Ruins of the Galaxy Box Set: Books 1-6

by Chaney, J. N.

  “What in all the mystics happened down there?” Awen demanded.

  Azelon stood on the bridge as if Awen had asked her about the weather forecast or how to reach the nearest bathroom on the ship. “Could you please provide additional information?”

  “No,” Awen shouted. “You know exactly what I’m talking about, and your sensors monitored the whole thing!” She knew she was letting her emotions get the best of her. But this AI knew more than she was letting on. “I thought you said the power suits we designed would keep Piper from hurting herself, and she almost lost her mind!”

  “I do believe that Awen is upset with you, Azelon,” TO-96 offered.

  “Upset?” Awen asked, striding up to the nav bot. “Oh, this is not upset. This is way past upset, Ninety-Six. This is I’m going to feed your body to the incinerator and rip your motherboard out of the ship. You read me?”

  “Loud and clear, Awen.” TO-96 turned to Azelon. “I do believe you are what humanoids call in trouble.”

  Azelon looked between TO-96 and Awen several times before asking Awen, “How may I be of assistance?”

  “For starters, I want to know everything there is to know about whatever is going on in the Unity on that island.”

  “I’m afraid that such a task may exceed your life span, Awen.”

  “Then expedite the process with the most pertinent data.”

  “Acknowledged. The island of Ni No was an early settlement of the protectorate sect, the one ordained by the Novia Minoosh’s core council to both shield the Novia populace and attack those who might do them harm.”

  “You already told me all that. I want to know how they did what they did, Azelon.”

  “With regard to…?”

  “With regard to their powers in the Unity.”

  “Acknowledged. Thank you for clarifying. Each member of the Gladio Umbra—”

  “The what?” Awen asked.

  “The Gladio Umbra—loosely translated as sword shadow—were individually selected from the Novia’s priestly sect on account of their devotion, vigilance, and fluidity.”

  “Fluidity? Explain that.”

  “Fluidity: the candidate must demonstrate interleaving proficiency within the levels of the Unity, far exceeding that of—”

  “Whoa. Hold on.” Awen waved her hands in the air. “Go back. Levels of the Unity? You’re saying there’s more to the Unity than the Unity?”

  Azelon tilted her head. “In asking me ‘more to the Unity than the Unity,’ I deduce that you are referring to portions of the Unity that you are unfamiliar with. If that is your intended meaning, then the answer is yes. There are three levels to the unity.”

  Awen felt light-headed. This was news to her. “Why didn’t I know about this?”

  “It is clearly stated in the codex.”

  “The codex?” She was having trouble keeping up.

  “The primary source book of the ancients, kept until recently in the temple library in Itheliana.”

  “You mean… the book that So-Elku stole?”

  “If you are referring to the human who departed the system bearing the codex, then yes—So-Elku.”

  Awen put one hand on her hip and ran the other one over her face. “I can’t believe this.”

  “I can provide holo-footage of the event if you like.”

  “Mystics, no. That’s not what I meant.”

  “It is another figure of speech,” TO-96 said to Azelon.

  “Acknowledged.”

  This was big. Really big. Whatever the Novia had discovered meant that there was more to the universe—the universes—than anyone had ever known. Mystics, this is confusing. Awen’s head hurt. She needed to sit down. And she needed a stiff drink.

  “May I offer an observation, Awen?” TO-96 asked.

  “At this point, anything that helps clarify this mess would be greatly appreciated.”

  “Understood. It seems that both you and Piper were operating within a vacuum within the Unity.”

  “A what?”

  “Granted, I am new to all this discussion of the Unity. My presence within Novia’s singularity is, without a doubt, the most fascinating element of my existence to date.”

  “Less personal commentary please, Ninety-Six.”

  “Ah, quite right. My apologies, Awen. My hypothesis is as follows. The environment that the Gladio Umbra cultivated was accustomed to operators who navigated the multiple realms of the Unity at once. Two new operators—you and Piper—who were only used to navigating in one realm would, therefore, be drawn to the others. This follows the fundamental law of physics that postulates that atmosphere always seeks to fill a vacuum. My scenario seems all the more applicable when an operator of immense power is introduced into the vacuum. The greater the atmosphere, the greater the vacuum—”

  “The greater the force,” Awen finished. “Which is why Piper was so easily pulled deeper into her experience in the Unity.”

  “Precisely.”

  “I can corroborate TO-96’s hypothesis,” Azelon said. “It is rational and holds up to my own analysis.”

  “Thank you, Azelon,” TO-96 said with what sounded like genuine gratitude in his voice.

  “You are most welcome, TO-96.”

  “You flatter me—”

  “Get a room!” Awen shouted. Then she froze, cupping her hand over her mouth. “Mystics, I’m so sorry. That was highly inappropriate of me.” She needed sleep. And time to think.

  TO-96 blinked several times. “Awen, if you are referring to biological reproductive copulation and the colloquial behavior of securing a paid space for said activity, might I remind you that Azelon and I—”

  “Are robots. I know, I know.” She pinched the bridge of her nose, squinting against a growing headache. “Like I said, sorry. I’m tired, I’m upset, and I’ve got to figure out how to teach a little girl to control her abilities in not one, not two, but three ethereal realms of the cosmos in two different universes before she hurts herself or someone else.”

  “Would summary teachings of the Gladio Umbra help?” Azelon asked.

  Awen released her nose and looked up. “Wait. What?”

  “Would summary teachings of—”

  “I heard what you said. I mean, you have that?”

  “Of course, Awen. Shall I compile an archive based upon the most pertinent aspects of the ancients’ teachings with specific regard to your training of Piper?”

  “Mystics, yes!”

  “Acknowledged.” Azelon paused for a second then said, “A tiered document has been delivered to the ship’s data system, accessible from any terminal, filed under ‘Gladio Umbra, a Brief History,’ accessible by your voice command.”

  “Azelon, I take back every bad thing I ever said about you.”

  “How many bad things did you say about me? And will they compromise my system?”

  “Apparently not, because you bots are still annoying, but I can’t seem to get along without you.”

  “I believe that was a compliment, though I am having trouble parsing the implicit speech.” Azelon looked at TO-96.

  “It is a vexing and often deeply taxing endeavor,” TO-96 replied. “But a rewarding one nonetheless, I assure you.”

  * * *

  Awen sat alone in her quarters with her feet propped up on her desk—one towel wrapped around her torso, another around her drying hair. Despite the Spire being a warship, the Novia’s larger physiology meant that each crew cabin was more spacious than anything she’d ever been used to. The extra room was a welcome change that she took full advantage of.

  Awen had treated herself to a hot shower. The running water helped clear her head, especially after the day’s events. Which were what, exactly?

  Mind-blowing, that’s what.

  Piper’s abilities were more than Awen could have imagined, amplified further by the forces explained by TO-96’s vacuum theory. Together, they’d made for an out-of-control free fall into the Unity that had almost killed Piper. It probably
would have killed Awen and most everyone else on the island had the energy gone nova.

  Awen took a sip of that strong drink she’d requested. TO-96 made sure the replicator created something as close to Gundonium bratch as possible. It stung going down, but it worked like a charm on her headache. She swirled the golden liquid in the glass before downing the remainder in a final swig.

  “Computer, access file name Gladio Umbra, a Brief History.”

  “Accessed. Request confirmation name required.”

  “Awen dau Lothlinium.”

  “Receipt confirmed. File transferred.”

  A small blue icon glowed twenty centimeters above the desk. The symbol was a circle, open on the bottom, with a pointed arrow touching the inside top. It rotated steadily as the word Open hovered beneath it. Awen removed her feet from the table and adjusted the towel holding up her wet hair.

  “Here goes nothing.” She touched the floating symbol.

  Glowing holo-pages appeared in a thick stack, extending to the wall and fading into infinity. She could see from the first page that the documents had been translated into Galactic common.

  “Thanks, Ninety-Six.” She pulled up the first page, adjusting it to suit her desired reading preferences.

  The Gladio Umbra had indeed been an elite sect of the Novia, selected on account of their abilities—both natural and acquired. But according to this account, they’d also been misfits of one sort or another. It seemed that their organizational priorities had clashed with those of the Novia’s ruling body. Awen had realized long ago that the politics of any civilization were as complicated to the native species as they were to outsiders. The Novia Minoosh were no exception.

  The Novia had plenty of enemies in their day, and successfully fending off assaults, both foreign and domestic, had become a priority. But to achieve an adequate level of proficiency, the Gladio Umbra needed their own space for advancement—or as one translation termed it, meditation. It seemed that the distractions of everyday Novia life prevented them from doing their job defending the populace at large.

  Thus, it was eventually decided that the Gladio Umbra would leave Ithnor Ithelia and take up residence on the less-desirable planet of Nieth Tearness. Here, they would be free to pursue all means necessary to ensure the survival of their people, providing both a shadow to keep the Novia hidden from the enemy’s sight and a sword to dispatch any hostile force that decided the Novia was too enticing a prize to pass up.

  From within their sanctum on Ni No, the Gladio Umbra discovered that there were indeed two more levels to the Unity. This fact sent Awen on a study binge that made her lose all sense of time. Within the Unity, the most general realm, lay the Foundation—the fundamental plane that defined the origin of all things. As implied by its name, this plane appeared as a broad valley far below everything that Awen had ever explored. Immediately, she wanted nothing more than to see it.

  Below the Foundation was yet another realm—something the Gladio Umbra called the Nexus. It was the Unity’s root network, which served all things that grew from the Foundation, sort of like an underground root structure for a vast forest. Apparently, the accumulated power of the Nexus was so strong that only the greatest Gladio Umbra were able to move within it. Anyone daring to stretch into its reaches for too long without adequate training risked absorption into the network and would be lost forever.

  The co-planetary existence between the Novia’s general populace and Gladio Umbra worked well for a few hundred years. But as time went on, the Gladio Umbra became both revered and scorned by the Novia. Something they have in common with the Luma, Awen thought. On one side, the protectors of the populace were honored for their courage in the face of danger and violence of action. On the other, their adherence to time-honored traditions felt antiquated, especially when the Gladio Umbra became critical of the Novia. At first, their criticisms were held in confidence, shared only as warnings. But as the Novia slipped further away from their founding ideals, the Gladio Umbra’s warnings turned into prophetic chastisements. The Novia populace had no stomach for the forceful admonishments, and they distanced themselves from the monastic order altogether.

  When the Gladio Umbra were no longer interested in preserving what the Novia Minoosh had become, and the Novia Minoosh no longer required the Gladio Umbra’s antiquated means of protection, the two groups parted ways. To Awen’s amazement, the disagreements became so strong that the Gladio Umbra eventually boarded ships and left the star system altogether.

  “Never to be heard from again,” Awen read aloud. She sat back and pulled her towel up a little higher over her chest. “So that’s how you were abandoned.” Her thoughts drifted to the small island of Ni No.

  Awen would have loved to see the Gladio Umbra in their prime. Aside from wondering what they looked like—a significant omission that seemed to permeate all of Azelon’s files on the Novia Minoosh—Awen imagined that there were many rhetorical similarities between them and the Luma. Except that the Gladio Umbra didn’t turn on one another, Awen reminded herself. Still, they had in common the sacred call to protect civilization against evil. Until the Luma forgot it, that is.

  Awen let her eyes linger on the words Gladio Umbra. Perhaps it was time for the order to be resurrected.

  25

  “Are you ready?” Awen asked Piper. They sat on the boulders together, now on their seventh day of training. The morning sun was burning off the dew while a stiff breeze blew in from the ocean.

  “I think so.” Piper shook her head. “Yes. Yes, I’m ready, teacher.”

  Awen winced at the word teacher. The word had started to annoy her over the past days. It wasn’t a bad word so much as it was connected to something that she didn’t much care for anymore—the Luma. She’d learned new words in the last week that she thought of using with Piper instead of the Luma’s terms.

  “Good, doma,” Awen said, introducing the Gladio Umbra’s word for apprentice for the first time.

  Piper cocked her head. “What’d you call me?”

  “Doma,” Awen replied. “It’s an old word… a word that the Gladio Umbra used for someone just like you.”

  “Doma,” Piper repeated. “I like it.”

  “As do I.”

  “Do I have a new word for you?”

  Awen raised her eyebrows. She hadn’t really thought about that, but yes, there was a word for Awen’s position. “Shydoh. You may call me shydoh.”

  “That sounds pretty. I like it. Shydoh.”

  Hearing Piper say the ancient word made the hair on the back of Awen’s neck stand up. Awen realized that these weren’t just words—they were something stronger. Could they even be weapons? Maybe that was why she’d been so unprepared for what had happened to Piper on the first training day. Awen had taken Piper into the Unity expecting to be a Luma, planning to use the unseen realm for peace. But there was another aspect to the Unity that she never would have thought to explore. Power.

  Awen had been far more cautious since the near-fatal events of that first day. She’d been reckless to try to make such hasty advancements with Piper. Her enthusiasm and curiosity had gotten in the way of her judgment, and she’d nearly lost Piper over it. Not anymore, she’d thought. Never again.

  Every night after parting ways with Piper, Awen walked back to the temple and took out her data pad. She pored over the documents that Azelon provided on the Gladio Umbra, often forgetting to eat, drink, or sleep for hours at a time. Awen soon realized that she couldn’t take Piper to places in the Unity that she hadn’t been to herself. So the more Awen read, the more she delighted in exploring the Unity’s deeper realms and learning about the Gladio Umbra and their ways.

  Still in her power suit, Awen would lay the data pad aside—sitting in the middle of the floor with her legs folded beneath her—and slip into the Unity. Unlike Piper’s suit, which served to curb the girl’s powerful surges, Awen’s suit acted as an amplifier, giving new strength to her abilities in the Unity. Awen burned through the
midnight hours, exploring the Unity’s Foundation and then—like a miner digging for treasure—diving into what the Gladio Umbra called the Nexus.

  But whenever Awen’s thoughts turned toward So-Elku, she shivered to think what he might be doing with his version of the newfound knowledge. Azelon had informed Awen that the book So-Elku had stolen contained information about the Foundation and the Nexus. Cursory as the codex explanations were, Awen knew that the Luma Master was powerful and resourceful—he would be working on exploring the same realms as Awen. That scared her. It also motivated her to move Piper along as fast as possible without harming her. If So-Elku knew about Piper and her powers, he would want the little girl for his own purposes and corrupt her even as a child. As soon as Piper’s presence was felt in the Unity—and perhaps So-Elku had already sensed her—Awen guessed he would stop at nothing to capture the girl. Awen would do everything she could to train and protect Piper.

  “You ready, doma?”

  “Sure am, shydoh.”

  Awen squeezed Piper’s hands, and the two slipped into the Unity.

  * * *

  “Today, I want to take you somewhere new,” Awen said.

  “New?”

  Awen could hear the excitement in Piper’s voice as the two of them floated high above the island. They were at least a thousand meters from the ocean’s surface, watching the world from within their second sight. Everything shimmered with ever-unfolding layers. The seabirds left long trails of glowing particles behind them, flitting about in the wind. The rays of the sun sparkled in slender shafts that stretched to infinity. And the ocean hummed like the low notes of a stringed instrument, creating harmonies that could be heard all the way out in space.

  “I want to take you to the Foundation,” Awen said. “It is something I have only just started to discover myself. And beyond that, the Nexus.”

  “Is it safe?” Piper asked.

  “Index finger.”

  “Sorry.” Piper raised her finger.

  “Yes, doma?” Awen asked.