Destiny's Kingdom: Legend of the Chosen by Daniel Huber, Jennifer Selzer Read Free Book Online Page A

an audio message.
    “Fellow traveler, do you require assistance?”  
    A minute passed with no response, not even an identifier message. Perhaps they were having mechanical difficulties? Quade thought it odd that he hadn't heard any distress signals coming through his communication feed. He hailed the ship once more and waited, only to be met with silence. Now that he was closer, he could see a scoring blackness along one area of the hull. Flipping a lever, he commanded a scan of the other vessel for its identity and damage report.  
    “Teaching vessel Valiant,” Quade muttered, reading the scan. “Minor engine fluctuations, no significant damage.”  
    The craft was drifting, not appearing to be on any course or direction, just hanging dead in space. A weird, creeping nausea began to work its way through Quade's stomach, and an unfamiliar sense of anxiety followed, sending tension through his arms and shoulders. Something about this drifting craft gave him a deep-seated sense of unease that he didn't understand. He sent another hail, this time requesting two-way visual communication, and again there was no response. The wayward ship was very near to him, seemed to be moving slowly closer and as watched, and he noticed that the lights were dim in all the viewports as well as all the exterior running lights. Power drain, systems failure…it could be anything. Still, communications shouldn't have been damaged. Even in the worst power failure a ship's communications would override and run off of auxiliary systems just like life support, so that in an emergency there would be means of sending a distress signal. Just as he was about to send out a final hail to the other vessel, something caught his eye; something that Quade had never before seen.
    Seeping from the hull of the ship that he'd been watching came an unidentifiable shape, something that looked as if it had form, but then actually had no form. It was black as indigo ink, and permeated from within the other craft like a ghostly fog. It hovered around the body of the courier in a parasitic position, almost seeming to leach from it. The dark cloud encompassed the cruiser entirely, masking the grey and red painted markings to obscurity, then all at once, it tore itself from the ship.  
    Nausea wrenched Quade’s stomach and he swallowed hard against its painful bloating stab. In all his life, he'd never felt this type of sickness, physical combined with a mind numbing sense of ill ease. A cold sweat broke out on his forehead, and he ran a hand over his clammy skin. His breath came in short, labored gulps and gasps. What was that thing? In years of traveling and mapping the stars, he'd never seen an apparition such as this, nor felt such a strong sense of doom toward any single thing. He squinted as he watched the inky shadow drift and churn for a moment, making a strange distortion as it wavered in open space. Quade looked down to his sensors. On the readout, he could see the display of the wayward ship, but nothing else between himself and it, nothing on sensors where the inky cloud hung between them. He looked out his forward viewers again, and the shadow that was blacker than the blackness of space itself still moved toward him, wavering inward as it floated, its size changing and becoming smaller as it neared. As it advanced, his gut swelled with nausea and Quade's instincts screamed for him to get away, forget the other ship and trying to establish communications, just retreat, get away from this thing-
    Before his hands could reach the forward thrusters, the black vapor rushed Quade's ship, passing through the hull like it was nothing. It seeped in from above, channeling down through the center of the ceiling, also from the side. It swirled, its cloud-like substance filling the perimeter of the cockpit, gathering its huge, phantom silhouette until it became thick and took shape. Quade jumped from his chair, backed against the control panel. Unalive, unreal,