Ancient Stars (Universe on Fire) Read online

  ANCIENT STARS

  UNIVERSE ON FIRE SERIES

  BY IVAN KAL

  Copyright © 2020 by Ivan Kal

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

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

  If you liked this book, please consider leaving a review on Amazon. Reviews are appreciated!

  Sign up to my mailing list to be notified when a new book is released: Mailing List

  Contact the author:

  https://www.ivan-kal.com/

  Facebook.com/ivankalauthor

  [email protected]

  Table of Contents

  What Came Before

  Prologue

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  EPILOGUE

  What Came Before

  A storm raged in space: violet and red energy churning in a cloud that stretched for hundreds of light years. The occurrence was anything but natural. It was a remnant of a terrible war, the result of weapons designed to break the very fabric of space and time—weapons that had been used by both sides in a terrible war that had engulfed this part of the galaxy. Many races that had not even contemplated what the lights in the sky above them meant, and some that had just reached for them, had been wiped out, caught in a conflict that was not their own. They had not even been the intended targets, merely victims of misfortune. They had lived in the shadow of a great empire that ruled the space all around them, and when that empire tore itself apart, they died in the process without even knowing why, unaware of any danger.

  The great Empire of Zhal’Qash had risen to power over many thousands of years, and had accepted other races into their Empire—those advanced enough. They had created amazing technologies and brought stability and peace to the stars that they had ruled, until they had accepted into their ranks the Val’ayash: a race that was fractured, without unity, even as it explored beyond its star system. The Zhal’Qash saw potential, and so they’d made a mistake.

  The Val’ayash learned all that the Zhal’Qash could teach them. Using Zhal’Qash technology, they expanded rapidly, until a religious sect grew and eventually took control over the Val’ayash. They then began their holy war.

  The Zhal’Qash fought the Val’ayash, and their war tore their empire apart, just as it did space itself. In the end, as the war drew to a close, as they used weapons of such magnitude that they warped space itself, the Val’ayash were defeated and the Empire collapsed, plunging all those who remained into a dark age. The systems that survived the war starved as they no longer had access to trade, left to fend for themselves in a hostile galaxy. In the old core of the Empire remained the reminders of the war: what eventually became the neutral zone, a devastated swath of stars filled with the ruins of the Empire: energy storms and dead systems.

  Two factions grew from the remnants of the Empire, with two very different ideologies. There were the Qash’vo’tar, the former Zhal’Qash systems that had banded together and decided to forsake their racial identities, to instead become unified in both purpose and ideology. To them, it was the difference between the Val’ayash and the Zhal’Qash that had caused the war, and they vowed never again to let a race like the Val’ayash rise and reach space. They began conquering and uplifting all races in around them, erasing who they used to be and turning them into Qash’vo’tar themselves.

  On the other side of the neutral zone came the Zhal Confederation, a star nation that prided itself on their diversity, who believed that the reason for the fall of the Empire was zealotry and warped faith. They allowed other races to join them while still retaining their racial identities.

  The two heirs to the Empire were at odds, but they knew how any war between them would end. And so they agreed to a truce, joint in their desire to keep what had happened before from happening again. Thus they protected the neutral zone, in order to prevent the younger races from gaining access to the technology of the old Empire.

  But the neutral zone was vast and filled with dangers left by the war, and they had little hope of patrolling it all. While the threat that the two star nations posed was great, some were willing to risk their wrath just for a chance of scavenging a piece of the old tech. A new balance was established—the two remnants of the old Empire guarding the neutral zone while some tried to slip past them and scavenge what they could.

  That was until a new race was discovered by the Qash’vo’tar, a race that had evolved on a world inside the neutral zone. The Qash’vo’tar watched the new race, and they saw in them similarities with the Val’ayash. And so, they decided that conquering and keeping the race from reaching into space—going against the agreement that they had with the Zhal regarding the neutral zone—was their only option. The conquered race was called humanity, and for decades they suffered under Qash’vo’tar rule, searching for a way to escape their captors. They experimented with technologies that they did not even fully understand, and in their ignorance, deep beneath the ground of their homeworld—Earth—they accomplished something remarkable. Humanity opened a portal to another universe, changing in the process the very nature of their own reality, allowing magic into the universe.

  Humanity used the portal and explored the other side, learned magic and combined it with their tech. Eventually, they defeated the Qash’vo’tar forces that kept them from reaching space. Humanity had an advantage, and they used it to become free. While magic was now possible in their universe, no one knew about it, nor did anyone have any knowledge that could help them harness it—no one other than humanity.

  Humanity started exploring the neutral zone, hoping to find something more to help them keep their freedom. In their search they found a Val’ayash expedition, the ancient enemy of the old Empire. With that knowledge, humanity managed to bring both the Zhal and the Qash’vo’tar to a negotiations table. With magi-tech, they were equal to the Qash’vo’tar and the Zhal, and so they managed to reach an agreement and their freedom. The three united in their need to find the Val’ayash home base and defeat them once for all.

  The Val’ayash learned of Earth and magic from a human prisoner, and attacked and besieged Earth and the portal to the other universe. Humanity managed to fight them off, but were in the process forced to reveal the existence of magi-tech to both the Q
ash’vo’tar and the Zhal.

  Now, their shaky alliance is the only thing that stands between the galaxy and the return of the Val’ayash.

  Prologue

  The storm in space was unlike anything else in existence. Appearing as a wild ocean, filled with waves the size of skyscrapers on the scale of planets, it was death to any ship that came near, and yet the energy suddenly shivered as something pushed through from within.

  The edge of the storm parted and a shape emerged. Massive in size, hundreds of kilometers long and wide, while still a speck compared to the size of the storm, it was magnificent. The hull gleamed in silver and black, untouched by the storm. The object was roughly shaped like a blunted arrowhead, and it moved slowly as it left the storm and continued on.

  The shape was not a ship, although it resembled one from the outside. The thick gleaming hull merely protected and hid what lay beneath. It was just a shell, if an incredibly advanced and powerful one, filled with weapons and technological systems unlike any this universe had ever seen. Beneath the shell lay a being of flesh and blood, a monster from the most eldritch of horror stories; a beast that lived in space. Deep inside its body, in a hollow chamber surrounded by metal, was a seat that looked more like a throne.

  A being sat on that throne, his mind connected to that of the beast in ways that few could understand, monitoring the space around them with the beast’s senses, even as he watched the purely tech holo screens with his eyes. The being had many names, different ones for different purposes, but the one that he used most often when dealing with mortals was Oxylus. An old name, from a forgotten version of humanity: a minor god of the mountains. It was not a name that fit him well, and yet it served its purpose.

  Oxylus was deep in thought, planning his next move. His enemies, Chaos and Order, beings of great power, were here, in this universe—or rather they had a connection to it, and Oxylus was planning on exploiting that. The two had struck a great blow against him. Their first encounter had ended with the complete annihilation of Oxylus’s birth universe, and for that, Oxylus would make them pay.

  And yet, he knew that he was weaker than them in many ways, even though he held greater power in others. The two were existences completely alien to Oxylus, being fundamentally different, but that meant little. His revenge was close, and Oxylus was patient.

  “Their fleets are away,” Oxylus mused.

  A woman suddenly appeared next to him, looking as if she was made out of fire, with her hair moving as if it was caught in the wind.

  “Enough still remain,” she said.

  Oxylus grimaced but nodded. “Moirai can win against them.”

  “CRUSH THEM,” a rumbling voice spoke inside his head as Moirai weighed in.

  “Of course she can,” the woman waved her hand. “That was never the question. It is the Herald of Chaos or Order that worries me. The last time you fought them, their Herald interfered. We were lucky to survive; if he had been more powerful we might not have.”

  Oxylus nodded his head in agreement. His last encounter with Chaos and Order had been catastrophic. He had been engaged with them, both he and Moirai occupied in battle when the Herald struck and distracted them, allowing Chaos and Order to overwhelm him, even hurt him.

  “We’ve seen no sign of a Herald in system. Perhaps they don’t have one here?” Oxylus wondered.

  “Unlikely, and you know it,” the woman said. “Why are you hesitating? Didn’t you put things in motion for this exact reason? The dragon and the human should be enough for our purposes.”

  “I know Iris, I just…” He trailed off. “I fear that they are going to be too weak. A Herald is imbued with the power of Chaos and Order, too powerful for beings that have no understanding of what they are.”

  “You could just tell them everything,” Iris said.

  Oxylus grimaced.

  “What?” Iris added. “You already plan on putting humans, the Zhal, and the Qash’vo’tar on the path of finding the Val’ayash. You could just go in person and tell them everything.”

  “There is no guarantee that these Val’ayash don’t have agents among the other races. I cannot risk Chaos and Order learning of my presence before I am ready to strike. It is why I have restrained the use of my power in this universe. The more I do, the greater the chance that they detect my presence. And who knows what they’ll do if that happens? For all I know, they will just tear down the dimensional barriers and consume the universe in full as they have done before. I will not play with countless lives in that manner.”

  “But you are willing to attack them and risk that happening anyway?”

  “They are already using this place as a feeding ground. Doing nothing does the same, only on a different timetable.” Oxylus shook his head. “If I am not distracted, I am sure that I could fight them off and push them out of this universe.”

  Iris didn’t respond immediately, but instead just watched him. It was an illusion, an unnecessary one. Her avatar was just a hologram, her true body being the massive AI core deep inside Moirai’s body. She wasn’t glaring at him from the body she was projecting in front of him, but rather through the sensors all around him.

  But the two of them had been together for a long time, and had their own way of communicating.

  “You could try and appeal to the Titans. Maybe you can convince them to finally fight back against Chaos and Order.”

  Oxylus snorted. “They are afraid, and I doubt they will be willing to speak with me after what I did to that one arrogant prick. No, you are right. The human and the dragon are my best bet.”

  “So, what are we going to do?”

  “We go back to Earth, and I manipulate things, of course,” Oxylus said.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Emissary Anthony Smith stood inside an office on the new space station in the orbit of Jupiter, that also doubled as a shipyard. The Titan 2 station was barely a month old, and was the only station of its size in the solar system. The previous Titan station had been destroyed in the Val’ayash attack, and Earth did not have the time to build more stations of that size. But they did need shipyards. Next to him stood two Emissaries of foreign powers: the Qash’vo’tar and the Zhal Confederation. Both of them were looking out of a window that showed one of the shipyard’s berths. In it lay the hull of a massive warship, a super-carrier. Fury-class, it was a massive cylinder for more than two-thirds of its length, and only at the end did it turn into the more traditional human-built shape. A rectangular shape that flared at the end where the massive drives were situated. The ship was the newest in the United Terran System fleet. A fleet that had less than a handful of ships at the moment. After the success of the Fury and its dominance against the Val’ayash fleet, the UTS had ordered five more of the super-carriers to be built. The new shipyards were constructed fairly quickly, but most of the work was done on the ground in massive industrial factories. Magic allowed them to cheaply teleport parts from Earth to orbit and assemble them there.

  The five ships had been projected to be done in two years, but events had conspired against them. The Val’ayash had revealed themselves, and time wasn’t on their side.

  “It is…remarkable,” Gork, the Zhal Emissary who looked like a rock-person, spoke as they watched people working on the ship. Out of the five ships, the one in front of them was closest to being finished since they had stopped work on the other four and focused exclusively on this one, and it should be ready for testing soon. There were two more ships of the same size laid in the berths in this shipyard, while the remaining two were being built in the yards at Senka.

  UTS had revealed the existence of magic to the Zhal and the Qash’vo’tar, and had even shared some magi-tech. The three had entered into an alliance, focused on finding and fighting the Val’ayash. Toward that goal, all sides had shared things. The Zhal and Qash’vo’tar had given the UTS technology that they hadn’t even known about before, most of it focused on shipbuilding, since that was the area where they needed immediate improvement
. They had no time to waste.

  “It should be ready for testing in a few months,” Anthony said.

  “So soon?” Gork asked.

  “We’ve focused all our efforts on finishing it. The Val’ayash are too much of a threat for us to rely just on the Fury,” Anthony answered.

  The two emissaries looked at each other. He knew that both the Zhal and the Qash’vo’tar had been somewhat cowed when they had seen the Fury. It was the larger than their largest battleships, and it had taken on a small Val’ayash flotilla when their own ships had failed.

  Still, the Fury was a prototype, and it hadn’t even been finished when it had fought the Val’ayash. Since then, it had went under a retrofit, but it didn’t change the fact that it was still a prototype. These new ships would have technologies in them that they had gotten from the Zhal and Qash’vo’tar, as well as the most updated magi-tech they had coming from their R&D departments.

  “If only you’d shared your magi-tech sooner…” Jahija, the Qash’vo’tar Emissary said with a hard expression on her blue-skinned face.

  Anthony turned and met her eyes. The time when Earth cowered beneath the Qash’vo’tar gaze was long past. “Perhaps if you hadn’t conquered us, we might’ve been better inclined to cooperate with you.”

  He saw Jahija grimace but she didn’t respond. The figment that Qash’vo’tar had never occupied Earth that all three sides had been saying outwardly had fallen off as the situation changed. The Val’ayash had returned, and there were more important things to worry about.

  “Peace,” Gork said. “We cannot fight amongst ourselves, not when the Val’ayash are here to destroy us.”

  “Yes,” Anthony said. “So, tell me, why have you requested this meeting?”

  The two emissaries looked at each other and then Gork spoke.

  “We’ve come to ask for your help.”

  Anthony frowned. “What kind of help?” he asked.