Scattered Ashes Read online

  Scattered Ashes

  Forsaken Stars Saga, #2

  Megg Jensen

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Subscribe

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Megg Jensen

  SCATTERED ASHES

  Forsaken Stars Saga #2

  * * *

  MEGG JENSEN

  Copyright © 2016 by 80 Pages, Inc

  Published by 80 Pages, Inc

  * * *

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form by or any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author or publisher.

  * * *

  1st Edition: February 2016

  * * *

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  * * *

  Cover design: Steven Novak Illustration

  Editor: Bryon Quertermous

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  1

  Rell bent over, wrapping her arms around her stomach. For weeks, she'd hunkered down in the military tower, battling a bug that never seemed to go away. Torsten had taken her to the med center, and they'd given her all of the relevant medications. Nothing helped.

  She had an insane craving for krullers, even though she couldn't bear to eat the wormy space barnacles when she and Torsten were trapped on the dragzhi ship. The first time she saw them, her stomach roiled. Now, it was the only thing that seemed palatable.

  Her appetite was the least of her concerns, though. She was lucky just to be alive. Many humans had died during the battle with the dragzhi. Some of their most competent engineers had lost their lives. Their knowledge was recorded in databases, but without practical knowledge of how systems worked, those left alive had months, if not years, of catch-up. Only one adult engineer remained, and he spent his evenings drowning his anxiety in his homemade absinthe.

  After burying the dead, Torsten, Rell, and a few others salvaged what they could from the dragzhi ship. First, they surveyed the wreckage, looking for any sign of life. There was none to be seen. The dragzhi they'd killed must have been the only one. Secure in the knowledge that they were safe, for now, they stripped the ship of as much tech as they could, brought it back to the tower, and began studying it.

  A lilting song played, alerting Rell to someone at her door. "Who's there?"

  "It's me."

  Rell smiled at Torsten’s voice. "Open."

  The steel pocket door slid into the wall, and Torsten stepped through the opening. His grimace told her the day ahead wouldn't be easy.

  "What's wrong?" Rell grabbed Torsten's elbow, dragging him to a chair, where he plopped down wearily.

  Torsten's hands lost themselves in his hair. "I don't understand what went wrong."

  "With what?" Rell kept herself from shaking him. Why couldn't he just say what was on his mind?

  Torsten took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. "We cracked the code and were able to hack into the dragzhi's main computer. As of yesterday, we thought we'd finally be able to understand how their ships work. The tech we needed to explore the stars was finally ours."

  "But...?" Rell asked.

  "But this morning, their systems won't power up. We tried everything. Maybe they were running off some leftover dragzhi power, and our electricity isn’t enough to make it work."

  Rell's heart dropped into her stomach. She, too, wanted nothing more than to leave Phoenix. The planet had brought humans nothing but grief. Though she'd been raised underground and had little knowledge of technology or how it worked, she wanted to contribute. She had yet to figure out how.

  "There must be something—"

  "There isn't." Torsten cut her off. "We've tried everything. Even Seward pulled himself away from the bottle long enough to tell us it was futile. He called us stupid kids, then sauntered back to his room."

  The bitterness in his voice didn't escape Rell. Seward was the only remaining engineer. No one seemed to know where he was during the battle. She didn't know the man well enough to know if he had survivor's guilt, or if he'd been too chicken to fight.

  To Rell, it didn't matter anymore. The humans had won the battle, but they were just as trapped on Phoenix as they'd been before.

  "Our greatest minds are underground now, buried," Torsten muttered from behind his hands. He rubbed his eyes, then looked up at Rell. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean..."

  She knew he didn't mean to hurt her. She'd grown up underground, one of the so-called buried. To those aboveground, her people were as good as dead. They'd chosen to live their lives away from technology, choosing instead to worship their new gods, the Menelewen Dored, and had resigned themselves to becoming residents of this adopted planet.

  When Rell warned her people the underground volcano was about to erupt, the buried had cleared out. No one knew where they had gone. They'd left no clue as to their whereabouts. At first, Rell considered looking for them. Though she had an inkling of where they might be hiding, she quickly changed her mind.

  Her mother was among them, and she was nothing more than the vessel that had given Rell life. It was Rell's father who had loved her, nurtured her. Well, the man she had always believed was her father until recently. He was dead, but her biological father was very much alive.

  The dragzhi had three distinct forms: liquid, rock, and fire. Rell’s father was one of fire. And almost no one knew but her. She had briefly told Torsten, Rutger, and Malia, but hadn’t elaborated, and absolutely no one else knew. It was a secret she had no interest in sharing. If the others knew, she would be thrown out of the tower. Grounders hated the dragzhi and the buried alike. Being both doomed her as far as the other humans were concerned.

  As it was, she was barely tolerated. In fact, Torsten's sister, Leila, hated Rell because she had killed her lover Mellok. It was an accident, one she knew she could never make up for. The only people she'd had a conversation with since the battle were Torsten's friends Malia and Rutger.

  Rell stood. "Torsten, we'll figure this out. We have to."

  "We don't have to. We've been trapped on Phoenix for two hundred years. Our efforts at space travel have accomplished nothing other than attracting the attention of the dragzhi. We practically have to start all over again now th
at our best engineers are dead."

  "No, we don't." Rell paced the room. "First, we need to help Seward back on his feet. If that means dumping out every last bit of absinthe, then we must do it. There are others who can learn from him. We can build another ship."

  "It's not that simple, Rell."

  "Of course, it's not simple. I never suggested it was. Yet, it can be done." Rell crossed her arms over her chest. "Giving up is pointless."

  Torsten stood, knocking over his chair. Instead of picking it up, he strode across the room and took Rell's hands in his. "Or we could settle here. Make Phoenix our home. Marry. Have children."

  Rell liked Torsten. A lot. Perhaps she even loved him. But marriage was a ridiculous notion. She hadn’t ever considered having children, much less a man to have them with. The whole thing was preposterous.

  Rell slipped her hands from Torsten's and went to the window. Resting a hand on the glass, she looked up at the night sky. Stars twinkled in the distance. Two moons hovered above. One blue, the other surrounded by golden rings. That was where she wanted to be. In the sky. Away from this planet, forsaken among the stars.

  "You're always moving too fast, Torsten. You need to slow down." Rell turned around to his disappointed face.

  "Is there someone else?" he asked, barely above a whisper.

  Rell laughed. "Someone else? Who? Everyone hates me except you, Rutger, and Malia." Then she realized that was the wrong response. His sad face became angry.

  "Torsten, there isn't anyone else. I'm just not ready for a big commitment yet. We have so much to do and explore. Don't you want to know what's out there?" Since the battle, she’d found herself harboring an insatiable wanderlust.

  Torsten's shoulders drooped.

  He was happy on Phoenix, and she knew he wanted her to be content with it, too.

  How could she? Her whole life had been spent underground worshipping gods who didn't exist—gods who were actually evil aliens. The dragzhi. It all had been a lie. She was determined to forge a new path, one that didn't involve staying on Phoenix forever.

  "Yeah. I guess." Torsten wouldn't look Rell in the eye. "I should go. Talk to Seward. See if I can get him back into the lab. Maybe he can help."

  "I think that's a great idea," Rell said. She leaned into Torsten, kissing him on the cheek.

  He didn't reciprocate. "I'll see you at dinner."

  The door slipped closed behind him. Rell sighed, sinking onto her bed. Her body trembled. Goosebumps spread from her shoulders down to her toes as a voice inside her spoke.

  It wasn’t her own thoughts. It was someone else. Something else.

  You do not want to marry him or settle down.

  Rell gasped. The liquid dragzhi. It had been inside her, and she’d forgotten it was there. Or it hadn’t allowed her to remember. She wasn’t sure which.

  I didn’t make you say anything you weren’t already thinking.

  “So, that was you. My thoughts felt jumbled. None of it felt right. I might have told him in a nicer manner,” Rell said, angry that it knew her most intimate thoughts. Maybe she wasn’t ready to settle down, but it didn’t mean she felt any less for Torsten than he felt for her.

  You will let something slip if I don’t control you. I can feel your resistance. The dragzhi’s voice echoed in her head with a lulling rhythm.

  "I won't resist anymore.” Memories flooded Rell’s mind. The death of Torsten’s mother as the dragzhi left her body and inhabited Rell’s. Her promise to the dragzhi. “I'll return you to space."

  I know you will. The dragzhi dragged out its final word in a fiery burn. You are the Key. You are a being of both human and dragzhi. You will do the right thing, even if I have to force you.

  It slithered into the back of her mind, mingling with her innermost thoughts. Except this time, she knew it was there.

  It wouldn’t let her forget it owned her now.

  2

  Torsten stalked to the engineering lab, his hands clenched. He wasn't mad at Rell. Instead, he was mad at himself. After all those years of avoiding girls, he kept coming on too strong with one he actually liked.

  Marriage?

  Why did he say stupid stuff like that? Of course she didn't want to be married. He wasn't even sure he wanted that—yet. He could feel Rell slipping away a little more each day, and he was blurting out every desperate thing he could just to keep her close.

  Leila would tell him he was doing it all wrong. Even though she was his younger sister by two years, she had far more experience with love. She'd lost two people important to her. Mellok had died in a confrontation with Rell, and Andessa died in battle against the dragzhi. She hadn't opened her heart to anyone else since. She'd even kept away from Torsten as much as possible. Leila assumed he'd made a choice between his sister and Rell. Maybe he had. Torsten wasn't sure anymore.

  He picked up a circuit board, then put it back where he'd found it. He wasn't an engineer. Torsten knew history. He knew religion. He had no idea what anything on that circuit board was called, or how to use it to return to space.

  The door whooshed open, and a tall blond man stepped into the room. "Any new ideas?"

  Torsten pointed at the circuit board he'd just examined. "Sure, Travis. I think we should hook this up to the coupler array. If we send a fast electrical pulse into it, the tensors will activate, thus causing the inter-dimensional rift to open again, leading us back into space."

  Travis laughed. "You've been reading too many of those old science fiction novels."

  "It almost sounds legitimate." Torsten tossed the board to Travis.

  "Not for anyone who knows what those words mean." Travis sat on the bench with an electronic test probe in his hand. He prodded gently at the board. "I've been studying this for weeks, and I still don't understand how it works. It uses materials I've never seen before."

  Travis leaned back, the chair balancing precariously on two legs. "I only recently passed my exams, you know. I was supposed to study under Martin Locke before he..."

  Before he died in battle. Just like all the others. Travis didn't have to say it out loud.

  "If Seward would get off his ass and help, I might be able to figure something out." Travis' chair landed back on all fours with a loud thud. He dropped the board on the worktable and stood. "I could spend every minute of every day looking at that damn thing and never figure it out. I’m out of here."

  Travis wasn't someone Torsten had ever been friends with, though the last few weeks had seen a shift among those left alive. Old alliances didn't seem to matter anymore. New friendships had been forged in the fires of death.

  “Let's take a walk. I want to see the dragzhi ship again." Travis snatched a jacket from the hook next to the door. "Unless you have something better to do?"

  Torsten could almost hear the unsaid words. Unless he had another book to bury his nose in. He had to give Travis credit for holding back. If Travis could try, then so could Torsten. "Sure."

  Torsten followed Travis into the hall. A familiar face headed toward them, his two different colored eyes sparkling. "Where are you two lovebirds off to?"

  "Shut up, Rutger," Travis said. "You're such a dick."

  "Hey." Torsten grinned at his friend. "What are you doing up here?"

  Rutger wasn't an engineer either. He had been raised in the military and trained for combat specializing in knives. Rutger was one of the very few people who believed Torsten when he said he hijacked a dragzhi ship—and only because he was with Torsten when it happened.

  "How are you?" Torsten asked Rutger.

  Travis grunted and sped ahead of them as Rutger fell into step with Torsten.

  "Doing great. Malia's been teaching me a lot of hand-to-hand combat, if you know what I mean." Rutger elbowed Torsten and winked.

  "She could probably kick your butt." Torsten followed Travis into the lift, dragging Rutger along. They hadn't had much time together, and Torsten had decided Rutger was coming with them on this little expedition. Rutger knew
more about how the weapons worked than anyone else. Torsten had flown the ship, using his knowledge to guide him, but Rutger had a better feel for these things.

  "How are things between you and Rell?" Rutger asked. "I haven't seen her out much lately. She seems to spend more time alone these days."

  Torsten shrugged. "She's fine, I guess. She has a lot to deal with. Life here is very different than what she's used to. I think she's still adjusting."

  Rutger didn't ask any more questions, seeming to take Torsten's explanation at face value. Torsten disliked making excuses for Rell. At the same time, he wanted to protect her and give her the space she needed to come to terms with everything that had happened.

  Before Torsten met Rell, he wasn't interested in any of the girls he knew. They were an unwelcome distraction from his studies. Now, all he wanted was to protect this girl, who clearly didn't need, or want, his protection.

  Torsten squared his shoulders as the lift doors opened on the bottom floor of the tower. Rell could take care of herself. She’d managed to live her entire life without Torsten hovering.

  He had been happy with his life in the tower. A quiet existence until the commander sent him out on a fool’s errand to find some mystical Key that could save their people. Then he’d found the Key—Rell. He still didn’t fully understand what that meant. It seemed Rell didn’t fully understand her destiny either.