Page 1 of Stegian: Project Exorcism 4

Chapter One

Nearing planet Sargaidia, onboard one of the Project Exorcism vessels, year 2056…

Vessel sirens blared,announcing what Stegian already knew, the ship was in trouble. It had gotten swept into what he could assume were stellar remains. The ship had been plagued with issues since its launch. Stegian knew why. Those who had forced his kind from Earth cared little about their safety, only that they left the planet.

The brains behind Project Exorcism had thought only as far as getting supernaturals off the planet and out of range of Earth. They'd sworn in negotiations that the planets they'd sought out were safe havens and new starts for the supernaturals. That, like everything else, had been a lie. He was sure of it.

He'd been a fool to believe them—to think mankind had an ounce of decency left.

Now, countless light-years from home, their ship was damaged because of stellar remains. The pilot of the vessel swore the anomaly was rare and not showing on his instrument panel. Stegian believed the young vampire. He had nothing to gain by lying. He was as trapped on the ship as the rest of them. Problem was the vampire wasn't as trained as he should have been. None of the supposed pilots were. They'd been put through a crash course on piloting prior to their departure. As had a number of crewmembers had been.

Stegian scanned the panels, doing his best to assess the damage to the ship. Two of the portside thrusters were completely gone and failing to respond in any way. Already the ship had begun to list to one side, something it should never do—that much he was sure of. It wasn't like space travel was totally foreign to him. He, like any other well-to-do resident of Earth, had visited other planets for vacation—though he’d been careful to select ones that didn't have much in the way of sunlight. Being a vampire left him unable to walk in the sun's rays. He missed it but couldn't dwell, not when the ship he was aboard was in such dire jeopardy.

Various people on board moved quickly from location to location, none seeming to know what to do. Pandemonium broke out. Several of the banshees onboard continued to wail, as if everyone around them wasn't smart enough to figure out people were going to die. They didn't need a supernatural alarm stating the obvious.

A shifter spun quickly, knocking one of the banshees out cold. Stegian wasn't big on violence but even he'd wanted to silence her.

People rushed around like mad as the ship pitched hard to the right and then shook violently. He had to reach out to steady himself or he too would have fallen, like so many others. Sirens continued to blare and alert lights beeped. The computer continued to read out different yet equally depressing outcomes.

“We’re gonna die,” one of the men yelled.

Another snorted. “We’ve been as good as dead since the day they loaded us onto this ship like cattle.”

Stegian staggered towards the control panels. The young vampire pilot was hurt and currently having his wounds tended to. While he would eventually heal, there was no fresh blood at the ready so the medical staff needed to try to stop the rapid rate of his blood loss. A fill-in pilot, another with limited training, was doing his best to gain control of the ship. It wasn’t working.

“Life support systems are down,” Stegian said, remaining calm in the face of certain death.

“I can try to land it,” Yunoc, the young male shifter who was trying to pilot the vessel, said. “At our excepted rate of entry and with the velocity we are traveling at, there is a good chance we could burn up in the atmosphere.”

“Do what you can,” said Stegian, bracing himself in the copilot chair.

A planet came into view and Yunoc focused on aiming the craft in that direction. “No promises.”

A natural leader, Stegian was often who the people aboard the spaceship had turned to. He’d been instrumental in negotiating with the humans on Earth and had done his best to prevent anymore loss of lives due to ignorance and fear of supernaturals. “Just try to land us.”

He sucked in a hasty breath and prepared for rapid decent. It came with a vengeance. He was thrown free of the pilot area and slammed face first into a wall. Pain exploded throughout him, and he was fairly certain he'd broken multiple bones, and they hadn't even impacted yet.

It came with a shuddering, thundering thud—and everything around him went black for a moment.

Stegian pushed off of the unforgiving inner shell of the vessel he’d been banished to one year prior. The smell of smoke and charred remains coated the area. While he didn’t quite know the extent of injuries on the ship, his senses told him they were grave and many. As if the ship’s crew hadn’t been through enough already.

He snarled at the thought of the ignorant humans who had herded him and the other supernaturals like cattle onto the vessels, hoping to rid Earth of them for good. Their fear of what they did not understand had prompted sanctions and even saw death squads come into being. These squads had one mission—find and eliminate supernaturals.

Stegian and a few other select figureheads had tried to reason with the humans. He’d tried to make them understand they did not have to live in fear of them. That supernaturals would police themselves as they had always done, but his pleas fell upon deaf ears. Soon, backlash from the death squads rippled through the supernatural community and attacks on humans began. From there, it was all downhill.

Now, one year and many a light-year later, thanks to the courtesy of accelerated speeds and state-of-the-art, highly efficient thrust-to-weight ratios, Stegian and his people were far, far from Earth and its reaches.

They were, according to his calculations, far off their original course as well.

They’d encountered meteor showers shortly after departing Earth and had never quite been able to get their navigational maps back up and running to standard. No surprise. It wasn’t as if the people running the vessel were top notch. It wasn’t as if humans would risk or give up their valued, qualified human pilots.

Yunoc neared him, helping him to his feet. He looked shaken but relatively unharmed, considering what they'd gone through. “Stegian, are you hurt?”

“No,” Stegian said, dusting himself off. Someone's blood was on him. It wasn't his. His heightened senses knew the difference instantly. The demon in him tugged, wanting to come out to play in the carnage. With ease, he quelled it, refusing to permit it to be an issue. He had other things to worry about, such as the safety of his traveling mates. “How many did we lose in the crash?”

Yunoc sighed as he leaned partially on the computer screens because of the angle of the ship. The screen blipped several times before coming back to full function. “Preliminary reports are thin, but the count is high. Higher than you would want.”

“One loss of life is too many,” Stegian said sternly and with conviction. He valued life. It was precious, and they'd come too far and had endured too much for this to be how they would end—stranded on some godsforsaken planet in the middle of nowhere. “What of the planet’s air quality? Breathable?”

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