Clouds of Endyr: The Coral Saga Book Three

By Angelo Niles

The Clouds of Endyr: Book Three of The Coral Saga is a sci-fi sequel to The Pearls of Ijnar. Storyline Overview: Earl Dagarth is again hurled into a chasm of alien intrigue as the galaxy unravels. Cindy Skyborne is the one soul in the galaxy who knows Earl’s true past—and what price the Terjj have put on his cells. The newly settled planet Cyrus 794G draws Terrans into a paradox beyond Eden’s Gate. The S’both energy beings with whom they’ve allied threaten to subsume every colonist—and indeed all life on the planet. Lydia Nev and an elite group of science officers join a desperate fight for survival in the Cyrus system even as the Coral Galaxy spirals into chaos. All the while, Queen Akirah vies for lasting peace for the fledgling Ambri hives on Ghaz. Thlags want control of the planet and improved status in the Terran Confederacy. Deep in the Endyr Nebula, the Terjj seek to settle a new home on Sharjah. Once their fleet is rebuilt, they’ll set their talons upon a long-coveted prize: planet Ghaz and her ice gas reserves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Angelo Niles
• Release date: Dec 17, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463013571

Angelo Niles

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:Angelo Niles has written several short stories, appearing in Aoife’s Kiss, Iron City, On Spec, Star*Line and Nova Science Fiction. His first novel The Chronicles of Ghaz won wide acclaim among critics. He lives in a desert retreat in Arizona where he’s busy at work on his next Coral Saga adventure, The Suns of Coral. This forthcoming volume will explore Earth’s early inheritors of the Milky Way’s far-flung planets. And yes, eventually the gateway into the Coral Galaxy itself.

Book preview

The Clouds of Endyr

The Coral Saga: Book Three

A novel by Angelo Niles

First US edition published at Smashwords: December 2019.

Copyrights © 2019 by Angelo Niles

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Cover design by Angelo Niles

All rights reserved.

Dedication

for my courageous sister,

Jimeela Fatimah Jones.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Presage to a Saga

Prologue—Saboteur

Part One —Archangel

Part Two—Fire in the Sky

Part Three —The Arrival

Part Four —Purgatory

Part Five —Eden’s Gate

Part Six—The Return

Epilogue—Dark Moon

Author’s Notes

About The Author

Acknowledgments

I pay tribute to my lovely mother, Sakina Zaky, who bore the brunt of this saga’s hardships. Thank you for a mystic journey over the sands. To John P. Brown, a profound gratitude for your honest critique. For the insights on alien characterization, I’m indebted to R.K. Lee. My gratitude to Paul Fahring and Larry Smith for your insightful comments. I thank Tyree Campbell, a faithful and patient editor. Without your insight this saga may have never left terra firma.

I wish to thank Megan Kelsey of Arizona State University for her valuable notes on poesy. Cherished also are the lectures on geology, astronomy, and planetary science by ASU undergrads Hannah Bercovici, Mr. Dupuis, Mr. Adler, Ms. Hall, Ms. Handler, Ms. Gherani, Ms. Carlson, and Mr. Czarnecki. I am humbled by the lessons learned throughout this journey. Our cosmos is far more fascinating than any world conjured by this author’s imagination!

I continue to be inspired by those who paved the way before me: Frank Herbert, Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson, Nancy Kress, and the beloved Octavia Butler.

To all my loyal fans out in the galaxy, thanks for sharing this odyssey with me. Without you, there’s no Angelo Niles.

—Angelo Niles, April 7, 2019 CE.

The Clouds of Endyr

With a determined will, any foe can be defeated. Even if it takes millennia.

— Queen Akirah, quoting the Sacred Runes.

Presage to a Saga

A pearl star is born by the will of Albar, yet its light spans the width of consciousness and time.

— Jish’urah Qulbaj, Ijnari skinshaper, circa 17000.

Azöl Star System, 20,000 years ago,

The story thus far….

Long ages ago on ancient Ghaz, an Ambri monk, Azmyth, captures a Terjj spy sent to scout the hives. Before long, Chieftain Bodhim conscripts Azmyth to train his elite Sarfyth captains as no living Ambri has ever fought a Terjj in hand-to-hand combat. But the Truthsayer, Nikrah, foresees Azmyth’s role in a future rebirth of the hives. He is entrusted with sacred relics—the very seed queens of Cheoptra—to reach the Caves of Birth before the arriving apocalypse.

Twenty millennia later in the year 3009 CE, in the Azöl Star System, a prophecy unfolds…

At a tiny pub on Tyre, third moon of planet Lynx, Earl Dagarth gets snared in a plot to steal a hidden cache from Oje Wu, a ruthless Gog. He joins his Cryon friend Cobra Crystal Eyes and Wu’s killer geisha, the lovely Tonja Cervo, on a perilous foray into Tyre’s caverns. After encountering a cave djinn, Cobra is killed. Together Earl and Tonja flee with the Starphire orb. Soon they meet mysterious robed beings in the Sufi City of Caves. They’re long extinct Ambri on Tyre! Earl gets teleported to ancient Ghaz, is proclaimed the Awaited One, and is soon enthralled in an epic war of worlds. Yet despite their mystic powers, the Ambri are no match for the invading Terjj swarm.

After a daring dogfight with Terjjan raptors, Earl’s battle sphere plunges into the Mythrih Sea. Earl is captured and taken aboard the Terjjan portal ship where he’s probed for his genetic secrets. He learns Tonja Cervo, the cybernetic spy, is also a captive. Left alone in a stasis cell, they hatch a plan to destroy the portal ship and send Earl back to his own era. Before long, they’re joined by a handful of Ambri who’ve cloaked their likeness to infiltrate the Terjj ranks. As Tonja obliterates the ship, Earl is flung back to his own future by the Starphire.

Years later, after taking a job on Ghaz as an imports advisor for Blue Star Interstellar, Earl digs up a cache of Ambri relics right under the gills of his Terjj overlords. Before he can get his lode home to Lynx, a Terjj smuggler snares him. An albino skinshaper Selusa hides fossilized Ambri eggs in Earl’s viscera, then packs him on ice. Just when Toth Ozard thinks he’s gotten away with his cache, Ozard is forced to jettison his cargo in deep space. After being left adrift in a cryotube for two centuries, two Orbiters, Arlya Seroh and Xuye Chi hawk Earl’s tube for profitable salvage. Earl awakens on Lynx with new skin and a kedjka grafted onto his spine. And worse, he’s pregnant with Ambri embryos!

A greedy Oort, Vlox Sski Ssjaffu offers Earl a new identity as Rex Dingo, but only if he’ll brave the perilous reefs for a rare gem—the Venus Eye. A Terjjan envoy arrives planetside in search of Earl’s cryotube. Before long, Earl joins Arlya and Xuye in a daring escape from Lynx’s tectonic doom. In the midst of it all, Earl births glowing Ambri nymphs…and is again bound to their Awareness. Bent on preventing the rebirth of this mythical hive race, the Terjj hunt Earl to the ends of the galaxy.

A lone Ambri monk, Azmyth, sets out to resurrect his species after eons of stasis in the Gheb Forest. Yet time has erased all vestiges of the Ghaz he knew twenty millennia ago. Gone are the hives, the telepathy orbs, the lakes and wild green.

Earl secretly ventures back to Firjah City as the wealthy mogul Rex Dingo. With the Terjjan siege on Wolf 16, the Terran Trade Council has convened on Ghaz to avoid a costly war for the Terran Confederacy. Tensions erupt when Matriarch Aedra Lopez is murdered at the Conclave.

Cindy Skyborne, a half human-Terjj spy, lures Earl into a sultry tryst. She has a rare and deadly gift. As a blood-sighter, Cindy soon delves into Rex Dingo’s genetic secrets and learns his true identity as a wanted man. She also spies Earl’s hybrid nature: a symbiotic kedjka writhing at his spine. One put there two hundred years ago when he’d foolishly gotten caught with stolen Terjjan secrets. Chancellor Mrraj Reghii spawns a secret coup with Ijnari Envoy Dragoh Tah. Dragoh covets glory and power—for that he needs Ghaz’s precious ice gas.

A lovely cyber-clone, Dr. Dvina Rhodes, threatens Terjjah’s hegemony when she unlocks a secret long forgotten in the pyramids. She is swept into an unexpected intrigue when she detects Azmyth’s bio-scan in the Hijaz erg. Dear binary fates! A living Ambri! Before long, she and Azmyth are hunted by a ruthless Terjj. Mrraj must send this elusive Ambri ghost back into extinction, lest his coup of Firjah City fails.

Barely alive after his scramjet is downed, Earl is left for dead in a Thlag karst. His attempts to reach the Caves of Birth are thwarted when rebels take him captive and steal his cargo. Earl finds refuge in Orkthum, an oasis enclave of pacifist Thlags. Again his bile is tested by Aghan She’egh-Oth, and Earl is led to a tomb of the Old Ones…to retrieve Thodhep’s scepter! Armed with the Ambri orb, She’egh-Oth urges her clan to join the other Aghans in a planetwide front.

Ghaz is now a brooding battlefield, with the entire Coral Galaxy on edge. During the Red Solstice, Ijnari forces ambush the Terjj whilst reveling in a battle reenactment of the Great War. Deep in the Gheb Forest, Azmyth sets out alongside Dvina Rhodes to find a hidden wellspring...and he learns he's not the sole Ambri survivor. Cindy is left poisoned by a dark secret only she can guard or sell to Chancellor Mrraj Reghii. A Terjj skinshaper, Ochi’ai Xinfyr, learns of Cindy’s plot with the chancellor and wields her own bit of genetic sorcery. Ever lustful for dark alchemy, Ochi’ai steals into the stars with Cindy’s embryos—Earl Dagarth’s own offspring!

After a daring escape from besieged Wolf 16, Prima Lydia Nev seeks out a handful of Ambri survivors who’ve hidden themselves in the Oort Cloud. As a new alien moon looms in Ghaz’s fiery sky, Lydia enters the Caves of Birth and awakens a sacred orb, thus giving Earl Dagarth a weapon beyond imagination.

Cindy escapes Firjah City’s turmoil, desperate for a way off planet. She stumbles upon Selusa in a karst, talons still sharp after long years of exile. The albino skinshaper knows of Earl’s preternatural longevity…and of his precious cargo: an Ambri chrysalis stolen by Thlags days ago. Cindy escapes Selusa’s fangs only after convincing her she’s worth more ruja alive as a blood-sighter.

A battle-worn nomad, Fyuth Onah, must take on the role of Grand Aghan and unite the fractured Thlag clans. Fyuth’s eldest daughter, Sifqiyah, flees through an Ambri gate and opens a ripple in time. In this alter-Ghaz, Sifqiyah is a High Neghus who rules over the Thlag Domain—a future full of wraiths and peril.

Given false reports of a Terran strike on Ghaz, Admiral Sijjo Ith of the Sixty-Third Egg Fleet strikes Ptyr’s moonlet capital, Neiro. Once a new worm path yawns over Ghaz, Sijjo vows to bring Terjjah’s full might down on the meddlesome Terrans. Thlag rebels join the fray when Ijnari traitors arrive to wrest Ghaz from their Terjj cousins. Amid a climactic battle for Ghaz, Earl escapes into the Gheb Forest with Lydia. They encounter Akirah, Azmyth, and Dvina, and learn there are other Ambri out there. Dvina’s long buried avatar surfaces, reuniting Earl with an old friend…Tonja Cervo.

Earl bands with Dvina, Akirah, and her newly risen Sarfyth brethren in the Gheb Forest. Now that the Emir Ngo’aj has fled the planet, the Ambri rebirth draws nigh. But first the Awaited One must fulfill one final prophecy. With the fate of every Terran world at stake, Earl braves a fiery chasm in the Ashlar Caldera.

Days after a costly battle in the Coral Erg, Fyuth captures Firjah City, only to find martyrdom at the Palace Shell. Now his feisty daughter, N’thai carries on the torch for all Thlagkind. Alone and desperate, Cindy returns to Firjah City’s sublevels. Soon she falls into Dragoh’s talons at the Garden Shell where he’s holed up in wait for reinforcements from Mother Ijnar. Yet it’s too late, for the Ambri have sensed his gills.

After eons of extinction, the Ambri rise up under a reborn Queen Akirah, olden Chieftain of the Southern Hives. Sifqiyah rescues her sibling Chuti from Urghh wraiths in an alter-Ghaz. She returns to a Ghaz newly freed from its Terjj and Ijnari overlords. Conflict erupts despite a hard-won peace, for the Thlags want Ghaz for themselves! Yet Akirah quells the Thlag uprising with superior noetic prowess.

The entire galaxy is afire, this after Lydia’s best effort to save her planet. Soon Earl’s beloved Lynx is drawn into a ghastly war. Admiral Thebe arrives in Ghaz’s orbit with an armada of Nebula-class ships to thwart the Enemy’s efforts to open a new Porthole. Dvina takes on a daring mission to vanquish the Terjj once and for all by infiltrating Sijjo’s portal ship. Cloaked as Sijjo himself, she strikes at the Perthid Nebula’s heart.

Ambrithya soon emerges from Ghaz’s ashes, for Envoy Dragoh Tah and his Ijnari troops have fallen alongside their Terjj cousins. Earl joins Lydia and Azmyth at the Palace Hive as Queen Akirah accepts Sifqiyah’s fealty. The Thlag Domain at last knows peace after millennia of slavery and conflict. With the kedjka symbiont excised, Earl returns to his homeworld Lynx, once again bathing in the lush reefs. Arlya Seroh arrives to lure Earl back into yet more alien intrigue and plunder in the stars.

Earl’s sweet hiatus on Lynx is fleeting as he gets ensnared in yet another alien conflict far from his beloved homeworld. Arlya Ai-One Seroh has sold his bio-scans to Fjoriian skyjacks. These mercenaries are renowned for their cunning espionage, and now they want Earl’s link to the Ambri prophecies.

When Earl stirs from hypersleep aboard a tiny space freighter, he soon realizes that he is more than mere cargo. The Fjorii-held moonlet, Ötzi, lies on the distant verge of the galaxy with only the Gilaen suns to scantly light its bleak, icebound surface. Deep in the moon’s crust is an ancient derelict whose origins predate even the Ambri. Ojer Cortiz, it seems, has offered Arlya a hefty ransom for Rex Dingo’s gift. The Fjorii merc has already seen what the Blue Star Interstellar mogul can do—for he was there when Earl flung himself into the molten heart of the Ashlar Caldera…into Cheoptra’s Eye itself.

One cold, barren moon after another has vanished from the orbits of key planets throughout the Coral Galaxy. No one knows where these lunar bodies have gone to, let alone what race or force is responsible for the Eclipse events. That is, except for the Ambri elders on Ghaz. But even they are at a loss to solve this mystery. Queen Akirah has deployed several parsec chasers in search of an answer. Her most trusted chieftain, Nimeth, sets his sights on the only likely culprit now that Terjjah’s hegemony is over—the ethereal Iyrean moon pirates.

Cindy Skyborne, former Terran Trade Council liaison on Ghaz, may be the only human who can solve the mystery now consuming the entire galaxy—if only she can escape the dimensional vortex that has swallowed the Ptyri moonlet of her exile. Cindy escapes her Iyrean captors only to emerge into a parallel of highly evolved Ptyr apes. She spends four relative years marooned on this alter-Orceus before fleeing to the heavens with a lone Rau’ichling girl, K’bu.

Prima Lydia Nev joins a panicked Council of Terran Worlds on Neiro after Wolf 16 loses its ore-rich moon, Torus. Yet victory over the hated Terjj has left a rift in the Confederacy. Many Terran planets want secession from Terra Prime now that Terjjah has fallen. Conflicts erupt over planetary possessions left behind by the Enemy.

As for Arlya Seroh, she thinks one being can thwart the Eclipse’s dark advance. She sets her sights on Cryos, a planet full of deep-core cities and marvelous techno-sorcery. One Cryon there may know the whereabouts of her only love in the stars: A Do’fin in whose genes rests a secret that could send entire nebulae into oblivion. Only, Xuye Chi has lost himself far from anyone’s sensors…and time is running out.

En route to the Azöl system, the Beowulf’s Voyage, a nebula ship escorting Lydia and other dignitaries, lays over at a secret naval base at Peoria. There Lydia witnesses a vast colony ship, the Archangel, in its final stages of preparation for a mass Terran exodus. Admiral Thebe and the Joint Chiefs have long anticipated the Eclipse events, and now Lydia and a chosen few elites are asked to abandon the Coral Galaxy.

All the while, Admiral Sijjo Ith seeks to gather the far-flung remnants of Terjjah back to the Perthid Nebula. Yet to achieve his desperate ploy he must cultivate a prize stolen from Cindy Skyborne—twin embryos that may give Sijjo a means to wrest Ijnar’s most coveted resource. Terran starships, Ambri gates and Terjjan portal ships all rely on a single power source: the pearl stars born in Ijnar’s halo clouds.

Arlya soon recruits a shape-shifting grifter, Ginx Dublin, on Kyoto Moon. But before they can escape, Hydran warships swallow in-system alongside Iyreans. Yet her cybernetic wits get her and Ginx past the siege and soon they’re in another hotbed of skullduggery —Dyson’s Abyss.

After long exile in the Lotus Cloud, Sijjo and a handful of Terjj return to the Perthid Nebula at Empress Nesrai’s behest. Oshii, one of Cindy Skyborne’s preternaturally grown twins, is presented as a gift at the Palace Shell on Ijnar. Only, what the Terjj-human hybrid carries in his cells will undo Ijnar’s hold on Sijjo and his wayward Terjjan brethren.

Amidst the Eclipse events, Cygnet Industries secretly exploits Ötzi’s gelid secrets with Earl Dagarth’s genes. An entity awakened in the ancient derelict there—She Who Hunts Novae—transforms Earl’s physiology once more, along with the moonlet’s terrain. Ötzi’s frozen surface soon yields a lush garden world with lethal plant life. Ojer Cortiz and his team discover the Enth’zul: a sentient tree held as sacred by the Sufi cadres of Fjorii.

Lydia returns to Ghaz to meld with the Sarfyth elders there, by chance their Awareness can glimpse a means to save the galaxy from a new, enigmatic foe. But the Ambri have also lost their moon Orindh along with an entire lunar hive. Akirah, former Chieftain of the Southern Hives, is now queen of the Realm of Ambrithya. Lydia joins Akirah deep in the Gheb Forest where Lydia is transformed after a sip from a glowing pool… With newly born Awareness and glowing amber eyes, Lydia shares a mind-meld with the Sarfyth elders at Truthsayer Nikrah’s Tomb.

With Earl’s services no longer needed on Ötzi, he is sent to Khidr Delta Five where the Cygnet sheikhs reveal their takeover of Blue Star Interstellar. The former Blue Star mogul is given a front seat at Khidr’s newest technological feat. After igniting Nimbus warheads in the planet’s Van Allen Belt, microsingularities gape in the sky…and at last Cindy’s hawkjet returns from the void. She alone knows the whereabouts of the stolen moons, as well as Azmyth and the lost Ambri lunar hive.

Arlya is at last close to Xuye’s rescue. She offers Ginx over to Sonyai Chi, a wealthy Nereid admiral mind on planet Ichthya. Only Sonyai, with her noetic prowess, can reach Xuye’s bio-pulse deep in Ichthya’s worldsea. Yet what emerges with the Do’fin may alter the entire galaxy if its life force is left unchecked. One by one, moons begin resurfacing from the void—only, they’re entirely altered by a frightening technology.

While staging for its launch, the Archangel is attacked by Iyrean destroyers bent on preventing a Terran exodus. Like their allies in the Hydra Cloud, Iyre’s High Vicelord Gor’ifrus truly believes Earthlings are to blame for the mysterious Eclipse events. Now the Terran Confederacy faces war on two fronts. Fjorii and zealous factions in the Khidr system seek to form a new Union of Caliphate States, while the Hydran Alliance gnaws at the Terrans’ fragile planetary infrastructure.

After capturing an Ijnari starlighter, Sijjo’s skinshapers unlock the secrets of birthing new wormholes. At last the balance of power kept in place by the Sacred Pact shifts in Sijjo’s favor. Soon Sijjo’s scout ships discover a viable planetary base deep in the Endyr Nebula—a world like Terjjah nestled in a covey of black suns. Now that the Terjj have a homeworld of their own, their gills lust for a new holy war. And so begins the Ijhad al-Quds.

Prologue

Saboteur

Amid the faint veils of gas and dust strewn over infinite nebulae we flee only to plunge into an abyssal void too far from Terra’s bosom.

—Molefi Niger, Wolfan poet, circa 3214 CE.

I.

On a remote moonlet in the sovereign orbit of Manx,

Designated P247.

Eight weeks prior to launch of Project Exodus…

Nigel Wynn shivered despite the mildly warm atmosphere, curled as he was in a snug terrasuit and neural-centric isolation blanket designed for his specific physiology. Probably just nerves, he thought. Nerves pure and simply agitated like the tattoos flickering along the arms of the tallish Khidri nearby. Oh, he’d tried chemical suppressants to no avail, and he’d refused outright physical augmentations to look like his Mantisoid hosts. Nanytes bothered him on a spiritual level, he supposed, being an adherent of a neo-Zen cult.

It sufficed to draw an illusory veil over his true Terran likeness like all the other observers of today’s experiment. Save for the Ang-Xi engineers, of course, who stoically wagged their mandibles or twitched antennae at incomprehensible Mantid syntax that Nigel’s linguistics filters could do nothing to decipher. The ions fizzled over his pores, over the incredible instruments and devices that comprised the Kepler drive’s complex systems. Agatha priest! The sheer size of it was breathtaking.

A lump choked his larynx as he quickly tried to breach one bioscan; that of the olive-toned Khidri who watched the Ang-Xi scientist critically as he—or rather it—initiated the final sequence:

Chffzek…dkaj…thzuff….rrzhh…

The all-but-sentient tractamorphic foam constricted gently against Nigel’s torso as his atoms surged instantaneously into the cosmic ether and the entire moon base folded several light-days across space. Amid that fleeting yet profoundly eternal blink of an eye, his neural implant gleaned a name behind the chiseled human features of the Khidri who no doubt had gone to great lengths to hide his true identity. Certainly anyone associated with this perilous experiment far from prying Confederacy eyes risked deep freeze for life if their presence were ever known to agents of Special Office or the Intergalactic Justice Bureau. Or worse, any of the Prime Worlds not privy to this clandestine enterprise.

Particularly so for the Chairman of the Lynx Stock Exchange, Nigel Wynn reproved himself, even as he grinned inwardly at his coup of intercepted data pilfered from Neil Tarnov’s state-of-the-art firewall. Dolak Cassowary had no idea just how far-reaching the aftermath would truly be once the world engines were activated and, one by one, Terran lunar bases began winking from their sovereign orbits. The implications were staggering. The potential ruja influx would surely turn the stock markets upside down and launch an era of wormhole technology long coveted by Old Earth’s progeny.

If the Ang-Xi let any soul live beyond their last transfluxed breath, Nigel exhaled wordlessly as the nebulae once again sprawled into view. The distant thunderclap must’ve been an effect of a moon birthing itself into a precisely calculated vector deep in some nameless quadrant of space. Or maybe it was the last wisps of tranquility before the entire cosmos erupted in phantasmagoric flame.

God save them all. What had they unleashed? Why’d these brainy insects meddle with those artifacts left by a race no Terran dared waken?

II.

Aboard the CSS Archangel,

1450 Hours Shipboard Time,

January 19, 3213 CE.

Dancing faery lights still plagued her vision moments after the micropulse detonated. After long clandestine maneuvering under the constant surveillance of wasp eyes, dutiful naval officers, and that meddling Wolfan Prima who perceived more than most organics—with those oddly glowing amber eyes—her objectives had finally been achieved. Now mere seconds after her fait accompli, the mole could proceed with her secondary mission. There certainly was no turning back now with the Archangel’s launch point at Peoria many light-years behind them. And with her FTL drives hurling them far beyond the Lotus Cloud, the Terran exodus from the galaxy’s heart was all but a sealed fate.

Assuming this assigned persona hadn’t been difficult amid the widespread chaos born out of the Eclipse events. Whole moonlets had vanished throughout the Terran-held star systems. Even obscure satellites deep in the Hydra Cloud, Eryr region and Outer Rim systems had lost themselves to this enigmatic phenomenon. War had ensued after suspicion fell on the Terran Confederacy, with Hydran warships laying siege at Kyoto Moon, and Iyrean destroyers swallowing into their midst at Peoria. That her silent brethren had struck at the Space Scaffold moments before Iyre’s strike further shrouded their true numbers.

Admiral Thebe now waged a war on two fronts: Hydrans joined by Iyrean phase ships in the galactic north, and seditious Khidr states allied with Fjorii in the newly formed Union of Caliphate States. Terrans were now fractured and bickering over moonlet possessions left by the Terjjan retreat; it all left Earth’s far-flung children teetering on extinction here in the Coral Galaxy. Yet if her brethren succeeded in their dire gambit, life might yet achieve its designed potential for her species.

And theirs…

Long lifetimes had passed since the Primal Psyche took its root there on the AAF Fatimah nearly a millennium ago. Deep within her core swirled a myriad life cycles, each with memories and emotions unique to their pattern chip schema. Like this newest life term, each persona endeavored to further the Prime Objective before their cycle’s end. Time, ah, novae births yawning infinitely in a vast cosmos. I wish we’d chosen a less catastrophic path to their uplifting. Oh, why this course? Why this argosy, dear sky?

She wished she had the will power to contradict the awful pull on her instinctual programming. But the horrid deed was done; the cryostasis berths hissed with livened organelles and synaptic links jarred from serene repose. Even now a shipwide alarm blared over the kilometers of habitats, faux skylines and cityscapes. Crewmen hurled themselves into action, manning emergency stations or racing aft to assist with the burden of forty thousand newly roused souls. Sadly, their courageous efforts would only be rewarded with an even darker omen. Eighty other micropulses awaited timed detonations, and then fully nine hundred thousand slumbering passengers would edge from hypersleep and overwhelm the Archangel’s crew with an incomprehensible crisis.

All for the survival of their species, yes.

Part One

The Voyage

A journey is but a means to an eternal end.

—Molefi Niger, famed laureate poet of Wolf 9, circa 3214 CE.

1.

Aboard the CSS Archangel,

1450 Hours Shipboard Time,

January 19, 3213 CE.

As dust and flames raged amid the Great Hall’s debris, Lydia coughed and blinked away her disorientation. Others moaned somewhere beneath the fallen pillars and structure blasted by the Terjjan strike. A gaping void in the vaulted ceiling revealed the ghastly aurora of pulsefire swarming over Neiro’s sky. An afterglow defined by spectral waves left in a wormhole’s wake.

Lydia knew what hell gaped over the Terran moonlet for Wolf 16 even now smoldered under a Terjjan siege. Dear Origin of Life, save them all—it had all engulfed her senses at once. A bad memfile resurging against her synaptic splice. The dreams were all too lucid. The memory all too visceral and frightening with each revisit to that awful day.

Where am I, dear sky? The starship, yes.

She was on a vast colony ship en route to an oasis world beyond the Lotus Cloud. The Terjjan armada was far from their sensors, Sijjo Ith’s fleet having winked into hyperspace mere breaths after the Archangel had floundered into their midst just days ago. Or was it a lifetime ago? Crawling out of her self-induced stasis nap, Lydia had trouble isolating an anchor on reality, let alone her whereabouts. Ah, okay. I’m in my private berth on Habitat Deck B17. Safely surrounded by kilometers of defensive shielding and state-of-the-art morph-plaz. I’m alive, still Wolfan despite my glowing amber eyes.

As if to reassure her befogged mind, she rose and approached the mirrored morph-plaz. A thirtyish face met her once topaz eyes. Saffron hair, now mussed by days in stasis, framed an elegant neck, smallish, squared shoulders and naked yellow skin. She’d once looked more human than she did now. Before that sip from the Praynth’s glowing pool there in the Gheb Forest. Before her metamorphosis, when her Wolfan traits had succumbed to slightly Ambri features: subtly elongated chin, translucent skin, amber blood cells. She now had a heightened Awareness imparted by sentient spores inhabiting an ancient copse on a planet whose denizens had waged a war spanning millennia.

Oh, would that I had remained blissfully oblivious of the events haunting my past.

If only Akirah had prevented that sip. If only the urge hadn’t overwhelmed Lydia as it had so many a soul before her. She now shared the collective memory and conscience of a once extinct species. Shared their noble sense of purpose in the cosmos. Shared a mystic birthright now with Cheoptra’s progeny in the stars…yea, over dimensions of time and space, just as their Awaited One did. Earl Dagarth, the very Zhul Amaj whose blood had fused past, present and future in some forgotten lifetime on faraway Ghaz. And that very legacy now infused her cells as she sighed with the weight of the galaxy on her shoulders.

No, Lydia, she whispered. You’re not a Prima anymore. The Wolf Cluster will thrive without your leadership.

Do forgive the intrusion, an angel’s voice came serenely from her periphery. The male persona hardly glanced at Lydia’s nudity. We’ve an emergency at hand. All critical personnel are requested, Madam Prima Nev.

Dear sky, what’s happened?

Life, I’m afraid.

Whah…what do you mean?

"We’re not sure how, but forty thousand cryostasis cells have prematurely thawed. Every available hand aboard the Archangel is hereby called into service. This crisis may well overwhelm our capacity to support so many organics."

Oh, dear God. Give me thirty seconds to dress. Advise the Command Nexus that I’m already en route.

As you wish, Madam.

The virtual apparition winked away as Lydia rushed into a body lace, medical gloves and a stage-one breather nib. Who knew what contaminants had breached the stasis berths? Given the vague origins of this crisis, chances couldn’t be taken; particularly not with newly roused passengers. Souls whose physiology vastly ranged with so many species under the Terran Confederacy’s banner. Oorts, Cryons, Ptyr sapiens, Ang-Xi Mantid insects, humans of every niche, and those testy Dactylians. While tacitly allied with Terrans, Ambrithya hadn’t joined the Archangel’s exodus. Akirah refused to abandon the birth world upon which the Ambri had resurrected their hives.

Lydia raced into the moil of deckhands, naval servicemen and common passengers hastily conscripted into triage duty. The gangways and passages grew fast congested with so many impromptu orderlies. Eyeing the chaos with a mixture of pride and anxiety, Lydia steeled her nerves and dove headlong into the nearest emergency station.

This way, huffed Chief Petty Officer Tottori. We’re swamped here, but every able body’ll help. Come on, Prima.

On your heels, Lydia said.

She was led past clusters of initial-waking teams. Easily three hundred groggy, confused persons mumbled and snarled at the hovering faces who tried to assist the prematurely wakened patients. Lydia