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  To the Victor

  Book One of Devour the Stars

  R Coots

  Arts Eklektos

  Cambridge, MN

  Copyright © 2019 by R Coots

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

  Arts Eklektos

  31792 Lakeway Dr NE

  Cambridge, MN 55008

  https://www.artseklektos.com/

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Book Layout © 2017 BookDesignTemplates.com

  To the Victor/R Coots. -- 1st ed.

  978-1-7336359-0-5

  First fruits to God

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Syrus

  Syrus

  Syrus

  Syrus

  Syrus

  Syrus

  Syrus

  Syrus

  Jossa

  Syrus

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  Jossa

  Jossa

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  Jossa

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  >ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  >ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  > Author’s Note

  Author’s Note

  Thank you for picking up this book! I hope you enjoy. At risk of making you run the other way, be warned that it is full of foul language, violence, and a lot more potentially disturbing topics. If that’s not your cup of tea/bottle of whiskey, I get it. If, at the end, you decide you want more, feel free to join my mailing list at: https://bit.ly/2Cupizv There’ll be short stories to expand on the world, art, bits of world building, and the occasional rant about the math of space travel (math, ew).

  >Prologue

  Syrus

  These creatures might look human. Might even talk and walk and sometimes act human. Make no mistake. They are nothing like humans. Forget that and next thing you know, you’ll wake up in the Great Beyond, wondering how your life ended so fast.

  -Professor Tolst, New Hopks College of Medicine

  Syrus came back to himself sitting in a puddle of blood, groggy with a rage hangover, not sure where he was. Well, besides sitting in a puddle of blood. That didn’t help much. He’d woken up like this so many times, it was difficult to tell if he was coming out of a drunken riot or if he’d had a particular reason for jumping the nav beacons and striking out for madness uncharted.

  Fuck it all.

  The lack of sniggering clued him in to the fact that this was a special case. Rissa always made herself known, whether in person or as self-appointed and absentee conscience.

  Nothing.

  He could count on one hand the number of times his rages silenced her.

  The terror jumped up and kicked him in the face. With it came the memory of the last time he’d felt like this. Rissa screaming for help. He’d been so scared for her, he couldn’t even pick a fight with her imaginary self. Hadn’t stopped to listen to the comms. Hadn’t checked his radar. Nothing at all to cover his trail. He’d just jumped in the closest ship and taken off.

  She hadn’t been there.

  His head felt like it weighed a thousand pounds, but Syrus managed to look up and take stock of his surroundings. He was in a small infirmary. Their medunits looked different than the Navlad models. The display towers were thinner, more rounded around the edges, but the dials and readouts were the same in a general sort of way. A mangled arm hung over the edge of the far unit.

  She was here after all. But only in body.

  People stood around him, their dark armor blending in with the darker metal of the wall behind them. Splashes of blood decorated the floor, ceiling, and everything in between. Too much to have come out of Rissa.

  Right. There’d been someone. Someone laughing at him. Saying something about death. And strength. Power, maybe?

  A spacer-white face swam to the surface of his memory, topped by a shock of butter-blond hair and set with bright green eyes. With the image came the laugh. So full of smug pride that it felt like having a bucket of oil thrown in his face.

  Syrus clenched his hand and met resistance. Soft, squishy resistance. He looked down. An eyeball sat in his palm, nerves and blood vessels trailing off to one side. He poked at it. The cornea gave, turning a little. Under the smears of blood, he could see a green iris, all the more bizarre for the burst blood vessels around it.

  Who’s laughing now, dick?

  Blinking, Syrus looked up. Was that . . .? It almost sounded like her. Was that someone else’s body on the med unit table? Had the fucker lied about killing her?

  That much he could remember, before the red haze of fury swallowed his short-term memory. The bastard had been describing . . . things. Things he’d done to Rissa. Rissa, who’d been so innocent and pure.

  That was a definite snort of amusement. And it was definitely her voice talking to him. She may have been innocent at one point, but not since she’d met him. Pure? That wasn’t very accurate, now was it?

  “’F you’re really dead, rather remember how you were.” He didn’t realize he’d spoken out loud until he heard the rasp of his voice in his ears. It was rough and broken, cracking in the middle of the words.

  A fragment of someone screaming flitted through his brain. Himself, as he pounded muscle and bone to pulp.

  Well, that explained it.

  “Unfortunately, sir, she really is dead.”

  Syrus’s head snapped up and he rocked back on his heels to look at the man who had stepped away from the pack lining the walls. Syrus wondered how he’d missed the man. He should have been able to tell someone was about to speak. Had an opinion. Something.

  Fucked up people. Everyone on the ship was tainted. Between the poisoned air and the emotional muck, he felt like he’d been running up mountains with a full pack strapped to his back.

  The man took another step forward and Syrus forced his eyes to focus. Spacer-pale skin, light enough to show blue veins underneath. Blue eyes shadowed by an ornate helmet that had no business in combat. Blood gleamed a bright, wet red where it covered his armor. Syrus wondered who it had come from. The dead man? Rissa?

  Does it matter? What are you going to do about it?

  Shut up, he told Rissa, glad he kept the words inside this time. Unless you have something helpful to say.

  You’re in trouble; how’s that?

  Syrus gritted his teeth and levered himself to his feet, dropping the squashed eyeball as he went. His clothes were so saturated with blood that he was literally sticking to things. He almost had to peel himself off the floor.

  How long had he been sitting there?

  Long enough.

  Better question. Why hadn’t anyone taken advantage of his vulnerability while he was down there? From what he’d seen of these people the last week or so, he shouldn’t be alive right now.

  “Sir? Your name please?”

  They were calling him sir. The fuck?

  “Shock,” said a new voice. Female. A woman eeled her way up next t
o the man and watched Syrus with a critical eye. “Or the next thing to. If I didn’t know better—” She scowled and leaned forward. “You are not a true Imperial.”

  Syrus scowled at the woman, trying to figure out what she meant. He sure as fuck wasn’t one of the Edgelanders. Or from this floating freak show. What else did that leave? The Seps Coalition? They never left their sector.

  You are a moron, Rissa told him, putting a phantasmal hand on his back. Right over the place where his maruste lived, displayed by the nanites that rode in the blood of anyone born in the Navlad Empire

  Oh.

  “I’m Savage,” he told the woman. He waited for her to step back and look disgusted, but she only looked interested. Maybe a little irritated. Well, that was new.

  He turned back to the man before she could come to her senses and realize how dangerous it was to be in arm’s reach of him. “Who are you?” Syrus swallowed against the scratch in his throat and tried again. “The hell do you want?”

  “I am Quinn, Second of the Kuchen Fleet Turan, temporary commander of the flagship Edde Belo, formerly under the care of Warlord Brander.” The man’s face soured slightly. “Which should be impenetrable to outFleet infiltrators.”

  Syrus coughed and spat a wad of blood to one side. One of his teeth felt loose. “Yeah, well, your air processors need some work.”

  Next to Quinn, the woman’s blank face twitched. Some emotion buzzed in the air around her. From Quinn, nothing.

  “Unfortunately, that is impossible,” the man said. “As for what I want, that is currently . . . fluid.” He tipped his head at the medunit table and the body under its hood. “What is done with her depends on you. She has already been promised.”

  “Promised?” So far he’d managed to keep from looking at the body in the medunit. That last comment though, it nearly made him lose his fight with his instincts.

  No. Remember her as she was. Not as she is now.

  “As a reward. For services rendered. The one who is to claim her has already been notified.”

  Suddenly, some of the things he’d seen and heard as he ghosted his way through the ship made a lot more sense.

  He nearly lost his shit all over again. “What,” he said through gritted teeth, “do you mean? Her body? To a person!?”

  Neither of the people in front of him so much as batted an eye. Or let their emotions loose for him to feel.

  No. Keep your head, you dumb fuck. Don’t lose control again. Look at the mess you made in here. You think painting the whole ship red is going to help? Don’t think. Don’t feel. Don’t turn back into the monster. There’s no one around to tame you, remember? Have to do it yourself again. Like the Academy. These people are your enemies. You can’t afford to let them see how weak you really are.

  Somehow, though he’d never understand what made it possible, he managed to stuff it back inside. Tamp it down a hole and slam a lid on tight.

  Even Rissa went quiet. He was alone in his head.

  Just the way he needed it.

  “There is one way to get her back. If . . .” Quinn trailed off and moved his face into a thoughtful expression. Something finally leaked through the mask. Something like triumph.

  Syrus just looked at the man. Who knew what this bastard would do if he realized that not only could Syrus beat people to death, he could feel people’s emotions and know when they were faking. Fucker might decide to toss his guest out an airlock. Or worse, try to force the use of that talent in the mad crusade these people seemed to live for.

  No, don’t remember. Remembering is bad. Just pay attention, you moron.

  Always so helpful, he told Rissa’s ghost. Except it didn’t sound as much like her as before.

  “Warlord Brander was our strongest warrior,” the man said. “Now that you’ve killed him, we are in need of a new one.”

  Syrus decided he was sticky and exhausted and in no mood to play games with a man who didn’t have the decency to kill his prey. “Got a point in there?”

  Around the room, the watchers shifted, armor and clothes scraping the walls softly. They sounded like a nest of snakes getting ready to attack. The woman next to Quinn went from impassive to irritated and back again so fast that Syrus nearly missed it.

  Quinn bent down and scooped the battered helmet off the floor. He shook it sharply, flinging a spray of blood and other assorted tissue from the insides before holding it out to Syrus. “According to the laws of the Kuchen Fleet, you have won the Helm of the Warlord. And all the rights that go with it.”

  Syrus stared at it for a moment, wondering if his stolen translator had shorted.

  The man kept holding the helmet out. The murmurs and rustling and clanks of armor around the room finally told Syrus he had heard right. This lunatic was serious.

  “A question.” A woman leaned forward from her place along the wall and touched Quinn’s arm. “If I may?”

  The man eyed her, then nodded. She looked at Syrus. Her brown eyes were dark, both literally and figuratively. Her mouth was small, lips thinned further by the frown pulling at their edges. She was spacer white, but her blondish hair had a smear of damp red in it. Probably from getting too close to the wall.

  “Ask,” Syrus muttered before she could open her mouth.

  She narrowed her eyes at him and turned back to Quinn. “Why trust him? He is Imperial Navlad. We are killing his people.”

  Syrus laughed so hard he couldn’t even tell what they were thinking. The ridiculousness of it was too much. He grabbed the feeling and used it to brace his shields. “You,” he said, then coughed out another laugh and shook his head. “You just got done asking why I’m not Navlad. And now? Lady, you’re the best laugh I’ve had in a month.”

  Probably the last you’ll have in a long time, too.

  That sobered him up real quick.

  Syrus snatched the helmet, ridiculous thorny inlay and all, and tucked it under his arm. It was too dented to fit on his head, never mind the blood. “First order,” he snarled. “Her body is mine.”

  The voices of the people lining the walls rose from a murmur to a shout. Syrus braced himself against the heat of their anger and watched Quinn, waiting. After a moment, the other man’s eyes softened slightly and he bowed, sweeping an arm in the direction of the corpse in the medunit.

  Then, still silent, he turned on his heel and headed for the door at the far end of the room. Syrus watched him go.

  Rissa said nothing. Syrus decided he was ok with that. Whatever was keeping her quiet, at least he wouldn’t be dealing with the constant internal monologue of a dead woman. Nothing his imagination cooked up ever compared with the real thing anyway. Now that she was gone—really gone this time—the fake was all he’d ever have.

  She deserved a better memorial than that.

  > Chapter One

  Syrus

  The only truth in life is strength.

  Strength of arms and strength of will.

  The man who has neither has no business wearing the Helm.

  -Kuchen proverb

  The rard of the Ludaf star system hobbled down the ramp of a Fleet drop ship and fell to his knees at the foot of a makeshift throne, coughing weakly.

  Syrus, sitting on the throne and wishing the day would just end already, looked down at the miserable, shaking piece of shit and curled a lip. “How did you manage a bunker in the middle of a fucking acid lake?”

  The fear rolling off the broken rard stilled, electric prickles digging into Syrus’s skin and turning to the crawling itch of disgust before slipping into the slimy ooze of a person who knows his superiority is bred into his bones.

  Syrus leaned forward and kicked the rard in the face. Not hard enough to break anything, but enough to tip the man ass over end and send him rolling across the clearing in the middle of the rocky outcropping. He hit one of the granite boulders on the other side with a whumph of escaping air and a cry of pain. His son, still standing on the ramp of the ship, yelled and started fighting the Fleet sold
iers who had him by the arms. They let him struggle, bracing their legs and planting themselves like they’d grown roots.

  Around him, the slopes were a moving, shifting mass of people. Bloodied, bruised, and in some cases broken, they stood, knelt, or lay strapped to body boards propped up on the rocks. The Fleet soldiers had gathered up as many of the high-ranking prisoners as they could find and stripped their shirts to check the maruste on their backs for size and detail. Then the prisoners had all been herded through the inoculation process before getting dropped in this natural amphitheater to watch their lives be destroyed.

  Now they coughed as a whole, trying to get rid of the smog of factory output clogging their lungs and draw in something better. Listening to the racket they made, Syrus would bet not a one had ever stepped outside the hab domes that covered this planet like blisters. The wind blew steadily, carrying particulate along to scrape at their eyes, their bodies, the landscape itself. Syrus could feel it scratch at his armor the way the crowd’s emotions scratched at his mind.

  This wasn’t everyone. That wasn’t possible or practical. But they’d be enough. Enough to send back into the system and tell the other Imperials how their new governor, or anined, took control. And how he would hold it.

  Blood. It would involve a lot of blood.

  The soldiers who had hold of the son of the rard decided they’d had enough of his temper tantrum. One of them cuffed the boy over the head. He slumped, stunned. The guards hauled him down the ramp and over to the edge of the clearing. While they tied him down with shackles and grav tethers, the guards in charge of the rard did the same. Once Syrus was sure there wouldn’t be any sort of escape attempt, he ignored them and turned his attention to the men lining up in front of him. Ralenen—the highest unit commanders in the Fleet, barring himself and Quinn. He would have liked to kick these men across the clearing too, but it’d be harder. And it’d draw this little ceremony out far longer than he wanted. Breathing air that the Imperials couldn’t might be an effective bit of intimidation, but that didn’t mean it was comfortable.