dominating a mad scientist’s lab from a low-budget 1940s movie, loud and sparking with excess power.
I had no idea what it was at first, but one thing drew my attention: a sealed cockpit at the epicenter of the metal contraption.
I was so amazed by the device, possibilities running rampant through my head, that I let them lead me to the enclosed chair without argument. Besides, I was on a ship that had sailed, its course set, and I was the lone passenger. With little ceremony, they threw me inside what was, in essence, a cockpit. The guards strapped me to the chair and slammed the cowling closed as they fired up the machine.
A dozen technicians huddled around the control center fiddling with the dials, and one of them came to a large knob, spinning it clock-wise as the power surged. One of the armored guards, I think the one that had laughed at me, waved, and in a flash, I was gone. The memory was familiar, and only at that moment did I realize what they had done to me.
When the blinding lights faded, I found myself atop a small strip of rock, maybe a quarter mile long and half again as wide, floating in that inky burnt orange sky, surrounded by other mini-islands. Torn from their host planets, these shards of earth were satellites to a central foundering planet, a cataclysmic orb that had failed upon itself and now was a dripping mass of lava and rock. Hovering above the ruined world was the citadel of crystal and silver, home of the Lightbringers.
The bastards had sent me back to Shard World.
Part One
“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree.”
Chapter One
I was reminded of Cool Hand Luke’s first words from the first time we’d ended up in Shard World: “Why does it always have to be an alien world?”
This floating island was new to me, and guiding by where the Lightbringers citadel lay, I was far from the small alien village we’d encountered, where we had defeated the Mist Army. My new home was a barren patch of rock, devoid of plant or animal life, but more importantly, lacking water. Instead of killing me outright, they had banished me to a slow and painful death by dehydration.
I wasn’t going to let them win. I wasn’t going to die on a small sliver of rock in the middle of nowhere. That wasn’t going to be my end. I had to find a way back, find a way to stop Dr. Zundergrub and keep Apogee safe. Being marooned on a Bok globule lightyears from Earth wasn’t as big a deal as one might think. Mr. Haha and I had built a machine to return us to Earth, and while I lacked his near-limitless abilities now, I still had everything I needed to build another. Maybe the first one I had built was still there, waiting for me to find it floating on some distant shard. Either way, I was getting out of this shithole. I was getting it out and making it back.
The first thing I had to do, though, was find my way off this rock.
I had little in the way of materials, just what I wore: an orange prison jumpsuit, white cotton shirt and briefs, and the metal manacles and chains that bound me. Freed from the power dampening-field generators, I could at last exert my full strength and remove the handcuffs. I tore the top of my jumpsuit, crumpled it into a ball, and used the twisted metal braces as flint and steel, lighting a small fire. I searched the rocky ground for minerals and found enough carbonized ores to make a respectable bonfire.
I had the crazy idea of trying to attract one of those whale-manta ray things that had almost eaten me whole on my first trip here, to somehow subdue it. It wasn’t much of a plan, but I was desperate, and nothing was going to deter me. One of the bigger whale beasties flew near but rolled off, uninterested. I made a huge ruckus, hooting and hollering, hoping to lure the creature, but it turned fast away, scared by something that approached behind me.
I turned to see what it could be, and my gut clenched. It was an open-decked ship, teeming with armed warriors, soaring with the winds that billowed into its many sails.
The Mist Army had found me.
The sleek ship circled twice before coming to a stop alongside the rocky island. Lined along the