bussie's writing style. There were repeated names, and phrases close together, making the manuscript feel clunky. The story was intriguing, and held my attention - however the writing style was too simplistic.
S. A