Calling Tower (The Calling Tower Saga Book 1)

by Josh Leone

  Calling

  Tower

  Josh Leone

  Copyright © 2015 Josh Leone

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1514363488

  ISBN-13: 978-1514363488

  for Suzanne

  My imagination created this world, but your faith in me gave it life.

  Any similarity between anything in Calling Tower and any people, places, or products in the real world is entirely coincidental.

  The author would like to acknowledge

  the editorial support of Paige, Amanda, and Jean.

  Thanks for taking time out of your busy schedules

  to read those rough drafts.

  Any errors that remain are my fault alone

  Chapter One

  Death and birth are merely transitional states of being, one leading to the other.

  -Book of Gifts (10-6)

  The planet had been insignificant, just another nearly Earth-sized marble floating in space around an unremarkable star. But there had been beauty. Water vapor hung in drifting clouds that touched a surface covered in something very similar to fast growing clover.

  The only other life forms upon the surface were flat, vast creatures, the eldest of which measured more than a kilometer and a half square. The flat creatures traveled slowly during the long days, searching out areas of brief clarity between the clouds where they could spread wide and collect energy while the underside of their bodies exuded digestive chemicals, liquefying the clover. Millions of tiny, straw-like tubules sucked in the liquid and provided the creatures with everything the sun did not offer.

  The creatures communicated using flashes of color for general things and chemical exchange for their most intimate conversations. The creatures loved, laughed, and took simple joy in their uncomplicated lives. They lived in perfect balance and knew only peace.

  While the creatures themselves were not catalogued, their planet was. It had been designated Sig-781-A in the stellar cartography database of another species, one that did not know the peace of the flat, vast creatures. Humanity had recorded the planet but, until its enemies had begun using Sig-781-A as a supply depot, had had no interest in it.

  The nature of war dictated that what one’s enemy wanted must be denied them. It had taken less than an hour to blast the surface of Sig-781-A clear of life. One might consider the genocide a mercy of sorts, since the natives had been so perfectly adapted to their world they would never have been able to live on another. Even if they could have, the charred tableau left behind would have driven them mad with grief. They were simple but wise. They would have known that death is sometimes better.

  Szoveda Sha and his four companions knew about the native life and regretted that its destruction was required in the name of the Holy Mother. But they felt no guilt over it. Their regret was for the fact that the simple and peaceful creatures had had the misfortune of being natives of a world other than Earth, that they had not been born human, a child of the Holy Mother. But Sha and his fellow warriors knew that the creatures’ deaths would give them a chance to be reborn into the blessed family of humanity.

  The fleet of the Human Primacy, after a short battle in space, had bombarded the planet, scouring it clean of enemy resistance. The enemy were not the natives of Sig-781-A of course. They had merely been unfortunate collateral damage. The enemies of the moment were the Vodule.

  The Vodule bore only a passing resemblance to any Earth-born insect, but a human would make the association without pause. Averaging two meters in height with armored bodies stooped over long, multi-jointed legs, the Vodule might have been described by one not versed in xeno-biology as a cross between a flea and a kangaroo, leaning heavily toward flea. Faceted eyes surmounted a head set atop a flexible, extendable neck. The neck connected to carapace-covered body from which extended a pair of low hanging arms that, at what could be called the elbow, separated into dual sets of manipulators, two ending in powerful pincers and two ending in hands equipped with three fingers and an opposable thumb.

  The Vodule’s primary advantage in its war against the Primacy rested in greater numbers. From egg to adult, a Vodule soldier required only a few weeks. Basic genetic knowledge was passed from queen to larva directly, leaving only the more complex skills requiring training - skills such as using weapons and other necessary technologies, though even in these a Vodule was gifted with powerful natural talent.

  The Vodule were tunnel makers by nature and in the short time they had been using Sig-781-A as a supply base, they’d excavated a vast complex of passages and chambers deep beneath the planet’s surface, too deep for the orbital bombardment to reach.

  The mission of Sha’s team wasn’t specifically combat-oriented, though they knew fighting would be a part of it. They were a scouting party. The five-person squad’s job was to search out the location of the local Vodule queen, then launch a driller-beacon that would make its way to the surface and send a signal to the orbiting fleet. Once that was done Sha and his squad were to keep the Vodule busy.

  The mission had taken almost twenty-three days, Earth Standard Time (EST). While a great deal of fighting had been done, the squad had not yet lost a single member, which would come as no great surprise to anyone, least of all Sha himself. The squad consisted entirely of Honored Returned, the most elite corps of holy warriors humanity had ever fielded. Viewed as semi-divine heroes by most humans, the Honored Returned were warriors equipped with the most powerful bodies and weaponry human science could provide.

  Despite the length of the scouting mission, and the fact that no member of the squad had actually slept since deployment by drop-pod, they showed not the slightest sign of fatigue - another advantage of their enhanced physiologies, one of many.

  As the squad had progressed over passing days, they knew by the concentration of the enemy forces that they were on the correct path toward the central chamber and the local queen. Once the queen was destroyed, the morale of the Vodule would suffer and it would just be a matter of cleaning up the stragglers.

  The opening to the main chamber was small, just big enough for Sha to stand upright in, which is to say, just over two meters. Two of the Honored Returned could stand shoulder-to-shoulder. But while the opening was somewhat small, the chamber itself was huge, easily half a kilometer long, by almost that distance wide. The ceiling was in shadows but Sha’s neurotech told him it was more than ninety-one meters away. Vodule, hundreds of them, occupied the chamber.

  Behind him, two of Sha’s warriors brought shoulder mounted weapons up to a proper firing angle. The weapons fired with only small popping sounds. The rounds were canisters, each approximately half a meter in length and twelve centimeters in diameter. Once clear of the launchers the outer casings broke away, revealing a dozen, needle shaped, short range attack drones.

  Each drone sought out a target, buried itself in carapace, and exploded into its unlucky victim. Each launcher fired six times, rotating a large cylinder as it popped, readying another round. The two launchers clicked empty at exactly the same moment. The Returned holding the empty drone-launchers knelt down to allow the two behind them to open fire and to give their weapons’ integral factories a chance to print and load new canisters of drones. This went on for three reloads until the weapons ran out of raw material. By that point, the Vodule were too close for ranged combat anyway.

  Sha centered his mind, knowing the other Returned under his command were doing the same. They were all veterans of many battles and it took just a few seconds of real time for Sha to direct his neurotech enhanced psi to accumulate in his right hand.

  Among the many gifts bestowed upon an Honored Returned, the
linkblade was surely among the greatest, second only to the Returning itself. The blade drew upon Sha’s own latent psychic energy (psi). The weapon was a direct extension of a Returned’s will. Precise mental focus allowed the formation of, what in Sha’s hands, was a length of seemingly solid, flat light. There were minor differences in the blade shape of each Returned’s weapon, based on skill and personal visualization. But no matter what its appearance, the linkblade of an Honored Returned was the ultimate symbol of his or her service to the Holy Mother Earth.

  The blade was not exactly a physical object, and when passing through inorganic material it did little harm. But through an electrical system, such as living flesh, the blade essentially overcharged the wiring, burning it out with sometimes spectacular results. The linkblade was ideal against naturally armored enemies like the Vodule, whose thick carapace could withstand heavy damage from conventional weapons. The linkblade simply bypassed armor, natural and otherwise, destroying nervous systems and even exploding individual cells in its passing.

  Sha’s linkblade met the first wave of Vodule, sweeping back and forth disabling half a dozen Vodule with each pass. Behind him, Sha’s team spread out and began scything down multitudes of Vodule soldiers as the Returned waded through fallen, twitching bodies. Over the din of battle Sha’s enhanced hearing was able to identify the tell-tale sound of massive versions of the drillers Sha’s squad had loosed.

  Sha’s neurotech used the sound and knowledge of the composition of geologic material in this area to calculate approximately how far away the drillers were from breaking though into the chamber. There was no need to share this information with his squad. Their neurotech would be making the same calculation and each of the Returned knew what to do in the short time they had left.

  It had taken only minutes for the squad to get separated from each other by the tidal force of the attacking Vodule. From above one could have identified exactly where each of the blessed warriors stood by noting the circular ripples of attacking Vodule. In the center of each, surrounded by growing mounds of dead and dying enemy bodies, bright flashes of discharging psi could be seen as linkblades took a deadly toll upon Vodule desperate to protect their queen. Sha appreciated the valiant efforts of his opponents. Such nobility would certainly insure rebirth in human form for all of those that died by the hands of the Holy Mother’s chosen warriors. Sha felt joy for the creatures as they died.

  Several of the Vodule had managed to penetrate his nano-armor and his injuries were beginning to overwhelm his body’s internal repair functions. His strength ebbed and his linkblade began to flare as his psi reserves were taxed. A brief check confirmed that the other Returned were also reaching the end of their reserves. Sha let his blade dissipate and ordered his nano-armor to encase him as he folded his body into a fetal crouch. The silver fluid of the armor swarmed around his form, and solidified into maximum hardness. The shell would provide only a few seconds of protection, but it would be enough to initiate Sha’s Sending.

  Knowing that each of his fellow Returned were doing the same, Sha pushed away all stray thought, all emotion. He visualized his psi building and it did. It accumulated in a small, imaginary, floating sphere located just below his navel. It was added to with each breath, compressing under Sha’s will, growing brighter and hotter as it did. Sha compressed the psi sphere into the size of a pea, and then compressed it more, to a pinhead. When Sha had compressed his psi as much as his will would allow, he broke the shell around his body, flung his arms wide, and screamed so loud the attacking Vodule paused in their effort to slay him.

  Where Sha and the other Returned had stood, there were now only smoking craters surrounded by hundreds of burned Vodule. In the next moment, the drillers broke through the cavern ceiling, falling to the ground and allowing tens of thousands of needle-drones to swarm into the Vodule hive. The remaining Vodule were shredded by the drones, as was their queen. As predicted, the soldiers that came after the drone swarm met little resistance. Sig-781-A was liberated.

  Within hours automated factory ships were printing components for defense installations, material processing plants, and terraforming devices that would, over the next few months, produce everything required to transform Sig-781-A into an Earth-like planet, suitable for human life.

  Sha’s consciousness knew none of this, existing as it did only as data transmitted from the site of its release back to Earth, where it was processed by the Calling Tower matrix, and DLed into an upgraded body, one custom made to resemble his original features, those of the body Sha had been born with one-hundred, twenty-six years prior.

  The new body was his fourteenth, and like every one before it, it was an improvement on the previous one, incorporating every advancement science had made since his previous DL. This was the Returning, the greatest gift of the Holy Mother Earth, offered to her most blessed children through the miracle of the Calling Tower.

  ◊

  The quantum entangled consciousness of the Honored Returned made the journey from where its body died back to the Calling Tower in less time than could be accurately measured by the most precise chronometers. As a result, Sha had been DLed into his new body long before Pietra Meot returned from her own mission as commander of the Divine Legion carrier, Elegant Night. The Elegant Night was basically a two-kilometer hollow tube with a box at the front consisting of bridge, crew quarters, etc., and a box at the back for engines, storage compartments, and other automated systems.

  At regular intervals along the central tube, spokes stuck out like quills on a porcupine. At the end of each spoke one of several types of fast attack ship was kept at the ready. The carrier was equipped with a phase engine and could carry its hundreds of specialized ships into battle, where they would break off and attack a target.

  The crew of the Elegant Night consisted of Pietra, her second, and a chief engineer. There were also twenty human pilots whose computer assisted brains could each control a squad of fifteen attack ships. Three-hundred attack ships, plus the not insignificant firepower of the Elegant Night itself made for a terrifying amount of raw destructive force at Pietra Meot’s command. It was a taxing burden, and she was glad to be home for some well-deserved leave.

  The ship’s flight path was entirely automatic once the carrier passed the outer defense perimeter of Sol system. The Night docked at one of the thousands of repair facilities orbiting Jupiter. The three person crew and the twenty pilots disembarked and made their way to whatever transport ship they’d been assigned to for the final leg of the flight home. Pietra lived on Earth itself, a rare privilege for one of her rank, but of course the accommodation had little to do with her and everything to do with her husband.

  Walking to her shuttle, Pietra accessed the Legion’s secure quantum network and uploaded her mission-related memory logs. At the same time she opened a link to the civilian q-net and put in a request for a ground car to be waiting for her upon arrival. Pietra liked ground cars, especially after a long mission. The feel of the vehicle moving over actual terrain always helped settle her thoughts.

  The shuttle maintained a leisurely rate of speed, so the journey to Earth took a little over an hour. As the shuttle left the station, Pietra was able to look out of the shielded window at her ship. The Elegant Night was already swarming with bots busily repairing and refreshing everything from the engine core to the micro-damage that occurred during normal flight. By the time she returned to the Elegant Night, it would be like new, right down to the name painted in bright yellow below the command deck’s panoramic window.

  There was no need for the window, but almost every ship had at least one. The transparent material was as strong as any other part of the ship and humans liked to see where they were going. For Pietra, it wouldn’t be the same without the big window. There was little she loved more than looking at the stars.

  The docking ring her shuttle connected to held hundreds of elevators of various sizes. She found one that was empty and rode down the kilometers-long structure t
o Earth’s surface where she quickly found the waiting car in a nearby lot. Two hours of relaxing as the car drove her to her final destination, home.

  It was a picturesque little house surrounded by a lawn of smart-grass. It was painted white and had shutters in a style she liked. Adding to the cozy, ancient look was an actual picket fence with a gate across a stone walkway.

  On the front porch standing in front of a rocking chair he’d made himself out of real wood, Szoveda Sha smiled. He put down the flimsey he was reading, which made Pietra laugh to herself. No doubt the flexible sheet displayed some awful gossip stream.

  The odds of being selected as a potential Honored Returned were unthinkably slim but Sha had an intensity of focus, even as a child, that had attracted attention. It was that intensity that had, in part, attracted her to Sha. But it was Sha’s humanity that had made her stay beyond the infatuation stage of their relationship.

  Pietra loved that Sha liked simple things like reading a flimsey on their front porch. She loved that when he ran to her and easily scooped her up in his long, powerful arms, he never squeezed too hard, despite the fact that those same arms could have picked up the car she’d come home in almost as easily. She loved that as he carried her past the rocking chair and into the house, she could see that the text on the flimsey was indeed from one of the many celebrity gossip tabloids Sha liked to read. She loved his effort to be human despite the fact that he was held in reverence by billions and had immense power at his disposal.

  Pietra had never seen her husband willfully intimidate another person or use his elevated status to gain special favor. People acted with deference to him, certainly, but he never demanded it, never took note if someone failed to do so. Pietra had known much lesser men who’d demanded so much more. But not her Sha.