Proteus - New Horizons (Book Nine)

By Alexander Nassau

"Time is running out as Razon forces his captors to finish his ultimate weapon, the dreadnought class Harbinger, a weapon designed to face the might of the Avorans which is now being perverted to his own cause of ruling the Apeyron Empire and restoring its glory for himself.
With the Proteus fleet desperately searching the galaxy for Razon and the Emperor, things are not progressing well. With Emperor Tath now reluctantly leading his people it seems something is rotten at the heart of the Apeyron Senate, dark forces trying to subvert our friends efforts to find Razon. Slowly piecing together the true power of Razon's new weapon it becomes clear our friends are outclassed, facing an uncertain future. Tath amasses a fearsome fleet bringing all the Proteus family together to finally put an end to this war criminals madness and rescue his father from Razon's clutches.
As the final battle approaches the future is uncertain and Beletrix faces annihilation. Will our friend be able to succeed as they face the raw power of a planet killer?"

In this epic conclusion to the Natural Selection saga, New Horizons follow the young ships as they are forced to grow up rapidly, their new friend and their home facing the gravest threat to date as General Razon, now in the possession of the Harbinger, a monstrous ship designed to face the might of the Avorans, is hell bent on ending all threats to the Empire and claiming his throne. Fast paced and action packed, New Horizons takes you on a journey as the whole Proteus family pull together to ensure the safety of everything they hold dear, but do they possess the power to actually defeat this planet killer?
Also included is another Proteus Unhinged Mini Story, The Secrets of Alphius Prime.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alexander Nassau
• Release date: Feb 24, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370167661

Alexander Nassau

November News: I know it has been a while and this is probably a surprise, but I have finally released a new book. Alphius Prime - Of Beasts and Monsters is an epic fantasy style book set on the world of Alphius Prime more familiar with my fans for being in Symbiotica and Proteus. Set in a medieval world you follow the epic journey of Echo Sana and her rather unusual family she was adopted by... unusual in that they are Kinar Beasts. There is a free preview to be had, so take a look and I hope you enjoy! I am pleased to see that I am currently rated as a 4.5 out of 5.0 Author on Good Reads. Thank you to those who took the time! It is really good to see the appreciation my fans have and that does spur me on to do even better for you! If you have any questions I am on Good Reads so throw me your thoughts and I will be happy to answer! Thanks for reading! _________________________ Finally, I am very pleased to say I actually produced a proper website and blog. Covering all my titles, with artwork, sneak peaks and so much more, it is the best place to find out exactly what I am up to and what books are coming soon. Like me on facebook now too! The link is easy enough to find on the page. Enjoy your reads! Alexander Nassau is an established science fiction author and artist with many well known mainstream works to his name, best known for his detailed and strong character driven stories. With a keen scientific mind and a strong attention to detail, he also is a commercial artist with a strong creative drive. Living in the UK, he spends his down time with his family and has something of a passion for classic Volkswagens.

Book preview

Proteus - New Horizons

The ninth book in the Proteus Series

and the final part of the Natural Selection Saga

First Edition

Copyright © 2017 / 2018 Alexander Nassau

Published by Alexander Nassau at Smashwords

ISBN: 9781370167661

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

"For Amanda.

Sometimes family is a word that people forget the meaning of. The true meaning of family is they are always there for you when you need them the most. Thank you for reminding me of that fact."

See More from the Author on my Blog

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Previously

Prologue

Chapter One - Tension in the Air

Chapter Two - Suspicions

Chapter Three - A Different Path

Chapter Four - The Lost Station

Chapter Five - Dreadnought

Chapter Six - The Last Stand

Chapter Seven - Broken

Chapter Eight - New Beginnings

Chapter Nine - Journey's End

Chapter Ten - Reflections in the Water

Epilogue

Preview of Symbiotica - Spectres of our Pasts

Preview of Proteus - Serendipity

Proteus Unhinged - The Secrets of Alphius Prime

More Books from the Author

A New Dimension - Who on Earth is Sarah Ash?

Authors Retrospective - The Strongest Survive

About the Author

PREVIOUSLY

Look up in to the night sky, there is more out there than you could imagine, worlds of creatures so familiar and so strange it would leave you in awe and wonder. Stranger still is that our own world is secretly part of that community, even if most of the population are oblivious to the fact.

On one particular world called Beletrix lives a race of creatures hard to understand. They are a joined race, a partnership of a host and a symbiote. Where life gets more unusual is that the hosts are not all the same species. While their native hosts are a race of nine feet tall aliens called Usha, there are some who have bonded to humans.

Beletrix while being their home world is not where they came from. That world was Alphius Prime, a world where the native life faced the terrible fate to burn in fire. It was this reason the population tried to escape building great ships to flee the demise of their home.

These were not ships like any you could imagine. They were living creatures designed to save their people. While each ship is an individual life in its own right, they share the family name, the classification given to them by their creators.

They are the Proteus class of starship, but things did not go as planned.

It was believed that only the eldest sister and the smallest of the fleet, a quirky ship called Koli managed to escape and searched the stars for three hundred years until she found Earth, a world where a small number of the indigenous intelligent life was capable of bonding with the ten survivors.

The truth was though that the flagship of the main evacuation fleet, Terrik barely survived, limping to safe harbour where she stayed for three hundred years, damaged and dying until her sister returned for her, answering her distress call and rescuing the survivors. As dust of that mission cleared came a new revelation. On the surface of Alphius Prime were the remains of two of the giant Titans, but to their surprise one, beyond belief may have escaped her fate. The survivors planned to build Terrik a new body, an improved version of her original design, but as usual things never go to plan. They ended up with twins as little Lunar arrived to join their family. With these two new ships, relationships on Earth deteriorating, they decide revisit a world Koli's crew had settled on for a time only to realise their automated construction drones had been rather busy.

That world was Beletrix, and they arrived to find the ghost city of Verlon.

At this point you are probably thinking they did a lot, and you would be right. You could easily write several whole books on the subject, if not more.

However, there was one major point missing. What happened to the lost Titan and in a way that is where the story of Proteus starts, on a dark world far distant.

Unexpectedly the survivors on Earth found themselves with a shocking revelation as an utterly unknown ship arrives, a young second generation Proteus class vessel called Saya, carrying a familiar crew and her pilot, Zenni Quinett.

The former pilot of the Titan class Miras had returned on a mission to rescue the crew of Terrik, even if she was a little late however she brought the news of the fate of Miras and the twelve thousand survivors she carried and a desperate plea for help. The surprises didn't stop there as she tells the story of Neo Alphius, a world they had settled on only to fall victims to a parasitic plague that afflicted their people reducing them to creatures they had called Necrotites, monsters that were their own people, trapped in a living hell. Perhaps the greatest revelation of all was Saya's origins. She was a naturally conceived and born, a life far surpassing the artificially created Proteus ships.

A rescue plan was formulated to not only cure those afflicted by the plague, but also rescue Saya's mother, Miras. Cutting this quite long story short, they succeeded making new friends along the way and having breathed life back in to Verlon city on Beletrix, Zenni, Miras and Saya finally got the opportunity to rest in the safety of their new home.

That is until fate intervened once more that is. During a mission to find new life out in the depths of our galaxy, Lunar was attacked by a terrible new foe, the Apeyron.

This is another very long story, but to cut this short the Apeyron were defeated, war halted before it could begin. For Zenni, Saya and her brave friends, they managed to survive, but the costs of this disastrous encounter had left its mark on both sides.

For our friends they mourn the loss of the baby of the fleet, little Lunar, while for the Apeyron the news is bleak, their home world has twenty years left before it is destroyed by a cosmic cataclysm, but thanks to their new friends there is hope. The Seleke Council proposed a new Empire for them based on change and harmony, a necessary evolution of their race in order for them to survive. The plan is to find three new worlds where they will build a new Empire and with the first of these worlds now found they are starting the long road to rebuilding their proud Empire.

Things in the Galaxy are returning to normal, unless you are of course on the world called Beletrix where normal rarely happens.

Much to everyone's surprise Lunar returns from the dead, the youngest of the Proteus ships having hidden her conscious mind in the Beletrix network, escaping her fate. She created herself a new body in the Seltus shipyards and with everyone's help she is now restored. However, not everything is quite so straight forward.

The shipyards, without input from the development team has had some unexpected arrivals. Four new ships were created and they were nothing like anyone had imagined. With the Proteus fleet almost doubling in size overnight, these new youngster are entering a complex and strange world trying to learn about their environment and the people they will in time call their friends.

What should have been a quiet time for the youngster has taken a serious twist as the Apeyron Emperor travels to Artaris, the new home world chosen for the Apeyron people only for his ships to be ambushed by forces loyal to the traitor and renegade, General Razon. Tath, the young outcast knows the truth though. He is Emperor Takal's and Empress Sayella's son and he is bent on saving his parents after Beletrix receives their distress call. In a shocking move, he bonds with Qidgee, the smallest and fastest of the young ships setting off on a daring rescue mission. It does not take long for Qidgee's little rebellion to grow in to a more serious problem as Norcee, Hataka and Cenya break ranks disobeying the Grand Council's orders and heading after their errant sister. They survive only thanks to Miras and Saya's intervention, although the fallout from their act is still being felt.

With the Emperor in the hands of General Razon, it falls to Tath to reluctantly take his place as Emperor, holding the reins of power over his people as he vows to bring Razon to justice.

Meanwhile what should have been a working vacation on Earth for Koli, Terrik and Lunar also took a darker turn as they ended up travelling to a place Koli had been told never to go to, the Avoran system. Helping the Earth ship Aurora, they managed to rescue the five stranded Avoran ships, returning them to Earth and in to the care of the Olympus Initiative. While the new ships are in a sorry state, they have given Earth the ability to reach for the stars and a way to defend itself.

Our heroes have no clue what awaits them, hidden in a dark place a station where a monster is coming to life, a super weapon that will assure Razon's dominion over his own people, and that will crush his enemies.

The Harbinger is nearly operational and it will spell the end of everything if Razon has his way.

PROLOGUE

Walking in to the hospital room this was all starting to become too familiar to Sellie. She had developed a sense of familiarity with the hospital in New Oxford, her weekly visits to see Sarah always in the back of her mind. It was strange where life took you and Commissioner Henderson had been right. For so long she had been stood at the crossroad in her life, pondering which paths were before her. The path had chosen her though.

Looking over to Sarah, her body motionless in the bed, this was a different hospital than the one in New Oxford, the technology quite literately alien, but this was a chance for her best friend to find her way back, if... she would find her way back.

I can't help thinking that life for me has been a series of meandering steps, each one blindly leading me forward to what was my destiny, she sighed sitting down at the side of her bed, her hand as always slipping in to Sarah's fingers. For us both it started at the Police Academy where we first met and I found the best friend I never knew. All that work and training and before we knew it we were starting our first day in the New Oxford City Police department, that promise we made to each other to become the youngest detectives on the force. Looking back on those early days it was fun, a grand adventure and now as I realise it was nothing more than a childish game to us both.

She squeezed Sarah's hand, looking at her, the only sign of movement the rhythmical rise and fall of her chest as she contemplated the journey she had taken.

It didn't take long for us both to see the world for what it was, our innocent game being stripped away until we were left in darkness, fighting each day to cling on to a sense of normality, each day failing just a little more. I think it was harder on me and you saw it, that hopelessness in my eyes as we fought that senseless war. What had been fun for us both took a darker turn and while I spent far too long questioning everything, you did what most officers do when the world becomes dark. You turned to booze to drown your demons. We continued on though and then one day I caught a first glimpse in to a new world on the case that would change both our lives, my first contact with Symbitek Global and the strangeness that surrounded them. After that case I was at rock bottom and you saw it. You told me about the Wyvern Sheriff's position and gave me a little hope of a fresh direction. Little did I realise that case had a sting in its tail and two weeks later you were on life support, a bullet in the brain as a petty act of vengeance for our efforts to keep the streets of the city safe from scum.

She paused, taking a breath as she looked at Sarah, no sign on her now of the terrible crime that had been forced on her. She just looked to be resting peacefully.

You never even got to see those swine's go to jail. We put two of their gang away, they took you from the force. I didn't know what to do. My partner was in a coma fighting for her life and I was so lost, utterly disillusioned at the senseless grind of keeping the city safe. I applied for the Wyvern position, but I had little hope it would come off until Commissioner Henderson stepped in. I kind of feel bad as all I seemed to do was shout at him, but for reasons I still don't get he looked out for me and tried to help. Six months after you were shot I took over the Wyvern Sheriff's office, that sleepy town where nothing every happened and I was happy, or at least I thought I was.

She laughed to herself shaking her head as she thought back.

It only took one month in to the job for me to be dragged back in to a new kind of darkness with two unexplained death and what seemed to be a cover up. What I had imagined barely scratched the surface as I was dragged kicking and screaming in to Symbitek's weird world once more. I ended up travelling the galaxy trying to unravel a mystery with my new and odd friends. I saved thousands of lives in Northern California that day and rescued the survivors of a dead world. What was perhaps most shocking though was I made so many new friend that day, not in the least with a Kinar Beast called Fluffy. It was the kind of adventure you would have loved and for the first time in so long, I felt a sense of peace, that I had actually made a difference. Then I had been dumped back in Wyvern, the only thing to show for my adventures was a rebuilt Stationhouse, a small crystal that changed colour and a cybernetic arm that I couldn't tell anyone about. Suddenly everything in Wyvern seemed so small and dull as I looked back at what I had been through, but the silence of Wyvern was not going to last. Koli, that wonderful and odd little ship started showing up in Wyvern late at night wanting to be my deputy, something I loved to indulge. Then Ryal started emailing me almost every day, a new pen pal on a distant space station that I could talk to about anything. Life in Wyvern may have been boring, but my life was far from it. Somehow I had become part of a bigger and stranger family and things got better for me, until that day I came to see you and I learnt what the Department was about to do to you.

She tried not to get angry as her thought became far darker, Sarah oblivious of her bitterness.

They gave up on you. They said you were dying and all they could do was make you comfortable. I have had people betray me in the past, but they owed you the chance to get better. Probably the stupidest thing I ever did was abducting you from the hospital and cashing in a favour with my new friends, which is how you ended up here on Beletrix. Our so called friends in the department may have given up on you, but you are my best friend and I will always have your back. What I did improved your odds and even if it was going to take a long time, there was a chance you would wake up. The Commissioner was none too pleased with me, but as always he surprised me. I don't know why but he told me to not wait too long at this crossroad in life I was at and then he illuminated one of the paths before me. I really don't know if Commissioner Lofthouse sounds right and you would probably laugh yourself silly at the idea, but he saw that possible future for me. You know me though. I did what I always do. I procrastinated, little knowing that the clock was counting down and the path before me would choose me more than I chose it.

Letting go of Sarah's hand she stood up pouring herself a glass of water as she sat down again, taking a refreshing drink as she pieced everything together, looking to Sarah once more.

I thought Wyvern would go back to being quiet again, right up the moment the whole area started showing signs of volcanic activity and deep down I knew this was not right. A long story short Earth was facing a global catastrophe thanks to some alien devices that had reactivated. They all needed to be reset and without you at my side I stupidly volunteered for a mission to travel in to the heart of an active volcano. I met more new friends along the way, one of which decided to save my life after a piece of the ceiling in the magma chamber fell on me. I managed to wreck my cybernetic arm, and Tamu, bless him decided that he was not going to leave me to die and cut my trapped left arm off. I woke up just a few doors down from you with two new cybernetic arms and a whole raft of injuries they were treating which is how I ended up stuck here. Like you, the road back for me this time was rather more complicated and the work they were doing was going to take longer this time, so I ended up on Beletrix convalescing. Commissioner Henderson thinks I was injured during the crisis and the United Nations was dealing with my medical care. I talk to him every so often to let him know I am okay and check on Wyvern to ensure Jimmy has not done anything too stupid. I thought my life would eventually go back to normal and that sleepy town was waiting for me, but how little did I know I was never going back there, in an official capacity of course.

Taking another drink of the water she allowed herself a wry smile.

I have had my fair share of adventures here, but I made a new friend, one who would be lost without me now. The road I had been travelling had led to this point, and I did what I always do. I helped without question and gave myself to be part of something far larger than myself. I know I have told you before, but talking to you helps me. I bonded with one of the new Proteus ships and became both her pilot and her friend. Commissioner Henderson told me to find where I fitted in life, that place where I felt at peace and where I truly belonged. I found it, even if it was something I never imagined. You would love Norcee. She is so young at heart and loves authority and rules, but together we have formed a partnership that goes beyond either of us. I have her back, just like I have yours.

She jumped feeling a hand on her shoulder as she looked up to the young woman standing next to her almost surprised she hadn't sensed her, the awareness starting to wash over her as she realised just how focused she had been on Sarah.

How long have you been there?

Long enough for you to realise that the decision we made was the right one, Norcee replied giving her an affectionate smile, This is the friend who you brought to Beletrix, the one who is never far from your thoughts?

This is Sarah Ash, former detective in the New Oxford City police. She was my partner in the force, she replied mournfully.

I take it by partner, you do not mean in the same way we are connected? Norcee asked as she looked up at her taking in her features.

Norcee had decided that she would reconfigure her avatar to a more human appearance considering their own relationship. She was exceptionally pretty, although amusingly her appearance was more akin to a teenager than an adult, perhaps a subconscious reflection on her young age.

We worked to solve crimes and ensure we protected each other when we were on duty together. She was like a sister to me, my best friend, she sighed sadly, I didn't have her back though. I was called in to Court to give additional evidence on one of our cases. Sarah went out on duty and she was gunned down by some bad people wanting revenge on the police. She had a bullet lodged in her brain that was slowly killing her. The team here managed to remove it and nanotechnology is repairing the damaged areas of her brain, but she is still in a coma. I come here to talk to her, maybe see if I can help guide her back, she replied filling her young friend in.

I am not that sure Grandmother's love of your world is justified considering what you have just said, Norcee replied looking to Sarah, Although I know you and I have seen your heart, humans sound primitive and violent.

Grandmother? she asked laughing a little, Surely you don't mean Koli?

She was the first of our family. Without her none of us would have been brought in to this world and as I am the third generation of our family, that would make her the Grandmother of all Proteus Valkryia ships.

That manic wonderful little lunatic being called Grandmother is probably the most amusing thing I have ever heard, she replied laughing a little to herself as she sighed looking up to Norcee. As for humanity, don't be too hasty to judge. Our life protecting New Oxford meant every day would be spent dealing with the worst of humanity, but only a tiny percentage of humans are actually like that. We protected the good people of our city from those hand full of individuals who broke the law and caused pain and suffering.

I think perhaps you may be right and I would have to judge this for myself by visiting your world, Norcee commented thoughtfully.

I am not sure a Titan class ship running around New Oxford would be a good idea, but who knows what the future holds, she replied glancing to her young friend questioningly, Guessing there was a reason you came out to find me?

I'm sorry Sellie as I know how much your friend means to you but it is time to get back to work and we have our mission ahead of us, Norcee replied regretfully, Plus you know how Qidgee gets when she is bored.

Standing up she leant down, kissing Sarah on the forehead as she sighed. She missed her so much, but as with everything it was a matter of time and waiting was the hardest thing. Standing up she nodded