by K. Aten
Also by K. Aten:
THE ARROW OF ARTEMIS SERIES
The Fletcher
The Archer
The Sagittarius
THE BLOOD RESONANCE SERIES
Running From Forever
OTHER TITLES
Rules of the Road
Waking the Dreamer
The Sovereign of Psiere
Book One in The
Mystery of the Makers series
K. Aten
Silver Dragon Books
by Regal Crest
Copyright © 2019 by K. Aten
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The characters, incidents and dialogue herein are fictional and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
ISBN 978-1-61929-412-7
eISBN 978-1-61929-413-4
First Edition 2019
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Cover design by AcornGraphics
Published by:
Regal Crest Enterprises
Find us on the World Wide Web at
http://www.regalcrest.biz
Published in the United States of America
Acknowledgments
This book wouldn’t exist without the prodding and support of my beta reader, Ted. He was with me from the beginning, brainstorming different ideas until I settled on this world, with these women. Thank you, Brother. I’d also like to thank Regal Crest Enterprises for letting me tell my stories to a wide audience. And finally I’d like to give a shout out to Micheala for reading through one crazy story after another, and for putting up with my persistent further/farther confusion.
Dedication
I took a handful of themes/tropes that I love and crammed them all into one ook. I suppose that I’m an overachiever like that. But I did it for a reason, at least on a subconscious level. This book is my tribute to every sci-fi and fantasy book I read as a kid. Science fiction is the genre I love most and it feels good to put my own star in the sky.
Map
Chapter One
DAEMON SHENDO HAD hated his job for the past twenty-two lunes and it was no coincidence that he’d also been the captain of Her Royal Sovereign Connate Olivienne Dracore’s Shield Corp unit for the same amount of time. It wasn’t that the heir apparent was a bad person, she was simply impossible. “Connate Dracore, I highly recommend that you allow the engineers to test the cycle before you attempt a solo ride. No one knows what it will do at speed with that much power.”
“If you’re afraid to accompany me on this test, Captain Shendo, you’re more than welcome to wait here with your Shield team.” Olivienne glanced at the half a dozen guardians that were milling around off to the side, all dressed in the infamous black uniforms of the Psi Shield Corp. She raised a single dark eyebrow at the grizzled man who was in charge of her safety. Nothing he could say would steer her away from testing the new cycle, but she was curious if he would attempt to follow her into what was sure to be an extremely dangerous ride. She was used to risk. But having enhanced awareness as one of her channels went a long way to mitigate the dangers of her many adventurous undertakings. Capt. Shendo knew that. As the head of her royal guardians it was his job to know all of her channels and their strengths, as well as those of the men and women that made up her Psi Shield Corp unit.
Every person born on Psiere displayed one or more different power channels of the mind when they reached puberty. The amount of channels varied, some had more and some had less. The strength of those abilities also varied on the six-point scale. Every Psierian went through rigorous testing as soon as their channels opened and were given a strength rating for each. The more channels a person had, the more power they were capable of. It was as if each person were a receptacle for stored power that replenished slowly throughout the oors of the dae.
Soft channels were those powers that didn’t exert physical change on the world around, therefore they didn’t really pull much power. Soft channels included things like telepathy, empathy, clairvoyance, enhanced awareness, and intuition. The hard channels were the ones that physically taxed the Psi, like telekinesis, apportation, levitation, pyrokinesis, and others. More than once Olivienne had exhausted herself on an adventurous mission from the use of her channels alone.
If a Psierian pulled too much too fast, they could burn through their reserve before it could be replenished, winding up with channel strain, which in turn would result in overall weakness and a headache. If they tried to pull more than they were capable of, the person would be rendered unconscious and that was not a good thing to happen in a dire situation. But Olivienne wasn’t doing anything that would pull that much power.
As the commanding officer of her Shield team, Shendo would also know that the rating of her enhanced awareness was six. While her two rating teleportation was next to useless, her five rated telepathy and four rated apportation channels were very good skills to have. And her six rating pyrokinesis was excellent but none contributed toward her safety quite like that awareness.
Capt. Shendo was a five rating telepath so he was well aware that the Connate was testing him. She’d never made a secret of the fact that she hated having a Shield team assigned to her, but it was protocol for all the royal family members. Olivienne disliked it so much she often went out of her way to prove that they couldn’t keep up with her. It was often a sore point in the unit that the highest trained individuals in the land couldn’t at least keep pace with one of their sovereigns. It pricked the pride of the entire unit but not nearly as much as it infuriated their Shield Corp captain.
It had become a game to her and Shendo had grown tired of playing games somewhere along the way in his twenty-five roto career as an officer. He knew that she was blessed with five, medium to high level, channels. For generations, royals had always been powerful Psi. But that didn’t excuse her from so publicly defying his authority. His anger at her willfulness grew and pressed on those around him like a dark cloud. “Your parens entrusted me with your safety and I will not allow you to take that cycle!” To further drive his statement home, he snatched the keys for both experimental cycles from the hand of the hapless lead engineer.
Being the first heir to the Divine Cathedra of Psiere, there were only two people the Connate took orders from and they were her parens, Olivara and Keshien Dracore, the Queen and King of Psiere. Olivienne had a presence about her, with the black hair and dark purple eyes of her mother. While the Connate’s attractive face and mannerisms were obviously from the Queen, her height and spirit were all from the King. She wasn’t known to abuse her authority as the Connate, but she also didn’t let anyone but her parens dictate what she could and could not do. As a result she ignored a lot of advice, specifically from Capt. Shendo.
Rather than acknowledge the captain’s declaration, she merely smirked at the older man and mounted the gleaming cycle. The saddle was padded and comfortable, the copere and stele piping along the sides of the illeostone tank was smooth and fluid. There were gauges where the steerage bar mounted over the tank. One read ‘MPH’ for mahls per oor, and the other sported the letters ‘CHG’ to show the percentage of illeostone charge pressure. The cycle screamed speed and Olivienne was not going to let one worn-out officer dictate her actions. She had put a lot of time and effort into retrieving the schematics for the new cycle on her most recent adventurist mission and was not to be deterred. Olivienne put on the helmet that was hanging from the steerage bar then turned to look up at him. “This is your last chance to come with me and maybe save a little honor in fr
ont of your unit.”
The captain’s face reddened at her implication that he was afraid, standing out against the stiff black color of his uniform. Then he laughed and held up the key to her cycle. “And how exactly are you going anywhere?”
The Connate rolled her eyes at him. Shendo should have known better at that point. She held out her palm face up and merely focused her mind on the key. In an instant it disappeared from Shendo’s hand and appeared in her own. Olivienne used it to start the cycle and shot the gaping man a triumphant look. It was apportation at its best. “Be back in a bit.” She gave him a quick salute then roared away down the test road. When the engineer realized what she’d done, he scrambled to set up the speed tracking equipment. There was no way he was going to waste an opportunity to make history with the newest application of the Maker’s texts.
The shock quickly wore off and Capt. Shendo cursed her impertinence. “Sheddech!” He hopped on the second proto-cycle, quickly donned the helmet, and sped after the Connate. As much as he was convinced her rebellious nature would mean his own death, he knew he couldn’t let her be unaccompanied during the ten mahl long loop she would take to test the cycle and gain speed for the measurement team. On a normal cycle with a normal Psi, ten mahls would take about ten meens. But nothing about his current situation was normal. He increased speed recklessly in an attempt to catch up with the Connate but she continued to accelerate away. Their path along the special test road took them out through heavily forested land until it made a great loop and returned back to the engineering facility.
The captain didn’t have a tinted visor on his helmet, it was a standard issue. However, Olivienne’s did. When they made it through the series of winding turns that eventually looped them back toward the original starting location, the morning light of both suns glared into their eyes. Archeos was the worst with its larger golden-white glow, but the smaller bluish-white Illeos certainly didn’t help.
Two mahls out from where the measurement would occur Olivienne increased the throttle and shot forward. Her hair had been twisted into a tight knot at the base of her neck but the wind quickly unraveled it. Inky blackness trailed the rider like the darkest of smoke. The Connate lived for the speed and thrill of the cycle and the captain was just praying to the Makers that he would simply live. Half a mahl out Olivienne kicked up the speed again until the markers on each side of the test track became a blur. She watched as the gauges and dials between her hands increased into the red indicator zone and smiled.
It was often said that there were three kinds of people in the world–people that avoided danger, people that thrived on danger, and people that created it. Capt. Daemon Shendo was definitely of the first variety. For the most part he enjoyed life and wanted to make sure he had as long of one as he could get. While he was a tested soldier, he didn’t make it to his age and rank by giving in to the recklessness of youth, or succumbing to the foolish pursuit of pride.
Just as he decided it was safe to let off the throttle and slow, his attention was diverted to a railer running in the distance along tracks that were parallel to the test road. The brightly gleaming aerodynamic cylinder had windows along the sides of the passenger segments and the light reflected off those windows into his eyes. Capt. Shendo’s control of the cycle wobbled in that instant and his speed was simply too much to avoid the impending crash. The cycle began to swim tail even as he brought his nearly blind eyes back to the front. Both speed and momentum were unmanageable with his concentration momentarily lost and eventually the front wheel cranked hard to the right, pitching the captain from the saddle.
As Olivienne flew across the finish line, breaking a multitude of land speed records on her cycle, Shendo flew through the air as well. It would be no broken record for him, but rather two broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder, a broken arm, and a broken upper leg bone. It would have been much worse but Spc. Devin, one of the guardians in the Connate’s Shield unit, was a three rated telekinetic and managed to slow Shendo’s roll half way through the crash. Too little too late perhaps. As he lay there gritting his teeth in agony, he thought that maybe it was finally time to retire. Then the pain became too much and everything went dark.
Capt. Shendo woke oors later in a med bed. He wasn’t in agony like he expected to be. Though that was probably a bad sign because that meant his injuries were severe enough that a doctore with the telesana channel had been called in. Healing with the mind was a rare channel to have and the people who held the ability always became doctores. But there were limits to even a Psi healer’s abilities so he still wore an immobilizer on his leg and arm, and his ribs ached. A medican came into the room shortly after and looked at him in surprise. “Oh, you’re awake!”
He shut his eyes and sighed, feeling every one of his combat rotos. “Unfortunately.”
“I’ll be right back, I was told to inform General Renou when you woke, and she’s just out in the waiting area.”
In anticipation of his visitor, Capt. Shendo opened his eyes again. When the door swung open to admit the general, Daemon Shendo wore a look of resignation. He never even gave his commanding officer a chance to speak. He simply met the trim woman’s eyes and admitted defeat. “I’m done and I want out.”
General Camen Renou nodded, both accepting and expecting his answer. “I’ll inform the Queen and we’ll start searching for your replacement. Thank you for your rotos of service, Captain.” And just like that, she walked back out of the room.
LT. COMMANDER CASTELLAN Tosh had always been known as a soldier’s soldier. She was strong, loyal, capable, and controlled. After spending four long rotos at the Psi Officer Academy, four in a stint in the western grasslands of Endara, and a little more than four fighting against the Atlanteens in southern Dromea, she had certainly earned her title. With one hundred soldiers under her command, plus another one hundred automatons, she was kept plenty busy. Grabbing a rag from her back pocket, Castellan wiped the sweat from her brow. The center of Dromea was located directly over the equatorial line of Psiere so it was always hot. But during the rainy season it was both hot and humid. The daetime temps averaged more than ninety pyrs or greater, only falling with the binary suns at night. There were plenty of daes she wished for the plush life of an Academy instructor or a royal guardian, and it was no secret to the men and women serving her that those daes occurred most often when the suns burned hottest.
Castellan hated being hot and she hated being sweaty even more. But the lt. commander had dealt with the conditions of her post without complaint over the past handful of rotos because of one reason, and one reason only. There was a promotion promised if she could help stabilize the region around Ostium, the largest city in Dromea. Ostium was situated on the southeast coast of the smaller southern continent. The city itself was bisected by the Mir Ostium River, which came down out of the distant mountains and emptied into the sea. The Atlanteens frequently caused havoc along the entire coast and would send their leviathans to harry the fishing ships put out from the ports in the area.
The Psierians weren’t the only sentient species that occupied Psiere. They were just the only land-dwelling one. Atlanteens were a bloodthirsty race that lived deep below the surface and had the appearance of half Psi and half swimmer. While their upper body was Psierian in appearance, there were a few noticeable differences. Castellan had always thought they were beautiful in an alien sort of way. The Atlanteens’ skin was a mottled combination of gray, blue, and green, and they had little gills at the edges of their jaws. They had strong arms that ended in strange web-fingered hands. Their species was not discernable in their gender because they didn’t have any external sexual characteristics, though their size varied widely. They had a fin ridge that bisected the top of their skull, and another larger fin on their back. Both fins were finer than the large scaled swimmer tail that was located where a Psi’s legs would normally be.
While the aggressive sea race had never developed any aether tech that the lt. commander had heard of, they
had very strong mental telepathy that they used to control all the creatures that dwelled below the surface. Giant leviathans were only one of the many species that were sent to attack the land dwellers. All manner of other land capable sea creatures would come out of the depths and attack citizens, night or dae.
Her thoughts were interrupted as she stared out over the glittering blue expanse. “Commander Tosh!” Noticing movement to her right, she turned her gaze to the approaching private. His trademark khaki uniform was crisp, as was the rest of his appearance. When he reached her, he gave a single closed fist salute. His elbow was bent and left arm across chest, held rigidly in place perpendicular to his body and parallel to the ground. Castellan saluted him back and he gave his report. “Ser, we have two leviathans sightings reported to the northeast, toward the island of Puer. So far they are staying away from the bridge to the south.”
She nodded at him. “Move two rail guns to cover that section of the wall and send word to the ’ton sergeant to be wary. Have him line up the automatons along the bridge now, don’t wait until the last supports are attached. We don’t want those suckers pulling down all our hard work now do we?”
“No, ser! I mean...yes, ser!” Clearly flustered, he stood there for a few secs longer. She smiled at him, thinking he’d be on his way, but he just smiled awkwardly back.
Finally the lt. commander rolled her eyes. “You’re dismissed, Benya.”
“Yes, ser!” The man quickly saluted and ran off to hand out her orders.
Castellan shook her head then turned back to the sea. “They get younger and younger...” Every citizen of Psiere had to go through advanced academy training after their primary education. Though the four rotos of service were mandatory, people were allowed to choose if they wanted to go to Officer Psi Academy, or just Base Academy. Base was for people that didn’t want a career in the military or any other corps that required combat training. Academy did two things for Psierians. It provided essential support for the military, and it also allowed people to select the course of their final education where they received training in their future career. Every Psi was tested upon entry to the institution located in the city of Scola and were given a list of options as to where their talents best lie. Want to be a chef? As long as it was within your test rating then you’d simply choose the culinary track where you both cook for hundreds of soldiers and get advanced culinary training. It had worked well for generations, probably because for the most part, people got to choose their own career.
