Broyles Threnody

1. Auflage 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5439-1865-6
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet/DL/kein Kopierschutz

E-Book, Englisch, 200 Seiten

At the edge of the galaxy, shadows gather. The true dark, not merely the absence of light. At the vanguard of its advance, the youngest of a near-immortal race is flung into the fulcrum of cosmic history. In order to solve the mystery of the shadows, he must first unravel the riddle of his species' existence, a secret which has been well hidden for over 20,000 years. What he finds will change everything. From the author of Rewired comes an adventure into deep space, both without and within.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Broyles, Matthew

Leseproben

????   Threnody dwelt in fields of green. Grass, then ocean, interpolating solid and liquid, waves crashing upon white shores of sand and snow. Displacements lumbered below: Roqueseal, threadworm, leviathan. A thread, spun of light and silk, drifted before his eyes. Reaching out, he saw it shrink from his grasp, then turn crimson. Suddenly, a bolt of jagged energy shot from its length, and knocked him back. Thunder pealed, and the blue skies darkened instantaneously. Threnody’s dream-eyes cast about nervously. Nothing so violent had never happened to him before during resonation. Something was wrong. Reluctant to wake, he listened harder. The thunderclap had been so loud, but its echo was fading slowly. The horizon purpled, and within moments, light seeped through the cloud above, burning away the dark and looming storm. To his amazement, the thread was still there, mere feet away. With trepidation, he approached, noting its return to a more benign whitish hue. Tensing, he stretched out his dream-hands again. This time, there was no shock, only a prickling up the length of his dream-arms, working its way into the center of his awareness. He heard a voice. It was faint, and he could not make out the words. Shifting his resonance, he listened harder. I am… “Threnody, lad, wake up…” The vision broke into jagged pieces, falling down and scratching his dream-eyes viciously. He shouted in anger and pain, and fled upstream, back into his physical body, where his optic sensors registered his mentor’s face standing a few feet away. It was a rude awakening. “RXXXXZ, Kaltiss…” he growled, the emotions from his dream still raw. The stout Xaji’s shell blinked red in offense. “Beg pardon?” she asked, with an edge of steel in her voice. Threnody caught hold of his temper. He was not prone to such outbursts, and was slightly embarrassed. He forced out a purple pulse. “Apologies. I just…saw something very strange in my dream.” “We all felt it,” Kaltiss replied, anger giving way to pity. “But I daresay it’s your first time. I’m sorry, Threnody.” It hit him, then. “One of us has died,” he said, in awe. Kaltiss nodded. “I was going to check the feeds to see who it was, but…I remembered you were dreaming, and I thought it best to wake you first.” Threnody’s shell glowed a faint purple. “Your concern is appreciated, and appropriate. I had no idea what was happening. There was the giant thunderclap, and then…” “The what?” “I mean, certainly, the silken wisp came first, and then the crimson shock, and then the thunderclap…” His mentor shone a dull pink. “My dear boy, what are you on about?” The younger Xaji’s shell shifted to match. “I thought you felt it, too. Eschaltus spoke of the vivid imagery of death energy, but I never knew…” “Lad, I’ve never heard any thunderclaps or seen any silken whatevers. Xaji death, it just hurts. Like a spike in your core. Unmistakable after you’ve felt it once.” Threnody pushed forth a brief burst of purple. Of course, he thought. Kaltiss was no visionary. She did not dream the mystron works, nor care to. Threnody had to respect their differences. The trader had felt something, though. She was Xaji, after all. And now that Kaltiss mentioned it, Threnody did notice a sharp pain in his core. “Thought I must say,” Kaltiss added. “Whoever it was must have been on the far side of the galaxy. Didn’t feel anywhere near as strong as when Ardus died, but I was only a few systems over from him when that happened.” Threnody remembered the story. Kaltiss was barely older than he when the rogue mystron Ardus was killed on Ymar. The cleric had gone evangelical with a peculiar brand of mystic astronomy not endorsed by the Council, or really by anyone but himself. Some said he fancied himself a god, and desired worshipers. One could never be sure how accurate the official accounting of events were, and Threnody had not dug into the archives to see for himself, but clearly someone wanted Ardus dead. The benefit of being physical representations of pan-dimensional consciousness was that Xaji were particularly hard to kill. But the task was not impossible, and indeed several of the species had met unnatural demises over the millennia. It was uncommon, but not unheard of. Threnody wondered what this newest casualty had done to bring about an early extinguishment. Rising from his resonance circle, he linked his feed to his mentor’s, and from there, they accessed the official channel together. Scrolling through the scant details, Threnody became more and more intrigued. Intergalactic exploration missions, mysterious circumstances, one confirmed dead, another uncertain, investigations launched…here was fuel for the fires of his yearning heart. Kaltiss did not share his fascination. “I hate to say it, but this is the price of mystron meddling,” she groused, her shell gone rusty. “It’s not enough to probe the mysteries of our galaxy, they have to go courting trouble outside as well.” Threnody bit back his first response, but could not let the comment stand. He pulsed orange-red. “These individuals were harming no one,” he argued. “They cannot be judged ill for merely possessing curiosity.” “The fewer of us there are, the more we’ll be at a disadvantage when the Khronar make their move. We all know it’s coming. We owe it to each other not to take unnecessary risks.” “The Khronar have barely stretched beyond their home sector! Their lightspeed capabilities are pathetic.” “Their home sector adjoins ours, as we were reminded not so long ago.” “Much to their chagrin,” Threnody reminded him. “What manner of fool would press an attack after that embarrassment?” While the Xaji had no true rivals in space travel and technology, their closest competitors, the reptilian Khronar, were on the opposite end of the aggression spectrum from the Xaji. They had an empire already, spanning most of their spiral arm, and had recently begun forays into neighboring sectors. They were impetuous and openly covetous of the Xaji technology edge. Reasoning that their numbers were superior, a fleet of Khronar warships had encroached on Xajus four hundred years ago. Thus it was that the Council finally showed its hand, and deployed the Dissembler, long thought to be a myth. While the would-be conquerors watched, an entire dwarf planet on the outskirts of the Xajus system had its molecules ripped apart and scattered through a dimensional vortex of impressive size and power. The Khronar fleet fled, and had never returned, though they continued to thwart Xaji efforts wherever they could. “We already know they are fools,” Kaltiss grumbled. “We must be ready to repel them when their next bout of foolishness manifests itself. Their tech grows in sophistication, century by century. We will face them again, mark my words.” “And for this trifling threat, we must abandon our quest for knowledge?” Threnody asked, alternating orange and red. “Lad, what we know about the universe dwarfs any other race’s awareness a thousandfold. And what mystron discoveries of the past few millennia have noticeably impacted our existence? We owe most of what we have to Alpha, who was no mystron.” “That could be argued,” Threnody insisted. “Without his insatiable curiosity, would we ever have had Skipships?” “A practical innovation, not a panoply of idle abstractions to justify do-nothingness.” Threnody paused to collect himself. He knew that Kaltiss was a devotee of the Igris school: Simplifying life, eschewing the more abstract pursuits in favor of seeing existence as it is lived by most beings. There was beauty in that approach, and to an extent, Threnody was sympathetic to it. “You know I respect your beliefs, Kaltiss, but I do not accept the binary choice inferred here. Surely there is room in Xaji society for both inquiry and pragmatism.” “Once there was,” Kaltiss replied, her brown bleeding a little red. “But since more than half the Lumen Novums forged after me have gone starry-eyed and settled into their resonance-chambers at the Oculus—which can scarcely hold them all anymore, mind you—I would say we face an epidemic.” Kaltiss paused, treading gingerly. “I know your aspirations, Threnody. But you must see, they are the same as those who have preceded you for thousands of years. These deep questions of yours are already being pursued, and by Xaji who have been at it for far longer. We don’t need any more mystrons.” “Yet we still know so little! We haven’t unlocked even half the secrets of the cosmos.” “Fat lot of good that’ll do us. A race of idling Void-gazers we’ve become. We need more traders, lad. More contact with this galaxy we rule.” Threnody was taken aback. “We don’t rule it.” “Not like the Khronar want to, no. And look, I do not endorse Virax’s methods in any way, but I have to say he’s got a point…” “Virax is an unhinged despot,” Threnody spat in disgust. The pariah of the race had been the last Xaji forged before Threnody, and his shadow hung heavy. “As I say, I won’t defend his methods,” Kaltiss replied, with a conciliatory purple pulse. “But he is right that we are the superior life form in this galaxy, and we shouldn’t be afraid to say so.” Threnody’s shell flashed red. “Superiority is subjective. And Virax enslaves millions. He is in no...