Across the Broken Stars: An Epic Space Fantasy Adventure by Jed Herne

Author:Jed Herne [Herne, Jed]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Undergrove Press
Published: 2020-02-02T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 27

A scream echoed from a nearby room. Drayton muttered something to a soldier, who raced out the door. Moments later, the scream stopped.

Drayton dipped the iron rod in the bucket of smouldering coals. “Last chance, Leon. Tell me what was in the chamber or share Pierce’s fate.”

Pierce’s blood spread across the floor, tickling the tips of Leon’s bare toes. Leon remembered the boy’s defiant glare, and he tried to capture the same anger, righteousness, and bravery as he scowled at the inquisitor.

An angel cares for the greater good. An angel cares naught for himself.

“Go to hell,” Leon said.

Drayton chuckled. He took the rod out of the coals and pressed it into Leon’s thigh. Leon screamed until his throat turned raw –

Drayton removed the iron, but the agony continued. “Tell me what was in the chamber.”

Leon’s eyes watered. A pink blister throbbed on his thigh and blood filled his aching mouth. He’d bit his tongue.

“Five seconds.” Drayton held the smouldering iron an inch from Leon’s thigh. “Then you get it again.”

Pain pulsed through Leon’s leg and he whimpered. He thought of Juliana and Blas.

He thought of the battle he’d fled.

He thought of the friends he’d betrayed.

“Four seconds …” said Drayton.

He thought of slicing off his wings, and his guilty joy at surviving all those years after the War, while angels’ heads appeared on stakes around Paya.

“Three …”

Didn’t take much to conjure those memories.

They haunted him always.

Reminded him what he was.

A horrible friend.

A false angel.

A traitor.

“Two …”

Tears streaked down Leon’s face. If he told Drayton what was in the chamber, what did it matter? He’d always been spineless. No one could say he’d gone against form.

He’d always been a coward.

And always would be.

“One–”

“P-p-please!” said Leon. “I’ll tell you! There was an inscription: ‘This steel garden is a lonely place, watered by legacies of pain. May ye not suffer its embrace for it is truly the angel’s bane. Yet in this field of speeding death, safety ye will find, in the flowing path of the Archangel’s breath.’”

Drayton grabbed Leon’s hair and yanked up his head to peer into Leon’s eyes. “Where does this riddle lead to?”

“D-d-don’t know.”

Drayton stabbed the iron onto Leon’s thigh, making Leon shriek. His leg twitched and he sobbed –

“The asteroid b-b-belt!” Leon said.

Drayton raised the rod so that it hovered above Leon’s thigh. “More precision.”

“In the Mallean asteroids – in the mining c-c-colonies, there’s a ring-shaped asteroid. Paracelsus-7. A jetstream passes through it.”

Leon gaped. Until then, he hadn’t known the answer, but somehow the searing pain had dragged the truth from him.

“Convicts mine zinc from Paracelsus-7.” Drayton frowned. “How do you know it’s part of the Path?”

“It’s in the r-r-riddle. ‘Steel garden’ – zinc’s a steel. ‘Legacies of pain’ – slaves and convicts have mined the asteroids for centuries. That’s why you don’t want to ‘suffer its embrace.’ Asteroids are ‘the angel’s bane,’ because they can kill us in collisions. The asteroids orbit faster than the discs, making them a ‘field of speeding death,’ and the ‘Archangel’s breath’ refers to jetstreams.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.