D'mok Revival: The Nukari Invasion Anthology Read online




  This book is dedicated to my friend, Pat Conley.

  You are an inspiration whose kindness and support generated the big bang to my literary universe.

  By

  Michael J. Zummo

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real people, living or dead, or events is coincidental.

  D’MOK REVIVAL: The Nukari Invasion Anthology

  Copyright © 2016 by Michael J. Zummo

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without written permission from the author.

  Cover art by Glenn Clovis

  ISBN: 978-0-9890044-7-3

  Author’s Note

  When I released my first book, D'mok Revival: Awakening, at Chicago Comic Con in 2013, people said they liked the premise of my story. However, they wanted the entire trilogy published before they'd invest their time and money. Most gave the same reason why: so many would-be authors promised to write multiple books then failed to make good on their promise. In the end, this wasted their time and money.

  I took this message to heart. Within two years the entire trilogy was released. Soon after, two novelettes followed. That's a total of five works, and nearly 310,000 words! While I believe I've more than fulfilled on the original promise, there's already a new full novel (D'mok Revival: New Eden) ready to be released. Furthermore, the first spin-off, Weun Academy, is already a third completed! Check out the sneak peek prologues at the end of this book for more on the next books.

  But Rhysus isn't the only person who has gone on a journey. I've grown a great deal as a person and as a writer. Without a doubt as you read through the stories of The Nukari Invasion Anthology you will see the evolution of my writing style. The first book read like a episodic television show and had an adventuring spirit. The Nukari were certainly pulling the strings from the background. However, you didn't see much of their power and direct presence until the end. Starting with book two, thanks to feedback from people like you, I've tightened the story arcs, and focused on action while not losing character development. This tighter format is what moved forward as my dominant writing style.

  For this anthology, I felt it important to stay true to my original works. I have not gone back and restructured the story using my new writing style. Only grammatical and spelling errors have been changed.

  Thank you for the opportunity to bring you this collection. For those new to the D'mok Revival series, I hope you enjoy it. Don't forget to send me feedback!

  Without further ado, allow me to take you on a journey!

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Book 1 -- D'mok Revival: Awakening

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: Legacies

  Chapter 2: At Square One

  Chapter 3: Crystal Power

  Chapter 4: Creatures of Stone

  Chapter 5: The Living Legend

  Chapter 6: Engineering XoXo Style

  Chapter 7: A Friend in Need

  Chapter 8: Grave Opportunities

  Chapter 9: The Little Thief

  Chapter 10: Ancient Underground

  Chapter 11: On the Prowl

  Chapter 12: Search for Jerin

  Chapter 13: Inked Honors

  Chapter 14: Allia’s Detour

  Chapter 15: Crystal Legacies

  Chapter 16: The Favor

  Epilogue

  Book 2 -- D'mok Revival: Retribution

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: Conflict of Heart

  Chapter 2: Auras of Blue

  Chapter 3: Sky City and the Smog Sea

  Chapter 4: Dancer and the Dock Worker

  Chapter 5: The Agran Menace

  Chapter 6: The Power of Three

  Chapter 7: Knot of Leads

  Chapter 8: The Forgotten

  Chapter 9: Plagued No More

  Chapter 10: Turf War

  Chapter 11: The Janux Nebula

  Chapter 12: The Gateway

  Chapter 13: Warrior Down

  Chapter 14: The Cosmic Link

  Chapter 15: The Wanderers

  Chapter 16: Fowl 359

  Chapter 17: Into the Rift

  Epilogue

  Book 3 -- D'mok Revival: Descension

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: The Pocket World

  Chapter 2: The Museum

  Chapter 3: The Coliseum

  Chapter 4: Ruul

  Chapter 5: An Unlikely Hero

  Chapter 6: Moonbase Alpha

  Chapter 7: K’pec

  Chapter 8: Transfiguration

  Chapter 9: The Enemy’s Mind

  Chapter 10: Leather & Lace

  Chapter 11: Enamored Assassin

  Chapter 12: Beast Hollow

  Chapter 13: Paradise Lost

  Chapter 14: Legends Never Die

  Chapter 15: Pleasant Dreams

  Epilogue

  Novelette 1: Mindwalk

  Author's Note

  Primer

  Part 1: The Tormented

  Part 2: The Mindscape

  Novelette 2: The Aloan Conspiracy

  Author's Note

  Primer

  The Aloan Conspiracy

  Sneak Peeks

  D'mok Revival: New Eden

  Weun Academy: The Boy with the Green Eyes

  Author Bio

  Final Note

  Prologue

  He cowered in the dark, naked, his quivering hands over his ears in a desperate attempt to silence the cries and explosions around him. The dirty air was ripe with death, as the ground rumbled from endless legions stomping into battle. He tried to scream, but only a dry rasp escaped.

  His breathing erratic, his eyes scoured the darkness. Were they close? Where else could he hide?

  A crunching sound just yards away seized his attention.

  A blur approached from the shadows; his body recoiled in fear as he saw another, and another.

  One by one, the blurs took shape. Their monstrous forms were grotesque; their muted features sagged and bulged like melted wax. Despite their appearance, each haunting face drowned him in memories. Some he had loved, some he had ruined, others were innocents left doomed by his failures. All sought vengeance.

  The first to reach him was a woman with jet-black hair. Her pupil-less eyes glared accusingly. Her hand stroked the shoulder of a ghostly young boy who clung to her side.

  An ominous symbol formed above them. His eyes were drawn along its ragged, glowing, silvery-blue edges. Heat radiated as its light became blinding. Then, with a powerful blast, it exploded. Tongues of flame enshrouded his tormentors, immolating their already hideous forms, transforming them into hell-spawned demons.

  Instinct told him to run, to bolt madly, anything but stay there. But he couldn’t. His body collapsed forward, trembling and useless. Fibers sprouted from the ground and entangled his fingers and toes, wrapped wildly around his hands and feet, wound up his arms and legs. The strands wove into cloth that soaked up color like a bandage on a gushing wound. He knew the garment well. It was his Coalition uniform.

  The world around him began to warp, and the ground disappeared. He found himself floating in a void. The emptiness flooded with stars. In the distance, a battle raged. Coalition starfighters dodged frantically about, blindly unloading their weapons into empty space. When a great ruin appeared before him, he stared in horror. It was his space station, burning. Half the mammoth structure already orbited its carcass as debris.

  Ominous crafts marked with the silvery-blue symbol took shape from the empty space, to prey upon the Coalition fighters. Two demo
ns shrieked as the enemy attacked. Their flaming bodies burst into a cloud of ash as the two friendly crafts vaporized.

  His eyes were drawn back to the female demon’s piercing gaze, desperate and beckoning. She reached out her hand to him.

  In the distance, a small fleet of transports emerged from the station’s ruins attempting to slip away. With defenses obliterated, the enemy crafts closed in quickly. The little demon cried out, and huddled closer to his mother.

  The enemy weapons radiated a hellish glow. He reached toward the woman as cannons thundered, unloading on the transport. The child gripped her side while she shrieked, “Rhysuuuuuusss!”

  His body radiated with power as his voice rose like a geyser: “Anakaaaaaaa!”

  The pair burst into ash before him as ripples of energy pulsed from his body, destroying the enemy ships in its path. But it was too late. His mind spun as the universe dissolved into a haze of light.

  The sounds of battle ceased. The demons, ships, and stars disappeared. He was utterly alone, cradled in a cocoon of energy. He whimpered and felt salty drops streak his face.

  The light around him turned greenish-blue. The wetness congealed, and he found himself surrounded by a thick liquid, trapped inside a huge glass cylinder. His weak hands reached up and grasped the tubes that ran to a device over and into his mouth.

  Distorted forms surrounded the tank. As the liquid drained, a great weight overcame him. The cylinder disappeared, replaced by a thick fog from which disembodied voices discussed the miracle of his survival.

  He was strapped to a bed with a curtain of tangled wires which led from countless machines into inflamed lumps on his skin.

  A translucent figure came to his side. “How do you feel, Commander Mencari?”

  Too weak to respond, Rhysus Mencari stared at the round Coalition symbol on the man’s lab coat.

  “By all rights you should be dead. I pray we don’t make you wish otherwise . . .”

  The world around him blurred as time surged forward. He was poked and prodded. Scientists danced in patterns around him, trying to uncover his secrets. A golden aura radiated from his body after his stewards encouraged him to manifest his abilities. Each time, wild arcs of energy ripped from his hands to destroy targets hundreds of yards away. High-ranking Coalition observers stood speechless while others scrawled notes. Mencari felt only the familiar numbness of guilt.

  The surge of time subsided, and he found himself being escorted down a narrow corridor, to a dark end. There, a smiling Admiral Asten, his direct superior, greeted him and motioned to enter the pitch black room just beyond.

  “Welcome to your new home, Rhysus.”

  The world around him elongated and pulled away as a tingling covered his body.

  CHAPTER 1:

  Legacies

  Welcome to your new home, Rhysus.

  Rhysus Mencari awoke with a gasp, his lungs burned as if he’d run a marathon. Beads of sweat ran down his brow. He wiped the trickles away; the other hand felt the damp outline that ghosted his form in the sheets. Sudden pain shot across his forehead and he gripped his temples, trying to contain the throbbing.

  Just another dream. It’ll pass.

  After a few deep breaths, he opened his eyes. The nightmarish images had vanished, his panic receded. He looked around his cramped, dark quarters.

  No matter how much he wanted, this wasn’t a dream. Struggling out of bed, he meandered to the window to stare at a slow stream of pitted asteroids that floated lazily by. His weary mind fought for stimulation.

  Where is this?

  A derelict Coalition mining station.

  Associated cosmic body?

  Sarien Asteroid Belt.

  Coordinates?

  325 by 65 by 443 sector 82 omega.

  Nearest Coalition station?

  He hesitated, wishing a different question had come to mind. After the destruction of his deep-space platform, the Plutaran colony where he was born was the answer. This wasn’t going to work. There was no escaping his reality. The maroon-and-black uniform from his dream, neatly folded and sitting on the dresser beside him, furthered his torment.

  How long had it been since it all started? The probing, the tests, the observers? Four, maybe five years? He couldn’t remember anymore. He’d only been on this asteroid for a little while, a few weeks perhaps. Sometimes he thought that at any moment Anaka would stroll into the room and tell him it was all a delusion from an over-indulgent night of drinking. He fidgeted with the wedding band he still refused to let them take from him, the only vestige of his wife and son. None of this was part of the wonderful plan they had created together—their fine careers, their family, all the places they wanted to see together. No, she, and everything they had built together was gone. Destroyed.

  Instead I’m banished to a strip-mined rock floating on the fringe of Coalition space. Some home.

  But where else did he need to be, really? The family that gave him meaning, that defined home, was gone.

  Memories flooded his mind of the moment not long ago when Admiral Asten had entered his convalescent room to say, “Commander Mencari, this is Osuto.”

  The alien named Osuto looked human, although he wore an unusual full-length robe, plain, smooth, without features of any sort. His wrinkles made it hard to guess his age; Rhysus believed he was not much older than the Admiral, perhaps somewhere in his sixties. Though, something about the alien gave an air of ancients.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Rhysus,” Osuto had said. “The admiral has told me much about you—”

  Admiral Asten raised a hand. “Forgive me, but there’s little time. There’s been a change in plans, Rhysus. As of 2100 today, you’ll be leaving the station.” To the confusion in Mencari’s eyes, he sighed and added, “Priorities . . . have changed.”

  Then the admiral motioned to Osuto. “Don’t worry. You’re going to learn a lot from Mr. Osuto here. . .”

  * * * * *

  A tone sounded, drawing him from the window. Osuto’s voice, artificially cheerful, filled the air. “Good morning, Rhysus.”

  “G’mornin’,” he mumbled back. It was the best he could do.

  “When you’re ready, meet me in the control center and we’ll begin.”

  The admiral’s parting words rang through his mind. “Learn how to use your gifts. Give us a fighting chance against those bastards.”

  So he was going to train with Osuto here. And then?

  What he wanted to do was finish what he started before that attack. He and his colleague Scola had been fitting the Coalition ships with a device of Mencari’s own invention, scanners they hoped would be far more sensitive than what they previously had. Scenes from the last battle flashed through his mind, the invisible enemies decimating their fighters, half their mammoth space station reduced to debris.

  If only we’d had time to get the system working properly, to see where the bastards were hiding.

  Phased space. Who thought you could even do that? He hadn’t, until the new scanners had come online for the first time, and what came back looked like a blob of bad data. And then the anomaly began to move. In what now seemed like the blink of an eye, an entire phased fleet appeared and nearly wiped them out. How long had those aliens been watching?

  Now, Osuto was waiting. He looked at his new uniform that sat neatly folded on the room’s small bureau, its distinctive symbol on the shoulder: the letter “D,” broken at the middle with a sideways T-shape, and the entire letter surrounded with tiny planets. The image was faint, as though deliberately faded.

  Why did the Admiral make this sound so important when the Coalition all but abandoned him here on a godforsaken asteroid? There had to be something he didn't get, or perhaps wasn't being told. He needed to find out, and soon.

  A glance into the mirror above his dresser made him wish he hadn’t looked. Stress wrinkles aged his face; he looked haggard, felt like an ancient alien himself. He looked away, remembering the name Osuto had for those maraudin
g aliens.

  Nukari.

  As he carelessly lifted his new outfit, a corner of it brushed against a small picture frame propped up on the dresser, sending it tumbling to the floor. A shot of adrenaline surged as Rhysus watched it land with a sharp crack. His hands shook as he lifted the frame, his eyes locked on Anaka’s broken smile peering through the fractured glass. Her twisted image as a demon from his nightly torment invaded his mind. He tried to wall the nightmare away, but her scream filled his mind as he set the frame back on the dresser.

  The garment fit snugly as he donned it, accentuating his athletic frame. The material felt strange, unlike anything he’d worn before. Smooth and flexible, almost elastic, but strong.

  Glancing at the door, he knew he should’ve been at the control center by now. He picked up a crumpled scrap of paper from his dresser, reviewed the crude pencil sketch made in haste a few days earlier. The facility wasn’t that large, but held enough rooms and corridors to need a map. He tucked it into one of the jumpsuit’s pockets and headed for the lift, which still amazed him. Considering the mine’s age, the lift and the other technology he saw seemed incredibly modern. Everything shone with the gleam of fresh equipment just removed from packing crates, brightly polished, without a scratch anywhere to be seen.

  When he entered the control center, he saw Osuto juggling between a main console and surrounding monitors streaming with data. The room’s granite floor had the same symbol engraved on it as the one on his shoulder patch.

  He wondered, with bitter humor, what it was like to cling to a symbol that no longer held any meaning to him. In a moment of twisted irony, he found himself fidgeting again with his own wedding ring.