A CRYSTALLINE FREQUENCY chapter 0
when the waves collapse
note: as of now this book is upper young adult, but if the content becomes too dark, I’ll bump it up to new adult. this is a romantic sci-fi space fantasy that WILL be a standalone and it WILL NOT BE OVER 100k words i swear you guys i can write a short book
“So…did you kill the Grand Monarch yet?” Maknus asks, his voice jolting me out of my anxious mind spiral of continuously worrying about literally everything.
In a seat on the outskirts of my spaceship’s bridge, I sit up a little straighter and scan for nearby eavesdroppers. My crew’s too busy with their own tasks to care about my friends checking in, though, and I wouldn’t quite care if anyone overheard anyway. I trust everyone on this ship with my life—with the lives of our entire home planet, actually.
Today we’re finally taking steps toward saving Lupheria, and my rosy brown skin luminesces like a star on the verge of explosion with ecstatic anticipation.
My caginess is mostly because I feel bad I’m not doing anything. I devised the plans for this mission, but beyond that I’m fairly useless. Just sitting here waiting for everything to unfold, watching everyone else carry out my orders.
I lift my forearm, above which a hologram of my friends is projected. They wait in the much smaller escape vessel attached to my ship, Maknus lying back on the floor with his boots propped on Azaria’s armrest. Even through the tiny projection, her disgusted scowl is clear.
“No, I didn’t kill the Grand Monarch yet. You know I’m not killing him,” I say quietly, sinking into my mossy cushions once more. Most Lupherian ships are designed to feel like the cozy interiors of our homes, with live plants hanging from the ceilings and vibrantly colored electronic equipment. A stark contrast to the grayscale planet looming out the bridge viewport: Rakillon. “I’m just the decoy to distract the Rakis—er, my ship is.”
“But this is your plan,” Mak insists. “When your assassins assassinate the Rakis’ Grand Monarch, it’ll be like you killed him.”
Technically that’s true, but part of me still wishes I could actually be the one to drive a plasma blade through his greedy heart. All the suffering he’s caused over the past seven years is my fault, and I need to make amends for my wrongs more than I need food or water or anything.
For this plan to work, though, I can’t risk descending to the unfriendly surface of Rakillon. Instead, while I wait in my spaceship, a team of Lupherian assassins sneaks onto our enemies’ planet, cloaked with the best camouflaging technology. The Rakis won’t be able to detect them, nor will they care to when Lupheria’s heir lingers right outside their magnetosphere.
My well-known ship is the distraction, the bait dangling on the very edge of neutral space, where neither of our planets are allowed to attack each other without risking nuclear retaliation.
None of us expect the Rakis to play by the rules, but I’m not nervous about them invading my ship. Its shields are utterly impenetrable from the outside. Even if the Rakis unload all their weapons on us, my crew will remain unharmed, and I’ll be safe until phase two of the plan begins—until the Grand Monarch is killed, and in the tumultuous wake of his death, my friends and I take the opportunity to claim what our two planets have fought over for years.
On my holoscreen, Mak repositions his boots to be even more in Azaria’s face. “All I’m saying is…your mom would be proud, Sas.”
My heart stutters at the mention of her. Especially given the nature of today’s mission, given I’m currently sitting on a ship’s bridge just like the one where she—
“Your timing is impeccably bad, Mak.” Azaria shoves his boots off her chair and looks at where my hologram is projected in their vessel, meeting my eyes. In the hologram above my forearm, everything’s the same aquamarine as her irises really are, making her gaze feel more present, more tangible. “Saskia, listen to me—ignore him. Stop overthinking, all right? This plan will work. Every reasonable possibility has been accounted for, so unless the sun blows up, we’ll be fine.”
“I know,” I say through a shaky breath. “I’m not worried about the plan. I’m really confident about the plan, actually. It’s…it’s just…”
Mak’s face pinches with pity. “You’re thinking about him, aren’t you?”
This time my heart lurches into my throat, and I can’t stop my eyes from latching onto the dull planet out the viewport.
From here, it looks like any old space rock, only dotted with enough artificial light to indicate some form of life. But to me, Rakillon is a living entity, albeit a diseased one.
I spent half of my childhood there. I left half of my heart there.
“Mak!” Azaria groans, stomping on his leg. “Why would you bring up—”
“Is everything ready down there?” I ask before either of them can elaborate on the subject of him.
Thank the Elements, Harvel’s the one who speaks this time.
“Yup, just waiting on the most important facet,” he says, not even glancing at my hologram as he focuses on the command console. He probably didn’t even hear the rest of the conversation.
My mood lightens, and I let out a laugh. “Aw, Harv, you’re so sweet. You called me a facet.”
Azaria chucks one of her gloves at the back of his head, hitting the multi-functional electronic gadget that covers his left ear. “Are you flirting with my best friend right now?”
“No,” Harvel says, unfazed by his girlfriend’s faux outrage. “It’s an objective fact. Saskia’s our leader. We need her for the mission on Ziphoter.”
“Honestly, you guys could do it without me,” I start to argue, and Azaria immediately shakes her head.
“But we wouldn’t, because then I’d be stuck with two boys on an alien planet for the-universe-knows how long.”
Mak folds his hands behind his head like a pillow. “Can’t be a bad time if I’m there, though, right?”
“According to my calculations,” Harvel says,“it should take us roughly nine Lupherian days to trek from our landing point to the crystal caves, if Maknus doesn’t slow us down.”
“Why would I slow us down?”
“You’re very easily distracted,” I inform him, smirking. “Every time we’re trying to sneak around a deadly Ziph, you’ll be like, ‘Ooh, look, a flower,’ and then we’ll get eaten.”
Mak’s mouth flops open for a solid fifteen seconds. “Wait, does Ziphoter have flowers?”
“Depends on how their plants reproduce,” Harvel explains. “Plants on Rakillon didn’t have flowers, when they actually existed.”
“I don’t think our soldiers who’ve landed on Ziphoter had enough time to study the flora before Ziphs got them,” I add ruefully, thinking of all the Lupherians who’ve died in an attempt to acquire the precious ziphium crystals.
Azaria drums her fingers on her armrest impatiently. “We’ll see for ourselves soon enough. As soon as the Grand Asshole’s dead, Saskia runs down here, we disconnect from the main ship, and we book it toward the Rakis’ teleportation hole. Then, once we actually get to Ziphoter, the real challenge begins. Any news up there, Sas?”
I shift my focus toward the adult crew, who talk amongst themselves, paying no mind to my existence. They’re supposed to keep me updated, but none of them seriously view me as their leader since I’m only seventeen—since I’ve never actually seen battle. Any respect they offer stems only from their admiration of my father. Even orchestrating this whole plan didn’t win me many points.
Maybe once we succeed, they’ll finally see me as Lupheria’s future Queen. To me, it doesn’t really matter. All I want is to end the war I unintentionally started, to scrape the film of guilt off my heart.
“…breached Rakillon’s atmosphere,” one crew member, Julisa, reports, likely referring to our assassins.
I relay the information to my friends, along with the slightly more harrowing news that follows: three Raki vessels are headed our way.
“Three?” Mak finally sits upright. “Oh, we’re screwed.”
“We expected the Rakis would come for Saskia’s ship with full force,” Azaria reminds him. “Three doesn’t seem that bad.”
“They can’t touch us now anyway,” I say, standing to stretch my arms. If the plan goes accordingly, the Grand Monarch will be dead within an hour, and I want to be ready the second his wretched soul descends into whatever lower dimension it came from. “We’re shielded, and we’re outside Rakillon’s magnetosphere. Attacking’s against the law.”
“Like Rakis follow laws,” Harvel mutters as he scans the command console, probably watching the incoming ships.
“Hey, do you think the Exarch will cry when his uncle dies?” Mak asks, and my whole body stiffens at the second unwanted mention of him.
“Can Rakis cry?” Azaria deflects instead of scolding Mak this time. “Do they cry lava tears or something?”
I smoothen my turquoise spacefaring suit to expel my nerves. “I don’t know. I never saw any of them cry. I think they’re incapable of sorrow. It’s all greed and rage. I’m sure…I’m sure he’ll be vying for the spot of Grand Monarch along with the rest of the Morbaks.”
“Princess Saskia,” my ship’s captain prompts before my friends can answer. The middle aged woman’s reddish brown skin glows like all Lupherians’, and her eyes are grim despite their bright magenta hue.
I collapse the projection of my holosleeve and lower my forearm. “Just Saskia, please.”
“I don’t want to worry you…Saskia, but we have an unexpected visitor.”
She gestures toward the viewport, and without glimpsing the ship, I feel its presence like a hundred little insects skittering under my skin.
I avert my eyes in the opposite direction, refusing to look, refusing to confirm who has arrived.
“Captain,” the comms director, Calrin, calls from his spot around the giant command console. Purely for fun, he wears a ridiculously large and spiky headpiece to auditorily connect himself to the ship, but his anxiety cancels out the contraptions goofiness. “The Exarch is requesting communication.”
All my confidence and composure plummets into the endless depths of space.
“What’s going on?” Azaria’s voice chimes from my holosleeve.
“Saskia’s heart rate is through the roof,” Harvel replies, as concerned as he’ll ever sound.
The captain must notice my adverse reaction, because she stalks back to the crew, barking, “No one open communication to him. We need to drag out this distraction as long as possible—the Exarch can’t catch on.”
Pressing my back to the nearest wall, I take a deep breath and focus on the vines drooping above me. “Stop monitoring my vitals, Harvel—it’s weird. I’m…fine. It’s just…him.”
“Mushroom mites,” Mak swears, and when I check the hologram, he’s scrambled to his feet. “Is he attacking?”
“No, he wants to…talk.”
Mak runs a hand over his messily braided hair. “Yikes, that’s worse.”
“We knew there was a chance he might come, and it doesn’t change anything,” Azaria insists, as assertive as always. “Don’t waste your energy on that inconsequential space dust, Sas. He doesn’t deserve a second of your time, not after he betrayed you and started this war.”
I shut down the hologram and hugged myself, trying to contain the guilt scratching at my ribcage. Azaria is right; his betrayal sparked the war, but I trusted him. I told him about Ziphoter and the ziphium crystals, and if I hadn’t, my family could have secured them first. Lupheria could have controlled the crystals and maintained the peace. My mom could have survived.
And now, I’m finally so close to correcting my mistake, and he has to show up.
I shake my head, letting some of Azaria’s strength and surety fill me. This plan will work.
Unless he catches us during phase two. Unless he follows us to Ziphoter. Unless—
“Vaaalaaah,” his voice crackles through the speakers, freezing everyone on the bridge.
“Someone…someone opened the channel,” Calrin says, frantically pressing buttons.
The clicking sound isn’t nearly as grating as that voice wending through the air, mocking me with my family name.
“Vaaalaaah.”
“Who? Who opened the channel?” the captain demands, peeking back to check on me.
She shouldn’t have to check on me. I’m supposed to be the leader of this mission. I cannot fall apart.
“Vaaalaaah.”
His taunting voice sounds like it’s inside my skull by this point, but I tune it out and straighten my spine, determined not to let it affect me.
“Is that…him?” Mak asks apprehensively, even though he’s never had the displeasure of meeting the Exarch.
“They let him onto our comms?” Azaria sounds louder than before, like she’s gotten up into my hologram’s face, but I don’t check my holosleeve, too busy searching the bridge for signs of someone who might’ve betrayed us.
“Our ship,” Julisa stammers. “It’s…it’s moving without our permission. It’s like…the Rakis have some sort of magnet…”
And it does feel like that, not in the ship but in my chest, in my soul. On a metaphysical level, I feel the pull toward him, like he’s an unstable atom desperate to steal my electrons.
“It’s him,” I tell the crew, and several whip toward me in utter confusion. “The Exarch. He’s…doing something.”
Julisa swipes through holo projections and grimaces at the viewport, now filled with the white gleam of Raki ships. “Yeah, he’s pulling us closer to their magnetosphere so they can attack.”
“He can’t get past our shields,” I say like a mantra.
“Yeah, and he shouldn’t have been able to get into our communication systems either,” Calrin pipes up bitterly, still pressing buttons.
“Everyone in offensive positions!” the captain shouts over the speakers, alerting the entire ship—and hopefully not the Rakis.
Either way, the plan has gone awry, and I need to get to the escape vessel in case we’re forced to move to phase two quicker than expected.
“I’m coming down now,” I say into my holosleeve as I rush out of the bridge. “We have to push up the timeline. He’s forcing a confrontation.”
“We’ll come up to—”
“No,” I interrupt, cutting off Mak. “Just make sure our vessel’s ready.”
Weaving through the hallways of rushing soldiers, I avoid meeting anyone’s eyes. I know I’ll be of no help to my crew here, and this is the plan everyone signed up for, but I loathe leaving anyone behind.
Frankly, though, they’ll be safer on this ship than my friends and I will be on our much smaller, more vulnerable vessel. And even if the shields fail, he would never risk boarding my ship himself. The big bad Exarch only fights in the comfort of his little death pit, where he’s assured victory through unfair advantages.
As I reach one of the emptier halls, only two floors away from my friends, Julisa’s distressed voice comes through my holosleeve. “Princess Saskia, the shields are down. I don’t know—everything’s gone haywire—they’re breaching the hull.”
“Shit.” I hesitate a moment, emotionally drawn back to my crew, wanting to fight alongside the people I led into this situation. Combat isn’t my strength, though. I’ll be more a hindrance than anything else. They’re trained for this, and the best way to truly save Lupherians is to complete phase two—to claim Ziphoter.
An alarm starts blaring, and I break into a sprint, slowing only when I reach the end of a corridor. “Don’t let anyone get captured,” I order Julisa through my holosleeve as the stairwell door slides open. “The Rakis can’t find out what we’re—”
A blur of black surges from the stairwell, slamming me to the floor.
Pain spears my skull, and I must cry out, because Azaria’s voice vibrates through my dazed head—“Saskia, what’s going on!”
Groaning on my back, I squint up at the weight pinning me down—a Raki in full space armor, helmet and all. I forgot how much bigger they are, how I stand zero chance of muscling one off me.
“Get—” I grunt, and then realize my hand is free. Tapping my finger to my wrist three times, I let loose the knife lodged in my sleeve and jab it into a soft spot on my assailant’s side.
Aaand they don’t budge. Lovely.
I yank out the small blade, only the tip slick with a dab of black blood. What part of the suit is shallow enough for me to do any damage? Judging by the Raki’s lack of reaction to my weapon, none.
As I stab toward another gap in the metal plates, the Raki hops off to their feet and then stomps one booted foot against my chest before I can follow.
Azaria’s voice comes through again, more distorted than last time. “Where are you? Saskia—”
“Vaaalaaah.”
His voice is quieter now, echoing from one wall to the next like a lost phantom. A specter of white approaches from beyond my assailant’s leg, and even through my fuzzy vision, even in the space armor, I know it’s him.
He boarded my ship. He came. For me.
“Go, Azaria!” I shout feebly toward my holosleeve. “Go without me! That’s an order. Harvel, do it.”
My heart jerks like a crazed animal trapped in a cage, whether wanting to attack or return home, I don’t know. If my head weren’t throbbing, I’d probably thrash around as violently, but my limbs won’t move, my entire being transfixed as he crouches to pluck the knife from my hand.
“No! Saskia!” Mak’s voice blasts from my holosleeve, and the white helmet tilts with intrigue. “I’m coming—”
The Exarch reaches across my body to seize my forearm and speak slowly but fervently into the device. “Don’t worry, your precious Valah is in good hands now. Come see for yourself.”
“Don’t!” I cry, but I don’t know if my friends hear me because he stakes my knife into the hardware, so deep it cuts into my flesh.
I bite down on my lip to suppress a scream, channeling all my effort into glaring at the unfeeling helmet looming above me. The other Raki removes his black boot, but as soon as I start to scramble up, the Exarch gently rests his own foot atop my torso, pinning me down.
“I never thought you’d come back to me.” His gravelly voice crackles through his helmet as he leans down. “Figured out your people are inferior weaklings, have you?”
I spit toward the reflective white glass covering his face, but the iridescent saliva only hits his shin. “I hope your ship crash lands on the sun.”
“Is that the fate you desire for yourself? Because you’re part of me now, Valah. We’ve reconverged, and I can’t wait to see what kind of world-shattering secrets you have for me this time. Maybe we can start another war.”
Clawing at his leg, I try to pull myself up, but all I accomplish is giving him better access to stab a needle into my neck.
“No!” I shout, but it comes out far less potent than I intended, the tranquilizer quickly spurting through my veins.
I stare helplessly at the open stairwell, imagining my friends might emerge to save me—and then I must start hallucinating, because Maknus bursts into the hallway, using the weight of his periwinkle space armor to slam the black-armored Raki into a wall.
“Hungry?” my friend cheekily asks before shoving a cluster of neon mushrooms against the Raki’s helmet. They ooze over the glass and metal, rapidly eroding the materials in a way that Harvel would claim is science but looks more like magic to me.
Either way, the Raki claws at the glowing substance, distracted enough that Mak can move on to his next target.
“Step away from her or you’re next.” Maknys holds up more mushrooms, the threat clear in his tone. With his helmet on, he almost looks imposing, but fear isn’t an emotion most Rakis have the capacity to feel.
“I’m hungry,” the Exarch says. And then punches my knife into Mak’s lightweight periwinkle suit.
“Nnnn—” I try to scream, but it’s barely audible, my tongue too numb, my throat too rigid.
The neon mushrooms cascade to the floor as Mak stumbles backward, and I can’t see his face, can’t tell if he’s just shocked or if he’s dying. He doesn’t make a sound, and that frightens me more than anything, because Mak is always loud, always vocal, always making fun of the darkest situations.
“Maaa,” I try again, practically choking on the horror. And the guilt. Always the guilt.
Because I caused this. My plan—my hubris—led one of my best friends right into the starving maw of this merciless monster.
Every time I try to make things right, I twist them into something immeasurably more wrong.
“Say goodbye, Valah,” my enemy hisses, his voice like the rumble of a distant volcanic eruption, and the last thing I glimpse is his cruel wave before the smoke of unconsciousness veils the world.