As the cannons let loose, ALF gave the mental command to drop into subspace. The unit groaned and protested against the added strain of navigating a supernova between the fabric of reality. The AI braced himself, using any spare nanocelium to secure his footing against the floor. Sparks flew and gases escaped from various ports inside the cube. Still, he held the course.
When the stars finally greeted him again, the cube was in need of rest. The nanocelium would require time to recalibrate the unit’s navigational systems and figure out his location based upon the star charts. ALF didn’t care how long it took. He was free and the Kellekt weren’t behind him… yet. That single thought would haunt the AI every moment of his existence and he knew it. The Three were the most intelligent, powerful, and wicked creatures in the universe, whose hunger knew no bounds.
ALF looked out on the stars beyond his unit. There was nowhere they couldn’t find him, no lengths they wouldn’t go to to eradicate any trace of Evalan’s natives. Their fear of such primitive genes fascinated ALF, especially upon hearing that those same genes coursed through their hideous bodies. He would have to look into that, he thought. But first, he would need to find somewhere to rest. The Three would be coming for him.
He would be ready for them…
1
There were few moments in Kalian’s life which he reflected on and treasured, but the last two months would forever bring a smile to his face. For two glorious months, humanity’s new settlement had flourished with help from the Conclave, allowing them to expand their city, import technology, and integrate into galactic society. The world they had been granted along with their Conclave membership was beautiful, an island of paradise in the vast cold of space.
Evalan…
Kalian had been honoured when the human council offered him the opportunity to name their new planet. Naming it after the true birthplace of mankind seemed poetic to Kalian, though his explanation of their true origins had been a hard conversation. With their new policy to withhold nothing from the population, Evalan’s inhabitants had been informed that everything they knew about the Terran and their beginnings on Albadar was only the tip of the iceberg. Learning that humanity started out life in a completely different galaxy, where they had been wiped out by a race of locust-like machines, was a hard pill to swallow. Still, Kalian told them everything he had learned from ALF. They all deserved to know the truth.
Aware that he was falling into deep thought, Kalian reminded himself to stay in the present, with Li’ara. Their land speeder raced across the desert plains, leaving the city, New Genesis, far behind, as they passed through the mountain valley and into the wilds of their new planet. Without any roof, Kalian sat back and let the rushing wind run through his hair, marvelling at how majestic Li’ara appeared under the sun, her copper ringlets dancing in the air behind her. He squeezed her hand and she squeezed back. It was the best feeling in the world. Well, almost the best…
“You’ve got that look in your eye!” Li’ara called over the whipping wind.
Kalian smiled. “What look?”
“You’re thinking about everything again, aren’t you?”
There was no hiding anything from Li’ara anymore. Their bond had only strengthened over the last two months, a fact that was helped by the mental bridge that connected them. Ever since Kalian had healed Li’ara on Naveen, after Savrick had tried to kill them, an emotional form of telepathy resided between them. Kalian loved it.
“I’m just enjoying the moment!” he replied, flashing his perfect Terran teeth.
“I call bullshit! I know how that brain of yours works! It’s like a damn computer!”
Kalian couldn’t argue with that. After all of his time inside ALF’s enhanced subconducer, his human brain was now more akin to Terran physiology. His mind-body connection was more attuned than any of the Gomar, or even most of the Terran who had ever existed.
“Sorry,” Kalian apologised. “I’m trying to stay in the moment, it’s just…”
“Slow,” Li’ara finished. She put the speeder into automatic and turned to him. “You’re still struggling aren’t you?”
This wasn’t the first time they had entered into this discussion and Kalian hated that it was even a thing. It was a side-effect to living inside a highly-evolved body with a brain that could comprehend an almost infinite amount of choices in the time it takes a regular human to blink. Everyone around him, even the aliens of the Conclave, had started to seem sluggish to Kalian, as if they were talking and moving in slow motion. Just once, and he had refrained from sharing it with Li’ara, he had thought it primitive to speak with his mouth instead of his mind. Kalian had tried to banish such thoughts, reminding himself of what Esabelle had said to him so long ago, aboard the Gommarian; it was his human qualities that separated him from the Terran and their mistakes, their arrogance. He had to hold on to that human side of him if he was ever to bridge the gap between humans as they existed right now and what they would eventually evolve into.
“No,” he lied. “That was a thing, but I’m fine now. I’ve adjusted.”
Li’ara sighed and her hand gripped his a little tighter. “You don’t have to sit here with me, you know. You could…” she glanced up at the cloudless sky.
Kalian offered her a warm smile. “Flying is the most wonderful thing, but it doesn’t compare to being with you.”
Li’ara sat back and mirrored his smile. “Liar. I refuse to believe that sitting in a crummy land speeder with me is better than flying through the sky like a god.”
Time stood still as Kalian considered that word. It wasn’t the first time he had heard someone refer to him as a god or compare his abilities to a deity. As complimentary as it was, it only served to remind him that he was different, even among his own people.
Kalian was about to reply, making light of her statement, but his brain was constantly mapping out the terrain around them, his Terran awareness expanding through the soup of the universe. This connection to all things fed back data, alerting him to the unique physiology and brain waves of the Gomar.
“Wait. Make a left here, through that valley.”
“Is it them?” Li’ara asked, taking back manual control of the speeder.
“Unfortunately,” he replied. Kalian brought up the coordinates on the holographic display. “They’re still ten kilometres out from where I said I would meet them. They’re too slow…”
“I don't think anyone would call the Gomar slow, Kalian. Besides you, they’re still the most powerful beings in the galaxy right now.”
Kalian disagreed. “They should have reached the coordinates I gave them yesterday and camped out overnight. They’re slow.”
“They need time,” Li’ara replied. “They haven’t had time in a subconducer like you.”
Kalian considered his words, aware that Li’ara’s friendship with Sef, the leader of the Gomar, was very strong after their time together in Clave Tower. As thankful as Kalian was for Sef’s care of Li’ara, not to mention the robotic leg he had built for her, he didn’t have time to coddle him or any of the Gomar.
“I’m aware of my advantages,” he said, “but time isn’t something we can rely on.”
“You say that, but it’s been two months since the Vanguard appeared and there’s been no sign of them.”
Kalian licked his lips. “That’s not a good thing. That just means they’re positioning themselves for the most devastating attack.”
The valley soon swallowed them up, surrounding them on all sides with mountains that reached for the heavens. The valley floor was barren, a flat surface of cracked ground and boulders long-detached from the mountains. Walking through the middle, the twelve Gomar stood out, encumbered as they were inside their black exosuits. Li’ara’s hands danced across the speeder’s console and brought them around the group, kicking up a trail of dust before skidding to a stop.
“Why are you walking?” Kalian immediately asked, hopping out of the speeder.
Sef presente
d him with a wall of muscle and the stoic silence typical of the mute. Kalian was waiting for the telepathic response, but Vox emerged from the group, the Gomar’s vocal representative.
“We can’t all fly, Kalian,” she said, somewhat frustrated.
“Yes, you can. I’ve been telling all of you for the last two months that you can do everything I can.” Kalian was unable to keep his own frustration out of his voice.
Li’ara jumped out of the speeder and sat with her knees up on the hood. The clearing of her voice was not so subtle.
Kalian blinked slowly, changing his approach. “Savrick taught all of you the art of war. How to destroy. How to create chaos. Those skills have their place, but you will need more than that if you are going to resist what’s coming for us all. You’re the only protection Evalan has, maybe the whole Conclave.”
“Why should the Gomar care for those who shun us?” Kovak interjected. The Gomar’s dark features creased under his scrutiny of Kalian. “The humans are afraid of us; they see us as nothing but dangerous aliens. And the Conclave… they won’t even let the twelve of us leave the planet. What protection could we possibly offer them from here?”
Li’ara cut in, “We’re working on that, Kovak. It’s just going to take a little time for the rest of the Conclave to trust you, to see you as we do.”
Kalian shook his head. “It doesn’t matter what you call yourselves. Gomar. Terran. Human. The genes, the DNA, that makes us what we are is the same in all of us. Our enemy will see no distinction when they get here. We’re all part of the same disease as far as they’re concerned.”
“What would you have us do?” Felion asked.
“You know what he wants,” Ariah replied. “Kalian would have us go under the AI’s knife.”
The group nodded along, agreeing with her statement while wearing expressions of disgust. This was a topic Kalian had brought up many times, though he refused to give up.
“ALF can remove your Harnesses, safely.” Kalian explained. “Without them you won’t need the exosuits and you can finally be free to fully explore your abilities.”
Ellik, the shortest of the group, folded his arms. “These suits have served us well. We won the Terran war because of them.”
Kalian sighed, becoming exasperated. “They allow you to access a portion of your natural power, but the Harnesses will always keep that power limited.”
Vox stepped forward, threatening as ever. “The same Harnesses that ALF fused to our flesh. How can you expect us to trust that thing?”
Kalian took a breath and stole a glance at the clear sky. Somewhere up there, ALF’s housing unit was floating through the solar system, completely disconnected from their communications array, as per the Highclave’s direct orders. Of course, they couldn’t stop Kalian from leaving the planet and visiting the AI.
“I have already explained all of that. It wasn’t ALF as he is now. There was still some rogue programming inside of his network that belonged to them.”
That rogue programming had hoped to sabotage the Terran culture by producing faulty genes. The Terran who couldn’t control their natural abilities were unstable, dangerous. Despite ALF’s victory over the rogue programming, the schism had already been created, leading to a war that saw the Terran Empire brought to its knees. The Gomar present hadn’t taken to the news very well.
“He can correct the genes and make you wholly Terran—” Kalian regretted the statement as soon as it left his mouth.
“We don’t want to be Terran!” Vox spat. “They kept us down and treated us like animals! They labelled us Gomar, so we claimed it back and made them pay for it!”
“Labels?” Kalian echoed. “If you cling to your labels there will always be a rift between us, between all of us. You call yourselves Gomar, we call ourselves human. Do you know what the Conclave calls us now? Evalandians. A year from now, a decade, a century and we will all be Evalandians, our names resigned to history. The dormant genes in the rest of the human race might have evolved by then, just as they have in me. We’ll all have the power of a Terran. But you… You would all rather cling to the past than forge a new future. You need to forget the names and be all that you can be.”
Vox looked to challenge him but Sef held out his hand, silencing her. Kalian is right. We must train.
Kalian’s hope died away. For just a moment, he had dared to dream that Sef would agree to the surgery and the rest would follow his lead. He let the conversation go, but this wouldn’t be the last time he argued the case. Hopefully, the training they had been doing together would show them what they could be.
“Okay, we’ll train here,” Kalian said, walking away from Li’ara and the speeder. “Same as last time; the first to knock me down wins.”
The Gomar took up their positions, surrounding him. Kalian balled his fists, cracking his knuckles. The nanocelium exosuit that clung to his body was like a second skin now, offering him extra protection. He often felt naked without it, on those few occasions he tried to fit in wearing soft fabrics.
Kalian already knew what they were going to do; that was the problem with blunt instruments. They always rushed him, attacking with the most powerful ability they could summon. He probed each of their minds, searching for the weak link who would let him in and give away their plan. Kalian had no doubt that the twelve were talking to each other, deciding who would make the first move.
There…
Felion was always their weak link when it came to mental intrusion. The others could keep Kalian from delving into their thoughts if they wanted to, but Felion had always focused his efforts into his telekinetic abilities, forgoing any further training into the power of his telepathic skills. Through Felion, Kalian could hear the others scheming. Vox would be the first to challenge him, again. This was no surprise. Vox loved to fight and he could already feel the ripple effect her increased heart rate was having on the rest of her body.
One last check made sure Li’ara was too far to be in any danger, though fighting with the Gomar did tend to get out of hand, hence the distance they travelled from New Genesis. Kalian always saw her presence as a form of extra training for all of them, as Sef would make certain that the group kept her safe.
Kalian decided to put them off. “I’m waiting, Vox…”
The group audibly groaned and blamed Felion, who dropped his head in shame. His comment had the desired effect, however, as Telarn ignored the plan and leapt across the desert in a single bound, his armoured fist held back, ready to connect with Kalian’s face. There was telekinetic force behind him, that much was easy to sense, but Telarn had foolishly left himself unshielded. All it took was a flick of the wrist to intercept the Gomar mid-flight and push him in the opposite direction. The force of it folded his body in half and sent him hurtling into the side of the mountain.
Kovak and Bal came for him next, one high, one low. As Bal came down, he produced a super-heated ball of organic plasma between his palms. They both knew from experience that the projected attack wouldn’t work against Kalian, but it would hopefully distract him from Kovak, who planned on barrelling into him. This wasn’t anything Kalian hadn’t seen before.
The super-heated ball of energy was launched from Bal’s hand a moment before Kovak sprung through the air. Their timing was perfect; their speed, however, left much to be desired. Kalian shifted his shoulders just enough to let the ball of plasma pass him by and explode against the ground. With both of his hands raised, Bal and Kovak slammed into his telekinetic wall, though their combined force pushed Kalian back. The balls of his feet dug into the ground, creating two track lines through the desert, unyielding to the hammering of the Gomar.
As planned, the Gomar behind him attacked, believing that Kalian was busy resisting their blows. In truth, he was barely thinking about Kovak or Bal. When Ariah thrust out her hand and sent a wave of hardened air towards Kalian’s back, all that was required of him was a quick leap, taking him over the top of her wave. Kovak and Bal were not so lucky. Ariah
’s telekinetic wave picked them both up and carried them violently into the desert, beyond the group.
Kalian was mid-backflip when his consciousness retreated into itself and assessed his surroundings. Time could almost stand still when he reflected like this. His skin fed back the pressure changes in the air, telling him that Ellik was on the move. It was logical to assume that when his feet touched the ground again, the stocky Gomar would be waiting for him. Ariah’s temperature had increased after her attack clumsily worked against the others. Her violent reaction towards Kalian came as no surprise, and he could already feel the air around her open palm heating up, moments away from producing a ball of organic plasma.
A fraction of a second later, Kalian landed with his elbow already in place to smash Ellik’s head back. The Gomar cried out in pain, his nose broken. How many times had he instructed them to shut off their pain receptors? A quick turn on the spot had Kalian avoid the plasma ball from Ariah, leaving the super-heated energy to collide squarely with Ellik’s chest plate. The Gomar cried out again as he was flung off his feet with a burning chest. The nanocelium in his armour would repair itself, but the heat from the plasma would burn his face if he didn’t erect a telekinetic field over the top of it.
“Ariah!” Garrion yelled. “Stop taking us out and hit him!”
In Kalian’s opinion, Garrion was the most technically skilled of them all. Sef was undoubtedly the strongest, but Garrion had a finer level of control the others couldn’t match. As a testament to that fact, Kalian could feel the trachea in his throat closing up, robbing him of breath. It was a precision attack, surgical in nature. What impressed Kalian more was when Garrion waved his hand over the ground, creating a cloud of dust and sand in the hope of blinding him from his physical attack. It was certainly progress. But, as always, it wasn’t enough to bring him down. Kalian subtly flexed his fingers and commanded the ground between himself and Garrion to shift. Some areas cracked while others grew, mirroring the waves of an ocean. The change under Garrion’s charging feet was just enough to make him stumble and fall forwards, where Kalian’s foot was waiting to kick him in the face.
The Terran Cycle Boxset Page 130
