4: The Taloned Sire

By Dante D'Anthony

"The refugees moved into the Sagittarius Spiral Arm in a disbelieving shock. Betrayed, starving, alone; middle-aged bankers and college kids stared at worlds they did not make, and so began the slow and tedious work of wrestling from those worlds a way to move forward.
Children torn from ordinary family life and suddenly beset with Herculean tasks. Artists and construction workers, teachers and clerks, waiters and soldiers-all cast into strange scenarios where they were to begin again under the most daunting of circumstances. It was their defining moment when robbed of their birth rights and dispossessed of their homes, they found they were a right unto themselves and not the confine of a particular space. Their home but anywhere their feet would set. They became as platinum in their dogged will to survive."

"The Marauders live at the core and worship the black hole at the center of the galaxy. That," he pointed in the direction of galactic center and Vince's faceplate ran through several imaging programs, "massive antimatter plume that shoots up from the center, that's their god, of sorts.
"Nobody really knows, they don't make converts, they make sacrifices. Me, I think the Predecessors traveled through the event horizon at the center to some other universe. But I'll never follow to find out. Ha. Ha ha!"
Vince had seen the plume when he first went into the Taloned Sire's sensory array. It was beautiful, a simple jet stream stretching for light years. It was the first thing he learned about in the piloting tapes. The plume; it functioned as the great navigational beacon of the galaxy.
Such piloting courses leave out the details of Marauders, however. There should be an addendum: Sociopathic Raider Cultures presenting travel risks.They moved through the gloomy ship searching for Predecessor Booty.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dante D'Anthony
• Release date: Jul 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301820603

Dante D'Anthony

From South Buffalo New York. Producer, writer, artist. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4873327/Currently heading up the launch of the “Pandoran Age Chronicles” franchise and the “Magnificent Raiders of Dimension War 1” feature film. D’Anthony has worked in Finance, NYSE Licensed broker with AG Edwards. He has worked in Commercial finance and project development in Miami with $70M in assets under management as the personal assistant to the owners at DCA International Real Estate and several high end Design, Architectural, and Development firms working on numbers of projects from conception through all aspects of Design Development, Financing, and Project management. In 2003 he won the Florida Communities Trust Grant ($6M) with his designs for parks in Southwest Ranches Florida. He has owned and managed two art publishing companies that have published art on clothing with national retailer accounts while maintaining ongoing bricks and mortar galleries. His current venture (a full animated studio launch) with a major Hollywood Producer involved includes a complete matrix of a feature film and merchandising franchise and a full console video game. Education: Undergraduate work at SUNY Buffalo, across from the venerable Albright Knox, Bachelor of Science in Design 1985 with a Concentration in Urban & Environmental Design. Included were seminars in Urban Planning and Design, and studios Interior Des, minor in Art History. At FIU in Miami graduate level Coursework in Fine Art & Special Education (continuing certification for Florida Department of Education) included figure drawing studies under the noted Richard Duncan. Additional Graduate Work in Architecture, Florida Atlantic University School of Architecture. NYSE Series 7 broker License, A.G. Edwards And Associates. U.S. Army reserves Corporal.

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The Taloned Sire

The Pandoran Age Chronicles 4:

Dante D’Anthony

Copyright © 2013 Dante D’Anthony

SMASHWORDS EDITION

For Rosemarie

And Francesca

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Prelude, New Galen System Ruins

Flight 107-9 to New Procyon

The Crash Trail

All the King’s men

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to acknowledge Rosemarie Campbell.

–Dante D’Anthony

New Galen System Ruins.

Archaeological Expedition flight log: Star Yacht Lord Kesey.

Crew members:

Winteroud Sole, Android E Gibbon

Approaching the ruins once again, the old foreboding and the old compulsion and longing to resolve its mysteries are twixt. Now the hum of the Lord Kesey soothes me and I feel again its precious memories-the Princess still echoes here and imagine I can smell her perfume. My android E Gibbon seems to know me as I know myself.

New Galen looms with its billions of tales, all clamoring at my mind to be heard, to be remembered. To correct the lies, the revisionist history and the horrid, brutal spin the Imperials have foisted on the Modern mind regarding the eras past, the Arcturian Colonials, the wars, and the nature of life. I find myself draw to my own words wondering if they could have been more elegant, more poignant-more of an indictment rather than a mild history of curious ancient colonies…

The Arcturian Colonials defined the aspects of their era more clearly than any of the galaxy's other societies to that point; optimism, technology, and benevolent order. It shone in their architecture, which soared, their economies, which roared, and their sense of life with its easy freedoms.

They achieved it without the all-encompassing grip of the Imperials and their Transhuman Overlords, the continual strife of the Oligarchies and Kingdoms, or the horrific mysticism of the Marauder Cult at the galactic core.

Like a society of Ayn Rand characters, their achievements now seem the stuff of mythological greatness, and it is hard to remember they were mere mortals such as ourselves.

Whether it be the incursions of the dark-matter beings from hyperspace, the resurgence of the ancient aliens, or the ravages of the pirate kingdoms and the mystery cults, we now live in a dark time, with Pandora's jar having been unsealed and its evils- death, disease, famine, war-streaming out upon mankind like hyper bogie banshees.

We may ask, How did we get here? Again, it is the Arcturian Colonials that step on to the galactic stage…

-Winteroud Sole The Arcturian Colonials, Objectivism in stone and Steel.

Winteroud shook it off and glared at the burnt vestiges of the city. There was no one there. His awful empathic, psychic sense howled unmercifully through his mind a fluttering moth of an echo. He retched with it again in a painful involuntary outcry. Impressions assailed him again and again; lives of people who had lived here, like echoes on a holoscreen speaking unfinished phrases time, and again. Put the damn case in the suspensor field, Sasha-I need to get this heart tissue reworked or I’ll be flat on my-Mommy said I could get some sherbert-Hey Sundar, what’s with all the traffic coming out of the Gate-Hells bells, we’re taking fire! He steadied his resolve. Their faces flashed before him, reliving the moments of the attack on the city with a gruesome realism as if they were reachingout to him.

He saw searing blood and fury, fire and windstorm.

A woman lunges toward him desperate, What is going on? she howls.

I am a scientist, he whispers to himself, looking to his recording android for solace. The android is astute enough to perceive Winteroud's anxiety at the visions in the ruins.

The star port towers like a crowd of stainless steel skeletons, witnesses to a crime of mass murder.

Rather grim, Sir. The chromium skinned android offers coolly.

Through a broken plate glass window, Winteroud sees a pile of skeletons. Then they are people huddling together, survivors from the attack- What really happened here? Sole barked angrily. The people look at him, then they are bones again.

Even his droid understood the hyperbole. We shall be the first to chronicle that assessment, it said in dry consolation.

The official history had many holes. Sole's psychic visions plumbed the quantum echoes. They made no spin for the mysteries-they revealed. What was, was. They began down the other side of the ridge, toward the charcoal and seared hulks of the ruins. Winteroud Sole, Historian and Empath, girded his belly with courage. His android, E. Gibbon, cataloguing each moment they stepped in the hellish ruins, was sensing a new awareness forming in his sentience-a profound sense of pity for those extinguished here so long ago.

Winteroud could hear raindrops splashing were none fell, It was raining here that morning…

Steve Moore

New Galen,

Arcturian Free Colonies, 3197.

Morning dawned lazy, gray, and rainy at the starport as Dylan tossed himself into a window seat and ran sleepy fingers through his hair. He watched the star liners taxi back and forth along the runway. It was just another flight among hundreds...flight 107-9, to be precise. The Rip Van Winkle. Bound Out space for the Sagittarius Arm of the galaxy and the frontier.

All night the big space shuttles had dropped passengers onto New Galen from the orbital Gateway. The passengers moved by the thousands mostly home to the cities and farms of the colony. Dylan's flight plan, however, headed outbound.

He glanced at a couple of stewardesses in pastel, shiny, revealing outfits. They were two beauties animatedly talking politics while floating bots made coffee.

A tall blonde-haired woman with a Slavic look chirped, Vina, since the Transhuman’s diplomatic meeting at Arcturus the whole schedule of the airline is turned upside down. My home bot has been feeding my cat all week because I can’t get back. Fefe hates the home bot.

Her companion, a perfectly formed brunette, replied, Maybe the cat knows something we don't, aye? Metal-heads! They absolutely will not be happy until they have a star gateway into every system, and a database on every economy. They just can't bear the thought of us ordinary humans having any freedom of our own!

Dylan chuckled to himself; galactic civilization interferes with cat feedings. He read the hologram graphics glittering over the terminal in a repeating pattern of faux neon and a glittering star field: New Galen Star Port, Gateway to the Galaxy! He thought to himself, just another flight.

He stared out the oblong porthole near his seat. A break in the clouds afforded him a view of the sky. Even at the first gleam of early morn, he could see the glow and ring of the Gateway orbiting New Galen. It was huge, a quarter as large again as the planet it orbited. Dozens of Stations drifted around it; they were smaller rings and sparkling lights. If one looked closely, massive star liners were discernible, appearing as from nothing through the gateway. Having traversed light years in moments, they reached the borders of one civilization and stepped in to another.

He peered at the mighty gateway sardonically, Stellar Gateways. More control. He grumbled, and thumbed a small hologram tape of a lecture from university. The hologram of his professor appeared, small but stalwart and colorfully robed. "Since the Gateways have been created they have been both a marvel and a curse. They are a marvel of technology, a curse of political contention. Plethoras of governments have been established throughout nearly a quarter of the galaxy since the advent of hyperdrives, yet only two truly matter. Firstly, the Cyborgian Central Command Economies-CCCE.

‘Mankind’s oldest civilization, CCCE is centered around Earth with their capital world at Deneb 4. Secondly, the Arcturian Republics: a few dozen worlds and worldlets, with their Capital at Arcturus Prime.

‘The Arcturians have full of control access to further settlement along the Sagittarius arm of the galaxy. They want no more Gateways built there by the CCCE. They believed future Gateways would simply insure Cyborgian control over trade, which they maintain should remain the prerogative of every people."

Dylan swiped his hand mockingly through the hologram, Smack, of course it should!

Roy Rudder

The hologram professor continued, The controversy has seen numerous incidents of violence with star fighters taking nips at each other in obscure corners of the star systems.

Dylan clicked the Prof off.

Dylan was simply glad he had not been drafted into the air corps to patrol the lonely orbits of forlorn globes. He looked again at the gateway glimmering in the sky as darker clouds moved in with more rain.

Gateway to the Galaxy! He parroted one of their recent holo commercials that had been playing all week on the serials. However, it was the last gateway from which a starship could instantaneously shuttle from system to system. Outward from here, the starships flew on their own power, unmonitored and out of the Cyborgian canal.

Such is the manner in which most pilots truly liked to fly; freely.

A fortyish businessman, unusually chipper, bounced down the aisle looking for his seat.

No God, anyone but chipper man Dylan grimaced.

The big pudgy face stopped near Dylan and smiled. Hi, I guess I got the seat next to you here, he said brightly.

Guess so. Dylan moved his jacket politely and forced a smile. He wanted to feel like a veteran of the skies but these business types flew all the time; so much for his sense of adventure.

Long haul to Wild Duck, eh? Chipper man offered.

You’re headed to the Wild Duck nebula? The frontier- Dylan’s sudden smile bloomed across his face. I didn't know they were civilized enough for business suits out there yet. He replied, trying to sound unimpressed. However, his eyes were scrutinizing Chipper man with more interest now. The frontier! Doing business, no less, he snickered to himself at the thought of chipper man moving brightly into a rugged mess of settlers.

Must have seen some real shenanigans out there?

The man shook his head affirmatively and replied, Hey, drop a few cargo tanks down and they start a city. It's only a matter of hours before somebody needs what somebody else has, and business is born.

Yeah, stands to reason. Dylan nodded his bottom lip pushing up importantly. Where you headed?

New Procyon University. Back to finish the term. Just ending spring vacation, you know, home and hearth. Back to the old discs. You know, Ivy and dusty quantum computers-rah-rah! Dylan said.

"Yes, I remember. Guess it is ever the same.