The Seeds of Stars
By L. Salt
The
life doesn’t promise to be joyful for a “Chernobyl child” born straight after
the nuclear disaster. True…but not for such an adventurer, adrenaline junkie,
and popular extreme sports’ blogger like Yuliy Kobrin, aka Kobra. Adopted by a
British couple, Kobra spends his life in urban exploring and travels.Skiing in
the Scottish Highlands, Kobra meets a young German couple, Edel Baum and Kira
Schneider. The new friends invite him to their luxurious house, where Kobra’s
attention is drawn to Edel’s collection of World War II antiques and a
mysterious Yugoslavian file which the couple asks to translate for them. The
file reveals classified underwater facilities from the Cold War times, hidden
deeply into the Kotor Bay of Montenegro. Yuliy can’t miss an opportunity for
such a discovery.
Six
months earlier, a prominent scientist died in his apartment in central Berlin.
The authorities believe it was a heart attack, but a police officer, Trina
Stahl, thinks this case is far more dangerous and complicated.
All
hell breaks loose for Kobra, when he comes under attack in the Kotor Bay, when
he realises his new German friends are not who they say they are, and his life
now is of an interest for many parties. From Montenegro to Scotland, from
Berlin to the Isle of Skye—Kobra is on the hunt for a mysterious alien object,
the Seeds of Stars, but also for the truth about his own past.
Excerpt
He
made a circle around the deck. ‘The structure is still excessively strong.’ He
touched the rigging. ‘No serious corrosion as such.’
‘Told
you, she looks good for her age.’ Edel winked, inviting him to the bridge. ‘Even
the gun’s turret is still spinning.’ He had pulled a couple of metal switches
on the control panel, and the turret turned slightly to the left, to the right,
and stopped in its original position.
‘Cool!’
Kobra observed the control panel. His attention was attracted by the radio.
‘Does it work?’
‘It
does now.’ Edel nodded proudly. ‘I spent a few days last week trying to fix it,
but in the end…’
Without
any further explanations, he switched it on, and his companion could hear a
distinctive crackling of the old-fashioned communication device.
‘Amazing.’
Kobra still couldn’t believe his eyes and ears. Once again, a long-forgotten
and abandoned piece of history had gained a new life. ‘So, what’s the problem
with the engine? If everything else is in such a good working condition, then…’
‘I
don’t know.’ Edel just shrugged. ‘That’s what surprised me as well. The surplus
company looked after the boat, but didn’t bother to fix the main thing—her
engine. To be honest, I’m not very good with mechanics.’ He sounded almost
apologetic. ‘Electronics, hardware, software…yes, please. They’re my area of
expertise, but mechanics…’
‘That’s
probably why they’ve sold the boat so cheap,’ Kira entered their conversation,
descending from the deck. ‘The sun is coming out and the sky looks much
clearer,’ she added. ‘It seems like the storm has passed by.’
‘Great.’
Edel clapped his hands. ‘It would be good to start the boat.’ He shot Kobra a
pleading look.
‘Ah,
okay.’ Yuliy smiled, understanding his hint. ‘I’ll try my best.’
After
Edel gave him some special rubber gloves and opened the engine’s compartment,
Kobra started his observation.
‘All
parts look alright, not even as corroded as I expected them to be.’ He checked
a couple of pipes and cogs.
‘I’ve
tried to clean and oil as many bits as I could.’ Edel moved closer to him.
‘And
the fuel tank?’ Kobra continued his examination, trying to open the tank. ‘Was
it empty? Or was it some old fuel left in it? Have you tried to change it?’
‘I
put some new fuel in it, but…’ Edel had started, but Kobra interrupted him.
‘Wait
a minute. It seems like…’ He stretched his hands into the oily darkness of the
tank. ‘Something big is in there.’
‘What?’
the couple asked in chorus.
‘Maybe
some kind of debris?’ Kira suggested.
‘No,
it’s soft.’ Kobra’s hand kept on pulling something that felt like a roll. ‘It’s
a…It’s a…’
He
made the last final attempt and, spilling leftover fuel everywhere, pulled out
a sealed, rolled plastic package.
‘What
is this?’ Edel stared at Kobra’s finding in disbelief. ‘And what on Earth it’s
doing in the fuel tank?’
‘Somebody
tried to hide something extremely important here.’ His fiancée nodded to the
parcel.
‘What
are we waiting for? Let’s open it,’ Kobra suggested, wiping the package
off and removing his gloves.
It looked like a journal with a few dozen of
album-size pages banded together in one plump file. Most of the pages were
yellow and rough, faded away, but the text, formulae, graphics, and pictures
were still in a readable condition.
‘Sovershenno sekretno,’ Kobra read the
square stamp on the top of the file’s cover.
‘Is
it in Russian?’ Edel frowned.
‘Well,
yeah. It translates to top secret.’
Kobra was looking through the pages.
‘Do
you understand the rest of it?’ Kira moved closer.
‘I
can try to read the whole document, but…’ He started unsurely.
‘Why
are Russian classified documents hidden in the fuel tank of the Yugoslavian
coastguard boat?’ Edel mumbled more to himself.
‘Don’t
forget Yugoslavia was Soviet in those days. Russian was one of its official languages.’
Kobra raised his amber eyes from the file.
‘Besides,
this package might be written by Russians.’ Kira supported his guess.
‘So,
what does it say?’ Her fiancé shifted on his feet impatiently.
‘It
looks like it describes some kind of research which was carried out in some
secret facilities in a place
called, ehm…the Boka Kotorska Bay.’
‘Where
exactly is it?’ Kira asked.
‘Let
me Google it.’ Edel pulled his iPhone out of the pocket. ‘The Boka
Kotorska Bay or the Bay of
Kotor
is the name of the winding bay of the Adriatic Sea in south-western Montenegro,’ he read the first line of the
Wikipedia page.
‘It makes perfect sense.’ Kobra nodded.
‘You’ve told me you bought this vessel from Montenegro.’
‘We need to know more about this boat,
her previous owner, and how it happened that the surplus company hasn’t
discovered these documents,’ Kobra
suggested.
‘As for the company, most likely, these
guys buy stuff in bulk,’ Edel tried to
find a reasonable explanation. ‘Let’s say, they’ve bought three or even four
such kind of boats. Three of them worked alright. So they sold them quickly.
This one might’ve been waiting to be sold for years, languishing in a dry dock
or a warehouse.’
‘Most
of the documents are dated 1975,’ Kira commented.
‘Look,’ Edel pointed to the pictures of photos. ‘These look
like photos of a landscape as if they’ve been made from a plane or a drone.’
‘Somebody
spied on this place in the Kotor Bay,’ Kobra summed up.
‘Whoever it was, he or she knew Russian or worked for Russians, or
both. The spy or spies wanted to come back for this package, but clearly, they
failed.’
Pick
up your copy of
The Seeds of Stars
L.
Salt
L.
Salt is a multi-genre author from the United Kingdom. She studied History of
World Culture and earned her Master’s Degree in Art Expertise at the St.
Petersburg University of Culture and Arts. Born in Belarus, she lived for many
years in Ukraine and Russia and, eventually, settled in the North of England,
where she currently lives with her husband. Salt’s interest in writing dates
back to her teenage years. Apart from creative writing, she has a passion for
traveling, arts, history, and foreign languages.
Her
debut novella, His Personal Reich was
released in April 2018 by Crazy Ink Publishing. It will also be featured in the
boxed set Chills and Thrills in May
2019. Her second novella, a thriller/mystery story Legacy of the Iron Eagle, released in February 2019. She is the
author of the Off the Ways Series
including The Ways We Follow (Book One)
and Angels of Zion (Book Two). Her
short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies, including the Crazy Ink
Publishing anthologies Royal Scoundrels and
Beyond Wonderland, as well as
magazines, both online, and in print. Another of her suspenseful stories, The Seeds of Stars, will release in December.
Connect with L. Salt: Blog • Amazon • Twitter • Facebook Page • Facebook Group • Pinterest • Linkedin • Goodreads • AllAuthor.
Thank you for your support with my new release:))
ReplyDelete