Page 4 of Shadows of Stardust

A far, far cry from the planet I landed on after evacuating the human homeworld. I drink it in greedily, something unconscious and primal at the center of me aching at the sight of it.

But there’s no time for that, either. No time to forget or let myself be distracted or take trips down memory lane.

With that strange, unfamiliar homesickness sitting heavy in my chest, I focus on my breathing and try to get my head back on straight

I’m not here to admire, or to compete.

I’m just a soldier on another mission, ready to get my boots on the ground.

2

Zandrel

Never in any of my thirty-two revols did I imagine myself in a place like this, on a mission like this, fallen this far from what I once was.

The air is warm, thick with afternoon humidity. The sky above is piercingly blue and a salt-kissed breeze rolls in from the beach just a few dozen meters away through the curtain of palms which ring the production zone’s landing strip.

A beautiful day, but my mind barely registers it.

I don’t register much of anything but a low static hum in the back of my brain, an insistent, cloying shame as my new assignment is about to begin.

I shouldn’t be here.

Stuck on some fatesforsaken planet playing child-minder to a few dozen horny, drunken idiots doing their best to preen and fight and fawn in front of the cameras.

And with a crew like this? The disgust of it clings to my skin like an oily, unpleasant film.

The two other guards on this side of the landing strip pay no mind to their surroundings. They’re too busy puffing on the ends of verroot cigarettes and chortling over the same bit of idlegossip that’s been going around the beach since we reported for training a few days ago.

“What do you think she looks like?” the first asks, letting out a puff of putrid smoke.

“Small, I hear,” says the second. “These humans are apparently a tiny lot. Barely able to defend themselves, let alone the homeworld they wrecked.”

I try to close my ears to whatever else they’re saying, my interest in some backwater species who destroyed their own planet and made themselves galactic castoffs less than zero.

Annoyingly, the human contestant is all anyone’s been able to talk about.

They’re apparently a curiosity, these small, defenseless creatures. Finding their way out into the universe from the Sol System in some fatesdamned galaxy they call theMilky Way, of all the asinine things they could have named it. And now that one of them has found their way onto Mate Match, speculation has run rampant over seeing a human in person for the first time.

Overhead, the two contestant cruisers begin their final descent, preparing to touch down on the clear-cut section of jungle where the show has made its landing strip. Arms braced over my chest, I make a half-hearted attempt at surveillance and scan the gathered crowd—poised and ready to kick off this oh-so-thrilling new season.

Putting aside the pathetic state of the security team, the rest of the show’s production staff seems to have at least a modicum of professionalism.

They move around the filming area like a well-coordinated battle unit, with eyes and ears and a small army of hovercameras all over the landing strip as the cruisers come in for landing.

At the center of it all, the show’s lead producer—a truly intimidating Nexxan female named Marva—holds commandover the entire operation. Three floating hoverscreens pan out in front of her, each showing a dozen different camera angles. She keeps her voice low, eyes narrowed in focus as she speaks into her headset, orchestrating the video feeds that will be edited and amalgamated down to the most salacious of storylines to keep the show’s massive audience enthralled.

What precisely that audience finds so entertaining about watching a beach full of fame-hungry fools flirt and fight and fuck, I have no idea, but it’s not my job to provide commentary on the show.

No, it’s my job to keep those fools from doing any actual damage to one another while they fight over a pretty female. Or to keep them from drunkenly wandering into the planet’s strictly off-limits territory outside the Mate Match production zone.

It’s my job to mind them like children.

Fates above, the depths of my failure, to have landed me here. Nearly two decades of training and fighting and proving my worth, up in flames. A ruin of my own making.

I’m saved from the spiral of self-recrimination by a roar of engines and a hot blast of wind and sand as the two ships touch down on the landing strip and the twenty-fourth season of Mate Match officially kicks off.

The cruiser carrying the males opens its doors first, its long landing bridge unfurling onto the raised stage that serves as the show’s opening scene. A pedestal for the latest crop of mate-seekers to pose and preen and get their faces on camera for the first time.

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