The Anuan Legacy: Book 1 of The Anuan Legacy Series
Page 1
The Anuan Legacy
Copyright © 2018 by Traci L. Schafer
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author or Inkana Publishing, LLC.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is entirely coincidental.
Cover Design: Ana Grigoriu, www.books-design.com
Final Edits: Christina Consolino, www.christinaconsolino.com
Back Cover Author Photo: Amy A. Ward
Published by:
Inkana Publishing, LLC
www.InkanaPublishing.com
First Edition
ISBN: 978-0-9993700-1-8
DEDICATED TO MY PLOT SISTERS,
without whom this book would not have been possible.
Christina Consolino
Cindy Cremeans
Jen Messaros
Jude Walsh
Ruthann Kain
Also
DEDICATED TO MY FAMILY.
Thank you for your love and support.
Destany (Schafer), Larry, and Ison Morgan
Liz and Larry Shaw
Jonathan and Angela Sanders
Todd Schafer, Phyllis Schafer, and A.J. Williams
Bennie Wright Ison (“Granny”), in memoriam
THANK YOU TO THE FOLLOWING:
My Beta Readers
The Plot Sisters, Alan Struckman, Destany Schafer-Morgan, Liz Shaw, Larry Morgan, Dennis Strobel, Anne-Marie Cors, Gerald E. Greene, and Kasey Binne
My Technical Consultants
Jonathan Sanders, Thom Shaffer, Tim Jones, and Andrew Allen
Contents
PART I
CHAPTER 1 - GAIGE
CHAPTER 2 - TORI
CHAPTER 3 - GAIGE
CHAPTER 4 - TORI
CHAPTER 5 - BRIAN
CHAPTER 6 - TORI
CHAPTER 7 - BRIAN
CHAPTER 8 - TORI
CHAPTER 9 - BRIAN
CHAPTER 10 - TORI
CHAPTER 11 - BRIAN
CHAPTER 12 - GAIGE
CHAPTER 13 - BRIAN
CHAPTER 14 - TORI
CHAPTER 15 - GAIGE
CHAPTER 16 - BRIAN
CHAPTER 17 - TORI
CHAPTER 18 - GAIGE
CHAPTER 19 - TORI
CHAPTER 20 - GAIGE
CHAPTER 21 - TORI
CHAPTER 22 - GAIGE
CHAPTER 23 - BRIAN
CHAPTER 24 - VICTORIA
CHAPTER 25 - BRIAN
CHAPTER 26 - VICTORIA
CHAPTER 27 - VICTORIA
CHAPTER 28 - BRIAN
CHAPTER 29 - VICTORIA
CHAPTER 30 - GAIGE
CHAPTER 31 - VICTORIA
CHAPTER 32 - GAIGE
CHAPTER 33 - GAIGE
CHAPTER 34 - BRIAN
CHAPTER 35 - VICTORIA
CHAPTER 36 - BRIAN
CHAPTER 37 - VICTORIA
CHAPTER 38 - BRIAN
CHAPTER 39 - GAIGE
CHAPTER 40 - VICTORIA
CHAPTER 41 - GAIGE
CHAPTER 42 - VICTORIA
CHAPTER 43 - GAIGE
CHAPTER 44 - VICTORIA
CHAPTER 45 - BRIAN
CHAPTER 46 - GAIGE
CHAPTER 47 - VICTORIA
CHAPTER 48 - GAIGE
CHAPTER 49 - VICTORIA
CHAPTER 50 - GAIGE
CHAPTER 51 - BRIAN
PART II
CHAPTER 52 - VICTORIA
CHAPTER 53 - LOME
CHAPTER 54 - VICTORIA
CHAPTER 55 - LOME
CHAPTER 56 - GAIGE
CHAPTER 57 - GAIGE
CHAPTER 58 - VICTORIA
CHAPTER 59 - VICTORIA
CHAPTER 60 - TAS
CHAPTER 61 - BRIAN
CHAPTER 62 - VICTORIA
CHAPTER 63 - GAIGE
CHAPTER 64 - VICTORIA
CHAPTER 65 - GAIGE
CHAPTER 66 - BRIAN
CHAPTER 67 - VICTORIA
CHAPTER 68 - GAIGE
CHAPTER 69 - LOME
CHAPTER 70 - VICTORIA
CHAPTER 71 - LOME
CHAPTER 72 - VICTORIA
CHAPTER 73 - GAIGE
CHAPTER 74 - TAS
CHAPTER 75 - VICTORIA
CHAPTER 76 - LOME
CHAPTER 77 - VICTORIA
CHAPTER 78 - GAIGE
CHAPTER 79 - VICTORIA
CHAPTER 80 - BRIAN
CHAPTER 81 - GAIGE
CHAPTER 82 - VICTORIA
CHAPTER 83 - TAS
CHAPTER 84 - VICTORIA
CHAPTER 85 - GAIGE
CHAPTER 86 - VICTORIA
CHAPTER 87 - GAIGE
CHAPTER 88 - TAS
CHAPTER 89 - VICTORIA
CHAPTER 90 - GAIGE
CHAPTER 91 - GAIGE
CHAPTER 92 - VICTORIA
CHAPTER 93 - GAIGE
CHAPTER 94 - TAS
CHAPTER 95 - VICTORIA
CHAPTER 96 - BRIAN
CHAPTER 97 - VICTORIA
CHAPTER 98 - VICTORIA
CHAPTER 99 - LOME
FROM THE AUTHOR
PART I
CHAPTER 1 -
GAIGE
“Gaige, you’ll be entering Earth’s atmosphere in ten seconds,” Nav said over the open mission channel.
“Got it, Nav.” I scanned the cockpit readouts to verify that all of the diagnostics still checked out. They did.
“Five seconds.”
I braced for the change in velocity.
“Prepare for entry in three, two, one . . .”
Just as I hit the thick atmosphere from the vacuum of space, cockpit warnings blared and diagnostic projections flashed by as the auto-systems tried to pinpoint the problem.
“Nav, something’s wrong with the shuttle!” I shouted.
“We know. We think an unexpectedly strong solar burst knocked out your Lexon system. We’re working it from here.”
The diagnostic projections continued to scroll through the air in front of me, still searching for the problem.
“There’s no time,” I said. “I’ll have to land it mentally.” Telekinesis was nothing new to an Anuan, but controlling something that large would be more than a challenge. It would be a miracle.
“Our readings show the electromagnetic interference on Earth’s atmosphere caused by the burst won’t settle down for another few Earth minutes. Be careful what you’re opening yourself up to, Gaige.”
“I don’t have a choice.” The shuttle was going down one way or another. I could take control or die. “Override!”
The warnings fell silent and the cockpit diagnostics faded. The remaining displays dimmed. The shuttle was all mine. I reached forward and touched the control panel. My hands trembled with surging adrenaline until I pressed them so firmly against the panel they couldn’t budge. I wouldn’t be able to land the craft and maintain a cloaking shield at the same time, but I’d have to worry about being detected later.
The shuttle vibrated under the stress of friction with Earth’s atmosphere. Opening my mind, I directed my mental willpower into the shuttle. Slow to entry speed! Still, the vibrations rocked the shuttle. If I didn’t get the shuttle’s speed down, it would break apart under the continued force of entry. I focused everything I could pull from within myself
at the shuttle. It slowed—not quite to a normal entry speed—but close enough to ease some of the stress on the craft.
Trying to manage the shuttle was depleting me, not just mentally, but physically, too. The unstable electromagnetic energy in Earth’s atmosphere from the solar burst wasn’t helping. I couldn’t maintain control of the shuttle much longer. Dusk had already started to settle over the area, but the night vision filter of the windshield allowed me to easily see Earth’s barren winter trees—lots of them. My eyes scanned for a clearing among all the trees. In the far distance, toward the northwest, I found one. You can make that.
I leaned my body and my mind toward the clearing and willed the shuttle in that direction. The craft glided above the treetops.
Slow to hover. The shuttle paused and hung suspended in the air over the open stretch of land.
Landing mode and down. Drained, I struggled to keep control. My energy level wavered. The craft shuddered then crashed to the ground with a hard jolt that slammed me forward in my restraint.
I laid my head back against the seat, exhausted. Stretching each arm and leg, wiggling fingers and toes, I seemed to be in one piece. But every part of me ached—especially my brain. It felt like an icepick had been driven through my temples.
Dusk offered some visual cover, but I could have easily been detected on radars since I hadn’t been able to maintain a cloak during the landing. A stream of sweat ran down the side of my face. I didn’t have enough energy to wipe it away, let alone hide a shuttle.
“Gaige? Ship to Gaige.”
I heard the static-riddled communications coming from my crippled shuttle, barely, but couldn’t gather enough energy to answer.
“Ship to Gaige. Respond!”
“Yeah.” With some effort, I got the sigh of a word out.
“We’re evaluating your medical values now—,” Nav said.
“Gaige,” another voice interrupted. “This is Mission Commander. I’m sending Conner down with a rescue team as soon as the burst energy subsides. Shouldn’t be more than another five Earth minutes.”
His words sent a small surge of adrenaline through my body, giving me enough energy to protest. “Tas, no! I mean, Commander, permission to—”
“You can’t stay down there like that,” Tas said. “I’m sending a team to get you.”
“Please, Commander . . .” I couldn’t let my situation affect the mission. I drew in a deep breath, trying to hold on to the quickly fading adrenaline. “I request some time to recover the situation on my own.” I took another breath. “One of us in this area is enough, maybe too much already. Remember, we can’t overwhelm her.”
There was silence and then, finally, Tas answered. “Request granted. But I’ll have Conner and the rescue team on standby. If we don’t receive a positive report from you in fifteen Earth minutes, I’m sending them. Understood?”
I couldn’t respond. Our short exchange had taken what little energy I’d regained. I knew I had to fix the shuttle, get it cloaked, and move it somewhere away from the current site. But I could barely stay conscious.
“Gaige? This is Tas. Are you still with us?”
Yeah, I’m with you.
“Gaige?”
No energy left . . . to stay . . . awake . . .
CHAPTER 2 -
TORI
“So, Tori, within the range plotted on this graph you can tell . . .”
I tried to pay attention to my mentor’s lesson, but a weariness had settled on me, heavy and sudden. With it came a feeling that something was terribly wrong. My eyes darted from one high-tech gadget to another within the disheveled test lab of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base’s world of classified research.
The cheap government setting reduced the technologies’ awe-factor, burying it amongst furniture and equipment spread across several decades. Like a time machine had crash-landed here and spewed its contents from a long journey across Air Force history. Everything seemed to be in its not-so-orderly place, but I couldn’t stop searching out the reason for my unease.
“Tori? You in there?” Brian waved his hand in front of my face.
My attention refocused across the table on my mentor. Yeah, I’m with you, I thought, though I truly wasn’t. Something else had me and wouldn’t let go. Heat flushed through my body and a trickle of sweat ran down the side of my face. I couldn’t decide if the reaction had been caused by embarrassment or the lingering worry over whatever feeling had grabbed hold of me.
Brian waited patiently, leaning forward just a bit as if he were hopeful and ready to snatch my words and move forward as soon as I’d recovered. His eyes, hazel-brown and murky, peered at me over the reading glasses perched on his nose. Those glasses and the gray beginning to show at his temples gave his otherwise youthful, fit appearance an authoritative edge, reminding me whose time I was wasting—the nation’s top civilian stealth scientist. I was living up to the honor of being selected for the U.S. government’s most prestigious college internship program by daydreaming. I had to pull it together and grasped for anything to get myself back on track. The colored graph in Brian’s hand brought a few words to mind—frequency, signal ranges. What about them? “Uh, the frequency range . . . the signal . . . um, is within the infrared—no, the ultraviolet . . .” I couldn’t put the bits and pieces together. “I’m sorry, Dr.—” Calling somebody so important by their first name had been hard to get used to, but Brian gave me his familiar “I’m-not-my-father look,” so I started over. “I’m sorry, Brian. I guess I didn’t hear you.” I swallowed and wiped the stream of sweat off the side of my face with my hand.
Brian smiled and tossed his graph on the table. “This is a lot to take in. You’ve been a sponge, Tori, but even sponges have their saturation points.” He looked down at his watch. “It’s almost time for you to go anyway. Why don’t we call it a day?”
“Really?” I held my breath, wishing I’d just thanked him and gotten out of there.
“Yes, really. These graphs will still be here in the morning.” Brian tipped his head toward the door. “Go enjoy your evening.”
***
Even though I’d left work a few minutes ahead of time, darkness overtook the days early during the winter months, so it still felt late. I drove slowly through the family neighborhood that led to our brick, cookie-cutter apartment complex. As I scanned from side to side, watching for any shadow of a small form that might dart out in front of me, I thought back to what had happened in the lab. I’d felt certain something was wrong. The feeling still clung to me like plastic wrap.
An emptiness that longed to be filled had so far refused anything I’d offered. I’d thought following in my dead father’s footsteps would satisfy the void, but it hadn’t. My soul screamed for me to take my life in some direction. More and more, I realized, this wasn’t it. My current path didn’t fill the lost, yearning spot within me. And being closed up in that classified government lab with its windowless concrete walls felt like wearing a coat two sizes too small—suffocating and uncomfortable. It just didn’t fit. My soul needed something else, something more. Perhaps sitting in that environment today had finally brought the realization to a head. It was the best explanation I could come up with, anyway, for the feeling I’d had.
***
I swiped my keycard at the main door of our apartment building, climbed the stairs to the second floor, and walked down the hallway, counting apartments as I went. It was easy to lose track of which identical red door belonged to me and my roommate. When I reached the seventh one, I placed my key in the doorknob. That’s when I heard them—the moans, the sighs, the heavy breathing. I removed my key and pounded on the door instead. “Kristen, you home? I forgot my key.”
After a quick gasp and some shuffling, the door lock clicked and a disheveled Kristen stood in the doorway with Justin right behind her, still pulling on his T-shirt. His matching blond hair, though different in length, lay equally askew.
“Hey, Tor,” she said. “We’re on our way out
to Justin’s. We’ll catch you later.” She grabbed Justin by the hand and pulled him out the door.
Justin threw a quick glance over his shoulder. “Yeah, catch you later, Tori.”
“Have fun,” I said, though I knew that bit of advice wasn’t needed. How the two hadn’t become fused together, I didn’t know. Their grades had to suck. Still, the idea of having someone I cared enough about to forget everything else, even grades, made me envy what they shared.
Once the residual racket of their quick getaway settled down, the apartment grew quiet and dead still. Perfect for thinking. I dropped my purse on the floor next to the door and absently picked up the open potato chip bag Kristen and Justin had left on the coffee table. After digging around in the kitchen junk drawer for a few seconds, I found a chip clip, snapped it on the bag, and tossed the bag of chips into the cabinet. Not before stuffing a few barbequed morsels into my mouth, though. That was all the appetite I had. Food could wait. Sorting out what bothered me could not.
Cutting back through the living room, I noticed bright red crumbs against the cream upholstery of the couch and paused to brush them into my hand. Though I’d managed to capture a few crumbs, I’d also left a decent smudge, but I’d deal with that later. I stepped into the bathroom and dusted the crumbs into the shell-shaped monstrosity of a sink. The design blemish stood out in the granite countertop of an otherwise nicely updated bathroom.
I crossed the hall of our square apartment and entered our one and only bedroom. In a haze of thought that I was anxious to sort through, I changed into the warmest flannel pajamas I owned—pink with white snowmen—and lay down on my bed. Bunching the pillow tightly under my head, I faced the opposite side of the room where Kristen’s empty bed sat covered with a yellow, lacy bedspread, rumpled but made. The bed probably wouldn’t be occupied that night, like most others. Practically living alone was fine sometimes, but other times, the emptiness in the apartment made me miss my family back home in Florida all the more. I even missed my real parents who’d been gone for so long.
My eyes tingled at the thought and I swiped away a tear. Barely four when they were killed, I didn’t remember much about my real parents or our home near Las Vegas, but somehow their scents had stayed with me. Mom’s soft floral perfume would waft into a room seconds before she did, followed by her bubbly, energetic presence. And Dad—his musky scent emanated a strength that always made me feel safe. Like he could lift me into his arms, wrap me up, and keep all the monsters away. I inhaled a long breath through my nose and could almost smell them right there in the room with me.