Page 1 of Shattered Silence

Chapter One

Enki Zakanin peered out through the viewing port at the vast expanse of the Universe, enjoying the silence. Millions upon millions of stars winked back at him, tiny holes of light in an endless tapestry of darkness.

Such a comforting sight.

For the first time since he’d left the infernally noisy trading station, Zarhab Groht, he was alone, and it was quiet.

Blissfully fucking quiet.

At last.

On Zarhab Groht, the endless chatter of thousands of rogues, cutthroats, traders, and pirates had threatened to drive him mad. He already walked the line between sanity and madness anyway, so Nythian and Lodan’s retrieval couldn’t have come at a better time. He’d completed his mission—find and detain the Callidum-seller—throwing the entire trading station into absolute chaos in the process.

Somehow, he’d managed to cause a massive freighter collision on the lower decks, had started a turf war between a group of Bartharran idiots and their equally moronic Plutharan cousins, and had accidentally destroyed half of the mid-level in a vicious plasma firefight that set off a hidden stash of frag-grenades.

The entire time, he’d had Relahek Alerak in tow, having plucked him from the badly damaged Plutharan raider ship that limped into the lower decks.

The irritating noble was currently detained in a holding cell on their stealth cruiser, Virdan X, bound for the massive Kordolian Fleet Station. This was the very same Fleet Station that General Tarak al Akkadian had stolen right from underneath the Empire’s nose. Now it belonged to their company, Darkstar Mercenaries.

Later, Enki would go and interrogate the fool. He would retrieve the names of each and every one of the buyers, and then Darkstar would hunt them down.

Enki had already taken back several of the rare and immensely valuable Callidum weapons from the selling floor on Zarhab Groht—knives, swords, even a fucking Aikun-made sikkor of all things—but Relahek had also sold Callidum to Ephrenian traders and Kaiin knew who else.

Unacceptable.

Nobody could wield Callidum except for Kordolians. Nobody.

And if someone figured out how to actually replicate the dark technology that had been key to the Kordolian Empire’s dominance in the Universe…

Enki uttered a soft string of curses under his breath. They could not afford to let it fall into enemy hands.

What a hypocrite you are, warrior. Your kind suppressed the masses with these deadly weapons, but you cannot tolerate others having them?

Quiet. Enki’s mental command was thunder in his own head. Burning with resentment, the other presence slunk away, disappearing into the dark recesses of his mind.

Stupid Tharian. It had chosen the wrong fucking body to try and occupy. A First Division warrior? Ha.

Give me peace, just for a siv.

The reason he craved solitude so badly was that he had a problem. A big fucking problem. A parasite had infected his mind; an alien consciousness without a body, seeking a form of its own.

A cursed second-stage Tharian. A phantom, a ghost. No Kordolian body in known history had ever played host to a Tharian before.

Enki was constantly having to suppress the alien’s infernal chatter. Sometimes, the constant background noise grew tiresome. He just wanted the cursed thing out, but nobody had been able to figure out how to do that without destroying Enki’s own consciousness in the process.

So for now, it stayed. Only the General and Zyara—and now Zharek—knew the true extent of his little problem, and despite that, the boss didn’t treat Enki any differently. He still assigned Enki the dangerous missions, still gave him no quarter in the training chamber, still expected him to be as ruthless and effective as the others.

No special treatment.

That had probably saved Enki’s brittle sanity.

It will be so much easier if you just co-operate, warrior.

Shut up.

Enki closed his eyes and put his bare feet up on the console, leaning back in his chair. The chair’s dark Qualum fibers molded around his body like a cocoon, distributing his weight evenly so it felt like he were floating. Shortly after boarding the Virdan X, he’d dissolved the tough exo-armor that fit him like a second skin, washed the stink of Zarhab Groht from his body and donned a soft, loose kashkan robe.

He almost felt like a real flesh-and-blood creature again; almost felt normal, whatever that was supposed to be.

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