P R O L O G U E
holindrian returns

A shimmering light fell all around Holindrian, hoisting him high into the sky, his feet dangling beneath. First, he could see just the top of the palace as he rose through the dense black smoke. A little higher and he could see the city itself. Fires burning, consuming whole wards at a time. The sounds were muffled, but he knew there would be the clanging of swords, the whizzing of arrows, and the miserable, painful screams of wretched, dying souls. Higher, Holindrian continued to rise. Boats had sunken in the harbor. The fighting on the rocky hills surrounding the town seemed to have calmed. A haboob traveled in a northeasterly direction, a transitory wall of brown, choking death.

The light continued to shine. All the colors of the rainbow streamed down, carrying him up, up into the clouds. He was higher than the mountains! There seemed to be no limits to his ascent. The definitions, the contours, the distinctive features of the land blurred together. Muted, people vanished into minute dark specks, fields became strokes of green, the clouds white wisps overlaying the canvas. He could see the whole of the blue world from up here…. 

Holindrian stood alone in a hallway with concave walls of a featureless white. He could not be certain what the material was. It was surely not any metal familiar to him. Everything seemed pristine. Not a blemish or scuff mark to be found. Feeling his eyes wince, he thought the white of the walls too bright, beyond adept description by man. No marble stone or cloud or snowflake compared. They seemed to be pulsating. Flashes of an even more intense white coursed through their…veins? As though the walls were alive, as though this vessel were alive.

The ceiling was black. Not just black but the absence of all light, the deepest shade of black imaginable. It contrasted brilliantly with the sterile surfaces of the walls. The black was not uniform in its composition, but rather composed of discernible shades of navy and violet and…were those stars? Stars sparkled and glimmered, specks of diamonds in a cave of darkness. It was remarkable how similar the ceiling was to the night sky.

When he looked down, and saw that the floor mirrored the ceiling, Holindrian first thought his heart might permanently lodge itself in his throat. The feeling of panic dissipated quickly, as he reassured himself something solid and firm was indeed beneath his feet.

“His reaction was much like your own.”

Holindrian looked up. He recognized that voice. “Uilliam?”

Uilliam’s long hair fell more than halfway down his back, wavy and rigid as though carved from marble, an ethereal white bearing just the traces of its past golden color. His face narrow and accented by sharp features framed by dark eyebrows. The eyes though, those magnificent eyes, were like windows into the past as well as portals to the future. They were an electric blue, the pupil an orb of mystical energy. Holindrian could see it all, the whole of the history of Uilliam’s race encapsulated within those eyes.

The Before…the Aeternam’s eyes could not or would not reveal the secrets pertaining to the Before, though there were shadows, vague, indefinite figures standing on the edge of history…something or someone had knowledge of the Before, and they were out there, somewhere. Uilliam had met them. 

What could be seen was the ending that gave rise to humanity’s beginning. Space and time emerged from oblivion, a singular fixed point of eternity. There was no sound; it had not yet been invented. There was light of untold intensity, rings of magenta and sapphire clouds that swirled, intermingling, mixing. Then came flashes, all different shades of reds, oranges, yellows, and blues, rippling throughout the nebulous clouds like the pattering of rain on a pond. A wave of warm, tender, and loving heat washed over him. Holindrian could feel the fiery heat as birthing contractions on a boundless scale shuttled the first generation of galaxies into existence, infusing them with life, spiraling engines of genesis. Ah! There was the sound. It had finally caught up. It came as a rushing roar, a wind sweeping through streets and between buildings just as it would through ageless trees and over sky-kissing mountains.

C H A P T E R  6
where few have gone before

At the urging of the Arx and Anchorage One, President Rein has rejected a proposal made by the Drazenbor head of state to permit a Drazenbor and Sarii Olgan expeditionary force to deploy with the Republican fleet. In a statement released by opposition leader Benjamin Riskaar, Riskaar praised the president’s commitment to defending Republican national security interests. President Rein is permitting a small number of Drazenbor and Sarii Olgan advisors to travel with the fleet. –The Daily Martian 

Three minutes later.

A rapidly spinning ball of plasma made full contact with the bridge and splashed against the shields the way a wave does on a rock. Lights shattered, spitting shards of glass like shrapnel. Sparks rained down, conduits sputtering. The domed light directly above Agathon and Commander Coden groaned seconds before it fell, forcing the two men to leap from their seats. Consoles overloaded. Some screens erupted in gibberish; others faded to black. A girder came loose, swinging down. It flung Lieutenant Kyo to the floor, and his face pressed hard into the grated deck plating.

When the shaking stopped and the fires extinguished, the bridge lay in shambles. Wires, cords, and bundles of cables drooped down, hanging in massive, tangled streams pooling on the floor. With the air filtration systems inoperative, the smoke had nowhere to go, choking all but Vidya, burning their lungs and scorching their eyes. Every face and hand had a scratch on it. Blood trickling from nastier wounds. Uniforms were blackened, burned, and frayed at the seams.

Pushing himself off the floor, Captain Agathon brushed his wavy hair out of his face. Swishing saliva around in his mouth, he tasted blood. Glancing down, he saw dozens of tiny burning holes on the right sleeve of his jacket.

“Medical team to the bridge,” he said somberly, extending over the wrecked dome light to reach the handset.

Vidya alone looked to be untouched by the damage. “Initializing emergency lights. Dorsal shields at 20 percent.”

Commander Coden got up, dusting the metal shavings out of his hair, then tried to pry open a door and vent the smoke strangling them. Lieutenant Colby was slumped over the navigation console, arms draped over the front, a substantial piece of glass jutting out of her side, likely piercing a kidney. Kyo lay on the floor motionless, his head cocked at an impossible angle.

The Morpheus and Hope had been destroyed the instant they exited the wormhole. Agathon couldn’t imagine there was anything left. Captain Haakon and the Challenger were listing and without power; a number of hull breaches had ejected most of the crew into space. The frigate Buran was a tough, old ship and still in the fight despite the gaping hole that had punched clean through. Captain Hale and the Apollo were lining up with the nearest attacker, bow trained on what they assumed to be the command-and-control center. 

“What is she doing?” Agathon muttered, wincing as he noticed the pain shooting up his arm.

His wrist was broken.

“Hale! Hale, what are you doing?” he shouted into the receiver.

Vidya’s commentary was crucial: “Captain, Apollo’s reactor is critical! They’re losing containment!” 

Agathon looked past Vidya. An arc of fire ripped through the Apollo’s hull from the inside out. Another and another lacerated the ship, the metal rippling as secondary explosions sent bubbles of fire into the vacuum.

“I’m detecting lifeboat transponders,” Vidya said. “They’re abandoning ship.”

“Captain Hale, please respond!”

His pleas were met only with static. Then the Apollo accelerated, hurling itself into the alien ship. The ensuing supernova obliterated both vessels.

Hull panels were streaking off the Solitude like comets, cones of fire and smoke trailing behind. Silver Arrow fighters vaporized by beams shot from the attacker’s central sphere, several at a time, reduced to ash. Slicing through space, the gimbaled wing spun around as the alien ship made its attack run, lobbing miniature suns at the Solitude. The keel arched high upon impact.

“Her back…it’s broken,” Agathon gaped.

The Buran jockeyed alongside the Banterra, firing forward missiles and gun batteries. The Albatross was long since gone. Under orders from Ekwueme, the supply ship that had followed them made for interstellar space. Whether they had been pursued, Agathon did not know.

The color in Vidya’s face drained. “Oh no,” she bemoaned and heaved the bulk of the ship hard to port.

One of the Buran’s warp coil nacelles was hewn clean off and tumbling toward them. Striking the starboard ventral section, and the Banterra lurched forward. Spinning, about its axis, and no one saw the flames engulfing the frigate as it broke apart. Knocked off his feet, Agathon soared, slamming into the consoles at the base of the observation window. A siren blared, red lights flashing, the centrifugal forces plastering the crew against bulkheads. Stretching out her arms, Vidya looked like she was trying to brace herself, as if she too were bound to fly about the bridge. Firing the maneuvering thrusters, she slowed the ship and brought them about.