Onslaught (Rise of the Empire Book 6) Read online

  Adrian reached his destination. He nodded to the four guards standing outside of the doors, and then entered.

  Chapter Two

  Anessa was seven years old, and already she was taller than every other child was in her school. However, she was the only one who had yet to gain her Sha abilities. It meant that she was not really a part of her class. She knew that they talked about her with their minds by the snickers and looks they gave her whenever she entered the classroom. The only one that spent any time with her was Garaam. The short, white-haired girl liked spending time with Anessa for some reason that she never quite figured out. But she was thankful for it, and because of that simple fact, Anessa swore that Garaam would always have her friendship in life.

  Today, Anessa was the one charged with cleaning the classroom. She didn’t understand why it was necessary; her parents had machines that did the cleaning, so there was never the need to do it by hand. But the teachers said that it was supposed to teach them responsibility. She didn’t really care one way or the other, so she always just set about doing the task. Cleaning wasn’t a hard task, and she could usually tune it out, think on other things while she worked.

  However, this day was different, as something kept nagging at her. Her body felt strange, her mind somehow clouded. But she didn’t tell anyone; she didn’t need to be sent to the medbots, or far worse—home. Already the other kids called her weak because she didn’t have the Sha; if she was sent home for being sick, she knew it would only get worse. Kids with the Sha rarely got sick. So she pushed herself to the limit, not showing any outward signs of her unease. She tried to hurry her work, finish as fast as possible and then leave for home, but her hands tingled and it slowed her down.

  The sound of the classroom door opening startled her, and she turned around to see two boys and a girl enter the room. Seeing who it was, Anessa’s stomach dropped, but she didn’t shy away from Tarasks’s cruel look. He approached, followed closely behind by his two companions. She didn’t know them well, as she tended to avoid the other kids, except for Garaam.

  “Look here, it’s the freak!” Tarasks said laughingly, his companions joining in a moment later.

  Anessa looked around the room. She was almost finished; the teachers might not even notice if she doesn’t finish. It was better than staying here, and if the teachers did notice, she would rather take their punishment than being insulted and bullied by the kids with the Sha.

  She turned and started to leave the room, but something grabbed hold of her leg, keeping it in place. Anessa froze as she realized that one of them had used his Sha to keep her leg in place. It was impressive, Anessa knew; Tarasks was being called a prodigy with the Sha. She had overheard the teachers one day talking about him; they were saying how being able to use Sha to grab and lift objects at such a young age was amazing. They said that he might even one day become a Dai Sha. She turned and saw Tarasks pointing a hand at her leg. He was shaking a bit at the effort, and then suddenly Anessa could feel his hold slipping.

  “Where are you going? We want to speak with you,” Tarasks said. He walked over to her before she could try to free herself and grabbed her by the shoulders. He pinned her against the wall with his hands, letting go of his Sha. Anessa could’ve pushed him away easily; she was bigger and stronger. But there were three of them, and all had the Sha. They might not be able to hold her for long, but it would be enough.

  “Are you sure that you are a Shara Daim?” Tarasks asked. “I mean, you don’t have the Sha; how can you be like us?”

  “It doesn’t come to everyone at the same time,” Anessa murmured.

  “You trying to convince yourself that you aren’t a freak?” Tarasks asked laughingly while he poked her in the middle of her chest.

  “I need to get home. Please,” Anessa said quietly as she tried to move away. The tingling spread over her entire body now, and she could barely think straight. She only knew that she needed to get home.

  Tarasks didn’t let her get away. He pushed her against the wall hard, and Anessa hit the back of her head against the wall. Suddenly she only saw darkness, and pain, and then something spread through her body like fire. The next thing she knew, she was on the ground, her hands extended in front of her, and someone was screaming. She realized that it was her that was screaming. Her throat was hurting, and she stopped. She looked around and saw Tarasks’s friends looking at her in horror as they backed away slowly. Anessa turned her eyes in front of her, looking for Tarasks.

  She saw him in the middle of the room. He was suspended in the air; red stained his clothes and was dripping down onto the floor. Chairs and tables were all around him, broken to pieces. Six long, pointed legs of the tables and chairs were piercing Tarasks’s body, keeping him impaled above the ground, the twisted tables and chairs beneath him.

  Anessa woke up in the bed in her quarters on the Empire’s base, where she was being kept as a prisoner. She shook off the memory that had come to her in the dream; it had been a long time since she had thought back on the moment she’d finally received her Sha. The life she had had before the Sha never really seemed real to her; it was not who she was now. And now for the first time since she was a child; she found herself without the Sha. It was not a feeling she liked experiencing.

  She looked around the quarters as she stood up; they were spacious, but strangely arranged. The quarters were separated with walls into different rooms, which wasn’t the case among the Shara Daim. However, it was still far from what her people would have given to their prisoners. But this Empire was strange in more than one way. She moved her shoulder and was immediately reminded of the device there, piercing her skin and the Nursha organ inside her body, draining any energy that it stored, making it impossible for her to use the Sha. The device didn’t interfere with her movements—she could barely feel it—but its existence was a constant reminder of her failure.

  However, while she couldn’t use any of her advanced Sha abilities, her body still had enough passive energy for her to have very limited access to her less demanding mental Sha abilities. Which was how she felt her visitor before he entered her room.

  She sighed and got to her feet as he stepped in, followed by two beasts that always seemed to follow him around. She turned around and gazed down on him, ignoring the beasts. She towered over him, like she towered over all the others she had seen here, both Human and Nel. Anessa had noticed the respect the others gave him, the presence he had among them; he was obviously the most powerful one among them. Anessa knew that her size meant nothing against him; in a fight without Sha, she was outmatched.

  He was looking at her face, refusing to lower his eyes and look at her naked body. She had noticed his uncomfortableness the first time he had come to her room and encountered her naked. Shara Daim wore their Shur At at almost all times; they could be formed into any shape and size imaginable and were very comfortable clothes. But she no longer had hers, and was forced to use the clothing provided by her captors. And while they were comfortable enough, she was not yet used to them, and preferred to not wear any clothes inside the rooms given to her. The fact that it made her captor uncomfortable was an added bonus.

  She stared at him until he finally spoke.

  “I would like to show you something,” he said. His words would have been instantly translated into her language by the Erasi translating device on her temple, but he had spoken in her language. She had been teaching him her language, just as he had been teaching her his.

  Anessa tilted her head, then turned around and grabbed the clothes from her bed. She then proceeded to put them on slowly, all the while using all her senses to feel out his reaction. He had great control, but his mastery of the Sha was not perfect. She’d noticed a handful of instances when his control over his mental abilities slipped, just for a moment. Too short of a period for anyone to take advantage of; in fact, too short for most to even notice it. However, she was a Dai Sha, one of the most powerful Sha masters in the Shara Daim. She could tak
e advantage of it, even crippled as she was. The most she could get was a snippet of his emotions, a stray thought here and there.

  She knew that he found her attractive, which had surprised her the first time she’d felt it. Since then, she had paid a bit more attention to his reactions, and had found that he wasn’t unpleasant to look at, only different than what she was used to. But those things mattered little to Shara Daim; they looked for different qualities in mates. And Anessa only involved herself with those who were her equals.

  “What is it that you want to show me?” she asked as she finished dressing.

  “Come and see,” he said.

  Anessa’s face twitched. Her captor seemed reliant on theatrics. That was to be expected, if she had been dealing with any other opponent. However, this Human had never been an ordinary opponent. He had given her information freely that had given her an edge over him; he had, in fact, tricked her into revealing things to him that under ordinary circumstances she would never have done. She gave herself a bit of a pass there; she had been injured, and for the first time since being a scared little child, had found herself restrained and without the access to most of her Sha abilities.

  As they walked out of the room and through the long hallways of whatever construct they were in, Anessa reflected on her situation. She’d been a prisoner for some time. A well-treated prisoner, for sure, but a prisoner all the same. She had given her oath to not try and escape, and she had abided by it because she had been promised that she would be returned to her people. And because she was certain that she couldn’t escape or harm them enough for it to be a worthy death. To die a pointless death was the worst fate a Shara Daim could imagine. But as time passed and she was still imprisoned, she found herself growing more and more impatient. Adrian had assured her that she would be sent to her people in time.

  And even if she wanted to escape, she wouldn’t be able to. She didn’t know where she was, she didn’t know how to operate their technology, and she had no access to the majority of her Sha—she didn’t want to try and remove the device on her own and risk crippling her own abilities. And without it, she doubted that she could get far. She was never allowed outside of her room without Adrian present, and without her Sha, he had the advantage. She was stronger and faster than him, but his fighting capability was superior despite that.

  She had no choice but to trust that he would honor his promise. Four guards followed them with weapons held ready, but Anessa knew that they had no Sha. She had only encountered two who had it, Adrian and the female that she fought with on Tarabat. And she hadn’t seen the female since they had arrived here. Adrian had told her that they had awakened Sha only recently, and that they were not born with it. It was one more bit of evidence that they were not worthy of possessing the knowledge inside the device.

  Adrian was trying to convince her that peace between the Shara Daim and the Empire was possible, but he did not understand. The Shara Daim’s goal was to rule the galaxy; they would not accept an outsider, someone inferior to them, as partners. Yet, as more and more time passed with her still imprisoned, she had started to wonder. The Shara Daim had never entertained the possibility of making alliances with other races simply because others were inferior. But the Humans and the Nel were descended from the same people as the Shara Daim. Or rather, created by the same person, as Anessa had recently learned.

  The Elders of the Shara Daim kept much hidden. Once she had thought that that was their prerogative, that they knew what was best for their people. Now, she had seen how things were in this Empire, and found them similar to her own people. Were the Shara Daim truly better than their two sibling races? Or was that just the arrogance of the Elders and the rest of her people? The ordinary people of the Shara Daim knew nothing but what the Elders allowed to be known; the history the people learned was not the truth, and if they had lied about one thing, what else did they keep hidden?

  Anessa was conflicted. She believed that her people were destined to rule the galaxy, just as their ancestors once did. She had been raised to know that Shara Daim were superior to all other, and to know that the Elders of her race always acted for the good of Shara Daim, but the more time she spent away from her people, the more she wondered whether the Elders truly had the good of all Shara Daim in mind. If they did, why keep secrets? The truth about their origins had not changed Anessa’s thinking; it would not change the thinking of the rest of her people.

  They walked for a short time, passing other people walking about their business. One small group caught her eye. It was three people: a Nel man, a human woman, and a child. She hadn’t seen a child during her captivity, so she stared for a moment. The child had human eyes, without the secondary eyelids that both Shara Daim and the Nel had, but it also had a lighter skin tone of the Nel and a tail.

  Adrian noticed her studying the child as they passed and looked at her strangely.

  “We don’t usually have children here,” Adrian said. “Families usually choose to live deeper in our territory. This family is here only to visit relatives.”

  Anessa looked at him, confused. “You mean, the two of them are the parents?” she asked in disbelief.

  “Of course,” Adrian responded.

  Anessa looked at him, not knowing whether to feel shock or disgust. It had never occurred to her before. She knew intellectually that their races were related to each other, but this was something more.

  Adrian must’ve noticed her inner turmoil, as he explained, “It’s true that there are differences between our three races. But Axull Darr made sure that any of the three races can reproduce with the other two.”

  Anessa tried to reconcile that knowledge with her belief; it was one thing to know that your race was engineered and that there were two others who had been created similarly, but to actually see proof…she didn’t know what that could mean.

  Adrian turned and led them away, walking a short distance before they reached their destination. As they approached the door, they opened to let them in. Anessa wondered how her captor did that; she’d not felt any telepathic interfaces anywhere, and yet the technology operated by some unseen means, and she was sure that it didn’t respond to motion. It was another mystery she hoped to solve.

  They entered a large room filled with people standing or sitting in front of holographic displays. They walked to the center of the room to a large round table, above which a hologram was showing a large fleet of ships. There were too many for her to count, but she could tell that they were greater in number than a single Shara Daim Legion, perhaps more than two.

  “Is this supposed to scare me?” Anessa asked. “Do you think that this will somehow change my mind?”

  He gave her a smile. “No, this force is not gathered to impress you. It, and us along with it, will leave for Ra’a’zani space tomorrow. And after, I will release you to go back to your people.”

  “You think that that is wise? Starting a war with the Ra’a’zani, just as my people are to attack you?” Anessa asked guardedly. He paused, outwardly retaining his confident aura, but for a moment Anessa caught a stray emotion as it slipped through his blocks. He was unsure. She kept her new insight to herself and waited for an answer.

  “There is plenty of time for us to deal with the Ra’a’zani before your people arrive,” Adrian said.

  “My people have been at war with the Ra’a’zani for decades. What makes you think that you can do better?”

  “You fought with only one of your Legions, and started the war with the Ra’a’zani at the height of their power. They are nowhere near as powerful now as they were then,” he said, and again a snippet slipped through—he was confident in his words.

  Anessa narrowed her eyes at him. The human had a lot more information than what Anessa had told him. He knew about the particulars of her war on the Ra’a’zani, which could only mean that they had acquired that information from the Erasi. And it would be problematic if the Erasi were actively selling information to them.


  “And how will I be returned to my people?” Anessa asked. “Your ships would not be allowed to leave our territory should you enter.”

  “My ship will not be staying in the Ra’a’zani territory for long. We will visit Tarabat and I will purchase a ship for you. I assume that that will be adequate.”

  Surprised, Anessa responded immediately, “Yes.”

  The prospect of going back to her people immediately invigorated her; she had been approaching her limits. She knew that plans for the invasion of this Empire would already be in motion; the Elders wanted the sphere too much to wait. And if the Empire had dealings with the Erasi, that meant that their location was known. It wouldn’t take long for the Shara Daim to find out the Empire’s location. But over the time she had spent as prisoner, Anessa had learned a great deal, and she was no longer as sure that the Shara Daim could roll over the Empire as the Elders thought. They still believed that they were dealing with a weak race, one that had allowed itself to be enslaved by the Ra’a’zani. But even though she disagreed with their views, she knew that the attack had to come now, before the Empire had the chance to utilize more technologies from the sphere.

  Adrian gave her another of his confident smiles and was just about to speak when one of his subordinates interrupted him.

  “Lord Sentinel, we have an unauthorized trans-space transfer from the Luna lane,” the Nel said.

  Adrian turned back to the holo just as its image changed to now show four ships sitting in the empty space. The markings and labels of the holo were unfamiliar to Anessa, but she quickly realized that what she was seeing was a trans-space entry point into this system. And she recognized the ships—three Erasi cruisers escorting one of their diplomatic vessels. She quickly moved her eyes across everything on the holo and stored all the information that she saw, just as the holo changed again and Adrian stepped into her line of sight.