Revisiting Phantom Starlight Chapter 1

I needed a break from Stellar Empire... so I took what I learned writing Born of Ash and Iron and applied it to Phantom Starlight.

I just finished my draft of Born of Ash and Iron, the final chapters and epilogue are with my two editing compatriots right now. As that works its way through that process, I want to keep working on writing, but I need a break from the universe I created and brought other authors into.

Sometimes you just need something fresh to work on, do you know what I mean?

So, I’ve put Stellar Empire into their capable hands for the moment and tried my hand at re-writing chapter 1 of Phantom Starlight, this is actually the third complete rewrite (not counting the original chap book), and probably a hundred plus minor rewrites and edits.

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Chapter 1

Sunday, August 1st, 2077

Atsawin drifted at the edge of sleep, eyelids leaden as if something unseen pressed against them. The steady murmur of the shuttle’s rotating drum filled his compartment, a subterranean rumble that shivered through the aluminum frame and hummed in his bones. Artificial gravity was supposed to be comforting, a sign of order and safety, but tonight it sounded almost like a lullaby sung by something mechanical and unfeeling. The air was sharp and cold, regulated at eighteen-point-three degrees Celsius, just enough to raise the hairs on his arms.

Shuttles Limited sold this voyage as luxury. BoeingX’s Argosy-class was advertised as a palace in motion: five concentric rings, each sliced into three private cabins, every one a neat wedge of comfort bolted into a machine meant to survive the void.

Fifteen passengers. Six crew. Atsawin’s team of eight. And six NASA engineers heading to a Venusian research station. Twenty souls in total.

Twenty. He had accepted that number long before he stepped aboard. Numbers were simple, obedient things. On paper it was tolerable. But in the lounge, watching faces break into smiles and nods, hearing laughter carried by the recycled air, it had become unbearable. The numbers had names. The names had eyes.

He should have stayed in his cabin.

The only relief was the absence of children. He knew with certainty he could not have gone through with it if there had been children.

His hand crept to his scalp, scratching as if the guilt itched beneath the skin. His stomach turned over and over, boiling itself into knots. He told himself he wasn’t a murderer, but the thought rolled through him like a stone through still water, leaving only ripples of nausea.

A scream tore through the cabin walls. A woman’s voice. “Gun!”

He sat bolt upright. A muffled pop followed, unmistakable. The peculiar, flat crack of a zero-gravity pistol.

The decompression alarm began immediately. A shrill wail rose from the walls, accompanied by a pulsing strip of blue-green light that threw long shadows across the cabin. The air itself seemed to thin as he breathed.

Atsawin reached for his mobile computer. The screen glowed with sterile icons: diagrams of survival suits, instructions for sealing hatches. No messages. No override. Just safety protocols, looping endlessly as though mocking him. He flung the device onto the cot.

The door burst inward. Markus Drake filled the frame, rifle raised. His tactical black fatigues made him look like a phantom cut from darkness, his square jaw and hard stare illuminated only by the emergency light.

“El jefe,” Markus growled. “We’ve got a problem.”

“The gunshot, the decompression, or the idiot screaming?” Atsawin asked, voice sharper than he intended, the sarcasm almost brittle.

“Apparently, Winnie had caught her boyfriend, the co-pilot, screwing the junior steward. When we armed her, she marched in and shot him.”

The words sank into Atsawin like stones into deep water. “You armed her? Are you insane? We could have pinned this on her. You’ve destroyed our cover.”

Markus didn’t waver. His eyes were steady, cold. “Captain didn’t see it that way. He called it a hijacking. Locked down the pilot house.”

Atsawin closed his eyes and pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. He could feel the plan slipping, unraveling like fabric eaten through by moths. “Get me a gun,” he said at last. If they lost the gate, the Laughlites would find another way. They always would. He needed to take the Kido-Sowah device entirely out of the equation.

“Cole and Stout have taken engineering. They took it from the flight engineer—”

“Lon Barron,” Atsawin whispered, as though naming the dead might honor them. He had memorized them all.

“Yeah, ok, him.”

The radio on Markus’s vest hissed. Cole’s voice crackled through, jagged with adrenaline. “Marko, I just had to shoot the engineer. He tried to bleed the fuel lines.”

Atsawin’s eyes snapped open. His hand rose and pointed, every syllable sharpened into command. “Get control of this ship. Get us into the gate. Nothing else matters.”

~ ~ ~

Nicole Loughlin adjusted the stylus on her podium, lining it precisely with its edge. The hall was black and heavy with silence, every breath of the audience folded into the same stillness. Their attention pressed against her skin, an almost physical force.

When she spoke, the music rose beneath her voice, a slow crescendo of strings and brass.

“We have chased the dream of warp since our forebears first reached for the stars. They had only fragments of the truth, and yet they imagined us walking between worlds.”

The screen behind her brightened to reveal Sergey Krasnikov’s stern face.

“It was he who gave us the Tube and the Shadow. And it was under the cloak of the United States Air Force” — the word States hung, heavy, pulling shouts and cheers —“that he built the Milner Gate. Humanity tore a hole into the outer system and passed through.”

The roar that followed struck like a physical wave. She let it swell, let the sound feed her.

“When they stripped away our states, they promised us freedom. What we received was chains made of bureaucracy. Politicians who sell themselves for power. Votes bought like indulgences.”

The chant of her name began again, rolling through the crowd like thunder. Nicole raised her chin, her smile subtle, controlled.

“It is long past time we take our America back.”

The audience shook with its answer.

“They waste billions on toys that win hearts on social feeds. They elevate a trust-fund child in Capital Hall who worries more about the cut of her hair than the survival of our people.”

The spotlight crowned her in fire, turning her curls into a halo. She leaned into it, her eyes burning with the certainty of her myth.

“Two-score and eight years ago, Sergey Krasnikov made the human race interplanetary,” she said, her voice rising to fill the chamber. “We will make America interplanetary, we will make America rise again, I will bring back the glory of our Republic to the Stars!”

The roar shook the hall, her name pounding like war drums in the dark.

~ ~ ~

The pilot house smelled of iron and ozone. Blood globules drifted in the weightlessness, scattering like red stars across the air. Bone fragments clung to the viewport, thin white crescents haloed in crimson. A single dart sat in its nest of sealing gel, surrounded by the mess it had made.

Beyond the glass, the black dome of subspace loomed, encased in the carbon nano-fiber ring of the Star6 station. The void shimmered like liquid obsidian, drinking every stray glimmer of light. The sight of it seemed to reach inside him, pulling at his breath, demanding awe and dread in equal measure.

“How’s the Kido’s output?” Atsawin asked, his voice hushed.

“Five-oh-five by sixteen,” Soboleva murmured. Her braid floated loose, strands drifting as though underwater. “Twenty-two percent. The links may still hold.”

His hand touched the cardboard ring that sat on the console. Five cans of soda. One hidden device.

The circle of the Meisner Gate felt almost ceremonial, a ritual offering waiting for fire.

“We’re synced with the gate,” Marjorie Gardner reported from the controls. Her voice trembled despite the blood drying on her hands.

Xie Laong shook her head, lips tight. “No. I can’t confirm fluctuations from the Kido.”

“We cannot know how the Kido will react at the event horizon,” Atsawin said, though he no longer cared. His true plan would end just inside the gate, no matter what the device chose to do.

“Take us in. Venus may already be watching.”

The ion drives burned. A faint gravity stirred, pressing bodies against restraints. Atsawin reached for Laong’s hand. Her skin was warm, soft, human. He silenced her fear with a smile. It was the only mercy he had left.

Crossing into subspace felt like piercing a membrane. The fabric of reality stretched thin, the containment ring straining to hold the galactic wound together.

“No change in the Kido,” Soboleva said. “Breaking horizon now.”

“Full power,” Atsawin whispered. He lifted a can from the ring. The metal was slick in his hand. “Embrace destiny.”

Gravity lurched. Atsawin slammed against the ceiling, the can spinning free. Cole screamed as he tumbled, limbs flailing. Soboleva and Laong collided, bodies entwining in weightless chaos.

Marjorie caught the rifle, her knuckles white. The pilot’s couch groaned, metal tearing against strain.

The weight reversed. Atsawin struck the deck, his skull cracking against steel. Light burst behind his eyes. Shots cracked through the chamber. One found his thigh, tearing through muscle with fire.

“Marjorie!” he shouted, voice raw.

Cole’s next round took her in the skull. The back of her head burst open, blood and brain splattering against the glass. The breach tore it outward, vanishing into the void.

The decompression alarm shrieked again, its voice thin against the storm of blood and steel. Atsawin’s body slammed against the co-pilot’s chair. Darkness surged up from below, swallowing him whole.