Prophecy
Line of Descent Series, Book 2
Paula Bradley
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.
Copyright © 2013 by Paula Bradley
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.
ISBN: 978-1-62652-449-1
Prologue
The moon shook off a plague of clouds and glared down at the planet below. Trees flinched and grass shivered as lances of cold light pierced the darkness to stab them.
Caught in the moon’s glower, the skulking shadows on the east side of the hangar froze. Camouflaging themselves like chameleons, they blended into the bushes, the walkway, and the low luster metallic walls with its round, impenetrable portal windows. As soon as the light moved on, the wraiths reformed, some of them slithering into the hanger to spy upon its inhabitants.
Several windows became suffused with white light, bathing the only spaceship in the hangar with its lights on. It was the Gandir, the personal vessel of the Prime Commander of the Shekron Military.
#
Two Anorasians in deep conversation by the open hatch were captured in the moon’s flush. The Prime Commander, legs braced, arms wrapped tightly across his chest, scowled at the High Priest before him.
“What you demand is madness,” Commander Nermelis grated. “The risk—‘tis not safe to take the Gandir into space without a minimum complement. We lack flight data calculations, hyperspatial transport points, and...”
“No time is left us, Commander.” Hesad, the High Priest of Touranim, spoke quietly. “Do we not leave immediately, our history will be forever lost.”
The High Priest, or Shel’Zib, had been notified months before by Touranim’s astrophysicists that a huge asteroid and a cluster of large meteoroids were bearing down on their planet, hurtling through space at a rate exceeding one hundred thousand miles-per-hour. They calculated distance and time, predicting that the mass would breach the atmosphere and annihilate their world in approximately six months.
The scientists were baffled: how could such a colossus be so close to their star system and just now record on their instrumentation? They should have had years, more than enough time for the military to magnetically lead the destruction away.
Hesad sat erect in a pod as energy bands tightened comfortably around him. Staring into the captain’s eyes, his pupils dilated imperceptibly. In his anxiety, Hesad’s usually mild and persuasive tone of voice became ragged. “I trust your expertise in guiding the Gandir into space without data from the inference engine. ‘Tis far better we make the attempt to secure the information in this storage unit than not.” Both stared at the device in his lap captured in his powerful grip.
“There is nothing more important than we safeguard this information from Them—not even our lives.”
Nermelis continued to frown. As Prime Commander of Touranim, he was responsible for the High Priest’s safety. However, he knew Hesad would persevere. Further discussion was futile.
#
As Nermelis spun on his heels and headed for the flight deck, Hesad sighed and his pupils returned to their natural state. He was thankful he did not need to use psychic manipulation. While grateful for the captain’s telepathically-received concern for his welfare, he nonetheless knew there was no time to encourage consideration for his personal well-being.
Several minutes passed before he felt the cabin’s pressure increase, a sign that the Gandir’s neural engines had come to life.
Sighing again, he relaxed his hold on the PDSU, the Permanent Data Storage Unit. His right hand slipped down his side, making contact with a second object, the key.
Hesad stared up into the night sky and the confluence of its stars. The moonlight shimmered on his eyelids, now wet with tears and remembrance from the angry emotions which erupted during his meeting with the Council.
There were those who challenged the High Priest’s interpretation of Netsor’ah, the Prophecy. They accused him ofoverreacting by creating the PDSU and its key, the SHARD, the Secured Holographic Archive Retrieval Device, and demanding the two be separated bylight years. What purpose, they argued; no Anorasian would ever find the PDSU and the SHARD. Nor did any of their species possess the degree of telekinetic ability necessary to join the two.
Their concerns were acknowledged and considered; nevertheless, he had remained adamant. In the end, they bowed to his rank if not his wisdom.
It was his vision of this Prophecy received from Shen’dalah which the Council questioned, not wanting to believe that the fate of their entire race was at stake.
Bowing his head, his lips formed the familiar words of prayer: May the light of Shen’dalah bathe the Min’yel’os in forgiveness for what They do, and let Him remove hatred from the heart of his most humble servant.
A thin smile trembled on his lips as he remembered the night in which sleep had eluded him, but instead gave him the vision.
He stood in a forest glade, the fecund air he drew into his lungs laden with moisture. Before him, an ancient stone structure which he knew it to be the Holy Temple of Shen’dalah. Never had he seen anything like this edifice, tucked away in a tropical forest. Six columns, hewn from the trunks of the red s’edra trees and deeply imbedded into the earth fronted the sanctuary, three on each side of the wooden steps that led to an unremarkable door.
Unknown symbols and characters he instinctively knew to be of law, family, honor, and home were etched around the base of each pillar. Also, ten granite stelae were arrayed around the temple like sentinels, some fifteen, some twenty feet tall.
He climbed the steps lethargically and pushed down on the door’s handle. It opened into a room dimly lit by a sun unable to find more than a minor breach in the barrier of surrounding trees. The moist air from without, coupled with the dust of neglect from within, produced sluggish motes that hung suspended in the air. Through the faint light, Hesad saw rows of benches made of the same s’edra wood on either side of a center aisle. At the opposite end of the room stood a stone altar nearly obscured by shadow with what appeared to be a golden object atop it.
He had nearly reached the altar when a blue light of magnificent intensity flooded the room. Hesad became blind to all but the figure that burst from the core of the brilliance, swathed in a golden robe that seemed aflame. Stunned, he knew for a certainty that he stood before the Great and Glorious Shen’dalah. Hesad immediately assumed the position of supplication by prostrating himself, his face in the dirt, his arms extended outward.
The fiery figure hovered inches above the floor. Thoughts combined with both volatile and soothing emotions poured into Hesad’s mind from Him the Most Revered. It was Netsor’ah, the Prophecy, its meaning mystical and mostly obscured by the language pattern and style. His mind absorbed then floundered.
He saw birth then death. There was also misunderstanding and great vengeance. Destruction—then annihilation? For his race, the whole galaxy—perchance the universe?
Hesad tried to keep his panic at bay as more flooded his brain. There: a reference to an entity misused in the hands of those who misinterpreted its intent. What was this entity? And who were those bent on its perversion?
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p; And more: an allusion to a second entity, one that would cause destruction on a magnagorical scale. The name “Sov’dovaris” filled his mind as his heart pounded painfully in his chest, envisioning galaxies exploding into gas and dust while a fiend howled maniacally.
And what, or who, was this third entity? Its name flooded his brain: Man’asorai. Which would mayhap save the galaxy from extinction?
The only part of Netsor’ah he understood was the reference to the decline of his race’s evolution. This abomination was the creation of the Min’yel’os, They who would stunt the natural growth and development of his race for reasons depraved and self-seeking.
He had ground his teeth in frustration; however, for some inexplicable reason, he did not despair.
Hesad had created the Permanent Data Storage Unit and a plan to prevent its discovery when he discovered the genocidal plot authored by the Min’yel’os, the governing body of his home world. With the gifted sight passed on by the legions of High Priests before him, he knew the entire Anorasian race, not only the inhabitants of Touranim, was in jeopardy. His shoulders hunched with the burden of knowledge he could never share.
If there would never be one with psychic power sufficient to find and open the PDSU with the SHARD, his race was doomed to extinction. But Hesad knew it was necessary to set the task to near impossible: if easier, the Min’yel’os would find and destroy both devices.
Hesad knew it was incumbent upon him and him alone to ward not only his race, but all the beings in the far-seeking galaxies that were doomed to extinction if the one chosen by Shen’dalah did not materialize and eradicate the malignancy. The Prophecy would prevail, of this he was certain. But which entity would, in the end, triumph?
He was jolted from his reverie when he felt the Gandir shudder. For a moment he was mired in overwhelming sadness. He knew for a certainty that this coming catastrophe heralded the demise of his beloved planet, Touranim. He would not live to see the rebirth and enlightenment of his people, but he would cease his existence blessed in the knowledge that the information in this PDSU would survive.
The Gandir banked sharply then wobbled. Hesad peered out the portal. Terrified, he beheld the instrument of their demise—an engorged asteroid accompanied by many bloated meteoroids sent by the Min’yel’os. Only four of the six months predicted by the astrophysicists had passed; the scientists had miscalculated the speed of the monstrosity. Even he could never have comprehended its magnitude.
#
While Hesad was lost in thought, Nermelis had encountered the advancing devastation as he sped toward outer space. Entering into evasive maneuvers, he was unaware that one huge segment, some two thousand feet in length, had broken from the main body and was mere seconds from plowing into the surface of Touranim’s moon. As the Gandir dropped beneath a large fragment in order to avoid a collision, Nermelis became alarmed. He was closer to the moon than he would have liked. Before he could ascend to a safer height, the concussive blast, caused by the impact of the fragmented meteoroid colliding with the moon’s surface, hit the Gandir—and the massive shock waves penetrated its protective force fields.
The spaceship’s primary systems were permanently disabled. Blinded and incapable of deflecting the energy and the vaporized magma streaming spaceward, it could not jump into hyperspace. With the on-board processing unit powerless to bring the local space drive back on line, the spacecraft carrying the High Priest was sucked into the gravity of the moon. Nermelis fought in vain as it spiraled toward the surface, but he could not bring up the Gandir’s nose.
#
Although prepared, Hesad’s heart nevertheless thumped wildly in his chest at the knowledge that his life was at an end. He knew the Prime Commander could not clear the moon’s gravity and maneuver the weighty spaceship out of the path of death, even with his skill and psychic energy.
Minutes before it crashed, Hesad slipped out of his pod and into an airlock. Without hesitation, he activated the sequence that opened the hatch. His body was sucked out of the airlock and he died instantly in the airborne lava. The PDSU grasped in his hands and its key, the SHARD, clutched under his arm, were blown clear of the hull. With his last breath, he had saved the two devices from annihilation.
As the Gandir erupted into an inferno of metal and gas, the PDSU hit the surface, bouncing several times before rolling down a small decline. It came to rest in a slight depression, five hundred feet north of the wreckage. The case that held the SHARD glanced off a rock and flew into the air, flipping end-over-end, finally coming to ground nearly a thousand feet west of the incinerated mass.
Hesad’s plan had been thwarted; the PDSU and the SHARD were but marginally separated. Even though unlikely, it was more possible the Min’yel’os would discover and destroy them, eradicating the genocide of his planet from all records.
But the asteroid never entered Touranim’s atmosphere. It was deflected by a natural cluster of meteoroids, missing the planet by only fifteen thousand miles.
#
For nearly sixty-five million years, the PDSU and the SHARD remained undisturbed under the fine lunar dust. This unremarkable satellite would have been their final destination but for the occurrence of another meteoroid shower, again sent by the Min’yel’os once They learned that Touranim was still viable. Many fragments pelted the moon’s surface as it roared out of the galaxy, but most of the deadly mass kept on its collision course to Touranim.
One meteoroid struck the spot where the Gandir had gone down. Its impact blasted the PDSU and SHARD into the sky where they became coated with hot gases and debris. Rippling shock waves then flung them out of the moon’s gravity and into the gravitational pull of Touranim where they maintained unstable and separate trajectories.
Fifty thousand years later, the PDSU’s orbit finally deteriorated and it fell to the planet’s surface. No one was there to mark its arrival on a plateau atop the tallest of a three mountain range. The soft dirt and gravel of the elevated land prevented damage to the data unit even though its hardened coating of gas and debris cracked.
Three hundred years afterward, the SHARD’s orbit finally degenerated. It fared better than its counterpart: it landed in desert sand.
Separated again but at a greater distance this time, the PDSU and the SHARD remained, as they had always been—inanimate and waiting…
Chapter 1
The Personal Transport Vehicle was tossed mercilessly by the gale as it attempted to stabilize itself.
“Inadvisable to proceed. Correct course now,” droned the mechanical monotone emanating from the PTV’s on-line processor.
“Received and acknowledged.” Ton Re’Sateron spoke through gritted teeth. “Maintain current coordinates as instructed.”
“Continuing present course is imprudent. Destination may be reached utilizing less hazardous approach. Relinquish manual control.”
“Flame you, cease whining and maintain your present course!”
Battling the two-hundred-fifty mile winds howling around it, the PTV made instantaneous and continuous corrections in an attempt to keep from crashing into the Ephres Ridge. The gale tossed it from side to side then tried to upend it by butting the tail end from below while hammering the nose from above. Sizzling jags of lightning repeatedly struck the craft, its protective energy shield sparkling as it stumbled and lurched like a Saturday night drunk.
Ton Re’Sateron gnashed his teeth and snarled, his fist slamming down on the armrest. The changes he had made to the ship’s intelligence matrix were proving insufficient.
It was not the first time he questioned the sanity of the Builders in creating intelligent modules that harped and scolded incessantly if one attempted something unconventional. This sniveling lump of holoformed composites wished only to arrive at its destination by the least harmful—and boring—route.
Once again, Sateron was thwarted from entering his laboratory by the most direct route. With an elaborate sigh, he relinquished control with a jab at the panel array. Instantly t
he PTV nosed south, then upward, clearing the worst of the maelstrom.
The frustration etched on the Anorasian’s face gave way to a frown of annoyance which then softened to acceptance as his craft hovered motionlessly above the west bank of the gorge. This archaic form of transportation, albeit mandatory for travel between the three sister planets of the Zubeln star system, stretched his already limited patience. Yet he was exhilarated, having pit his combative strategies against the maniacal winds bent on his obliteration.
Not one to readily admit defeat, he nevertheless considered himself courageous, not imprudent. He would no longer attempt the shorter route by entering into contest with the Agrist K’anna, this gorge too fierce an opponent even for his considerable talents. As with any formidable foe he saluted, acknowledging its superiority. He would need to find another outlet to vent the disappointment caused by his failure to extract even one living cell from Noreptal’s long-extinct riverway. His need to ascertain that life had existed on one, two, or all three of the sister planets was paramount to his experiments.
The Personal Transport Vehicle sped southward, eating up the ten-mile distance to the canyon’s entrance. When it reached its destination it slowed, dipped then banked sharply to the left as it slipped into the narrow opening. Once inside, it picked up speed heading north, returning controls to Sateron.
From bedrock to approximately one thousand feet up, only a quarter of a mile separated the Ephres Ridge from the Piseda Ridge, its twin to the east. At this level, the blow did not have room to whip up into anything more than an uninteresting breeze of twenty-five miles-per-hour.
Nonetheless, the trip to the lab entrance was not without some adventure. The way was punctuated by precision maneuvers around lethal rock projections—sharp turns left, quick rotations right, and shortcuts over a quartz labyrinth that took the Anorasian into more exciting turbulence, accompanied by the ever-present puling monotone of the PTV chiding him for recklessness.
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