Empire Reborn (Taran Empire Saga Book 1): A Cadicle Space Opera

by A. K. DuBoff

  Right now, though, Jason was finding it difficult to choose the right words in any language. He looked around incredulously at the solemn faces in the room. “A transdimensional space kraken? This is a joke, right?”

  His parents and Michael grunted, having spent enough time on Earth to get the reference, while the two other Agents’ brows furrowed slightly.

  “I wish it was a hoax,” his father said. “Believe me, when this landed on my desk this afternoon, I wanted to disregard it. But I’ve been over everything, and the image is genuine. I just wish I knew how.”

  Jason nodded. This wasn’t the time for jests, even though that was his preferred coping mechanism. He was a trusted member of his parents’ advisory circle, and he needed to demonstrate that he held that status because of competency rather than an expectation of birthright. The Sietinens were under enough scrutiny, as it was, for filling influential roles generation after generation.

  “What are the next steps?” he asked.

  “A conversation with the survivor. Preliminary reports indicate that he suffered some kind of telepathic assault from the… entity.” His father looked at him. “That’s why I asked you here, Jason. I’d like you to perform a telepathic evaluation and see if you can find anything others missed.”

  “Sure,” Jason agreed, though he had no idea yet what that might entail.

  “Transportation arrangements are already underway,” his mother said. “You can leave as soon as you’re ready.”

  He nodded. “Anything in particular you’d like me to ask about?”

  “I need to know if this is connected to what happened a few months ago,” his father stated. “If it is, and your vision…” He faded out.

  “I understand.” Jason didn’t need further explanation. The attack may be a declaration of war.

  CHAPTER 2

  As a rule, Raena Sietinen didn’t conduct business before breakfast—a fact her assistant, Jovan, seemed keen to ignore. “Whatever you have to say, I don’t want to hear it until I’ve finished my coffee.”

  “But, my lady, it’s—” Jovan insisted, a flush coming through his dark complexion.

  “Nope.”

  “What’s going on?” Ryan Dainetris, her husband, asked from deeper within their palatial bedroom suite. He approached the door, his black hair still dark from a shower, with a pastry in hand. His gaze landed on the very agitated assistant. “Oh. Good luck getting her to talk now.” He took a bite of the croissant.

  “A ship was destroyed,” Jovan blurted out.

  That caught Raena’s attention. “Where?” She snatched the tablet from Jovan’s quivering hands.

  “Near the Rift.”

  “Shit,” she whispered, reverting to the curses from her youth spent on Earth.

  Ryan rushed to look over her shoulder, his luminescent gray eyes narrowed with concern. “What happened?”

  “This doesn’t say. Only that the incident involved a salvage crew. There was just one survivor.”

  “Stars...” He skimmed through the cryptic report. “Attack or accident?”

  “I only know what’s in the document,” Jovan replied. “My lady, your father would like to speak with you. This report came directly from him when he couldn’t reach you this morning.”

  “I’ll follow up,” Raena acknowledged. “Thank you.”

  “I’ll be standing by.” The assistant bowed as Raena closed the door.

  Ryan headed toward the viewscreen integrated into the wall. “I’ll start a vidcall.”

  “No, I’m sticking to ‘coffee first’,” Raena stated. She flipped her chestnut hair behind her shoulder with one hand and took a sip from her mug. Running an interstellar civilization required dealing with a never-ending series of crises, and she’d learned that taking a few moments for herself and husband helped her keep a level head when it mattered. “Dad can wait fifteen minutes. If it was that urgent, he’d have astral projected to pester me.”

  Ryan hesitated. “I always forget how easy that is for you.”

  “Him and Jason, maybe. I’m out of practice.”

  Ryan shook his head. “If you say so. Shall we?” He motioned toward their breakfast table on the terrace overlooking the sea.

  Raena followed him outside, trying to suppress her concerns about the destroyed ship. Since Dainetris Galactic Enterprises, the corporate arm of her husband’s recently revived Dynasty, manufactured the starship involved in the incident—as well as the majority of all new starships in the Empire—it could be a public relations nightmare if the ship’s destruction was somehow determined to be DGE’s fault. However, if her father was tipping her off, that meant the Tararian Selective Service had taken notice, suggesting that something bigger was in play. After all, the TSS High Commander didn’t send cryptic reports on a whim, parental relation or not.

  “It’s probably a one-off,” Ryan said, sensing her mood.

  “No, everything was going too well. There was bound to be a major issue.”

  Ryan eased into his usual seat at the table. “I suppose settling into a normal routine would be too much for us to ask.”

  She sat down across from him, smiling slightly. “I did try to warn you about my family.”

  “Like we had a genuine choice about any of this.” He reached over the table and took her hand. “Not that I’d change anything—well, not with us, anyway.”

  Raena gave his hand a squeeze, then released it so she could cradle her coffee mug in both palms. “I’ve accepted that drama is a way of life for us. That’s why I defend these moments.”

  “And I love you for it.”

  She leaned back and took a deep breath of the salty sea air rising from the vast ocean between the First and Third Regions of Tararia, the core planet of the Taran Empire. The terrace overlooked the northeastern coastline of the estate, four stories above the manicured grounds. Though picturesque, Raena hadn’t completely shaken her memories of the isle’s dark history when it had served as headquarters for the corrupt Priesthood, only overthrown five years before. Moving there to the newly renamed Morningstar Isle had been an intentional political move, but on days like this when bad news set the tone, she couldn’t help wondering if the place was cursed.

  “You’re still thinking about it,” Ryan said telepathically.

  “Resorting to mind-reading now, are we?” she jested back. While she could have easily closed off her thoughts, she’d vowed to never keep secrets from her husband. He knew her better than anyone—even her twin brother, Jason.

  “If there really is an issue,” Ryan continued aloud, “your parents will handle it.”

  She nodded. “They always do.”

  “Stars, the last time they took on a big project, they overthrew the Priesthood and got us a castle to live in!”

  Raena almost lost a mouthful of sweetened coffee through her nose. Somehow, he always knew just what to say to keep her thoughts from going too dark.

  She admired Ryan from across the table—not just his handsome features, but the depth of his generous spirit. Like her, he hadn’t found out about his royal lineage until near-adulthood, and they’d grown into their roles together. Spending their childhoods as regular civilians had granted them a perspective that none of the other High Dynasty leaders possessed.

  “Don’t hold your breath for another castle,” Raena said, taking a cautious sip of coffee now that her chuckling had subsided. “We’re finally making headway redecorating this place and I don’t want to start over. Besides, the TSS can’t benefit us again or we’ll have a riot on our hands.”

  “Obviously, I’m joking.” Ryan took the last bite of his buttery pastry and dusted the powdered sugar off his hands.

  “I know. But even so, we walk a fine line.”

  “Public approval ratings are high. People don’t seem to care.”

  “That can shift at any moment. As it is, having members of the Sietinen Dynasty holding the top spots in the TSS is a potential conflict of interest with political and military
forces. All it would take is a spark to blow it into a big issue.”

  Ryan tilted his head, casting her a look he’d perfected that told her she was starting down a needlessly worrisome path.

  Raena took a long drink from her mug. “And this is why I don’t get into business before breakfast,” she muttered.

  “My love, let the TSS worry about the Rift. Your parents and brother can handle it.”

  “Yeah.” She looked out at the ocean. It could have been me.

  She’d had every bit of the Gifted talents as her brother, perhaps even more. Though she’d technically graduated from the TSS academy thanks to some rule-bending by her parents, she wasn’t an Agent and could never be, because it would conflict with her political position. When she was honest with herself, there was a touch of resentment there.

  It felt unfair to have had to set aside that part of herself. Her paternal grandparents had done the same, but they’d already had full careers in the TSS to explore their Gifts. Conversely, her abilities training had been cut short at the age of only seventeen, when Raena had ‘taken one for the team’ and gone to study on Tararia. There, she’d trained to become the perfect combination of politician and businessperson, poised to take over the Sietinen Dynasty and the family enterprise, SiNavTech. She couldn’t help wonder what she might have accomplished if she’d gone down the other path.

  They finished breakfast in relative silence, content to simply be in each other’s company. When the meal was complete, and all requisite coffee had been consumed, it was time to find out how serious an issue they were facing.

  Leaving Ryan to his own business, Raena took the short trek down the hall to her cozy secondary office. Since she made it a point to keep work away from their private residential suite, it offered a convenient place to go for urgent meetings. While her primary workspace on the other side of the sprawling estate was designed to impress visitors, this one was sparsely furnished for productivity, with the desk arranged so she could look out to her right through the window and feel like she was flying above the waves.

  She settled into the padded swivel-chair behind the desk and opened up a secure vidcall over instantaneous subspace relay to her father, following the contact instructions in his message.

  The viewscreen embedded in the wall behind the three visitor chairs resolved into the image of her father in his office. It hardly seemed like he’d aged since her childhood, still appearing youthful despite being in his fifties. His commanding presence, however, was the true representation—not just of age, but of the wisdom of someone who’d lived through devastation and would do anything to prevent future tragedy. He didn’t talk about it much, but Raena knew the war had changed him. But he was her dad, and she couldn’t imagine him being any other way.

  “Hi,” she greeted. “I got your message.”

  “Thanks for getting back to me quickly. I’m sorry to disrupt your morning routine.” Even though TSS Headquarters was on the other side of the galaxy, the time aligned with Raena’s since the former Priesthood’s island served as the standardized clock across the disparate Taran worlds.

  She smiled. “I’m fed and caffeinated, so I’m ready for anything. Now, what about this ship?”

  Her father folded his hands on his desktop. “We’ll know more soon, but I wanted you to be prepared in case it’s what I fear. Something may be coming through the Rift.”

  Now that I wasn’t expecting. She pursed her lips and took a calming breath through her nose. “I see.”

  He gave a solemn nod. “Worse, it may be connected to that incident a few months ago.”

  “Which…?” It took a second for her to make the connection to the recent tragedy in the Outer Colonies. “Oh.” A knife drove into her heart with the reminder. Several planets had been assaulted, displacing millions, and costing the lives of too many others. The circumstances were so different that she didn’t see how they were related. “How? I thought that was resolved?”

  “There was a little more to it than what the TSS shared with the High Council at the time,” he revealed.

  Her eyes narrowed slightly. “What happened to transparency?”

  “Information that has no actionability can cause more harm than good. It was a calculated omission, reserved until it became relevant.”

  “And now it is, because of this attack? Why?”

  “I’ll get to that.” Her father took a deep breath and looked through the screen, giving the impression that he’d rehearsed what he was about to say. “As I told the High Council then, the TSS learned that a rogue group had been gathering Gate-travel tech. The Gate spheres open a temporary passageway for instantaneous travel between worlds, but they are genetically keyed so only people with a specific gene can pass through. They are remnants of a galactic war sometime in the ancient past between Tarans and two other powerful races.”

  Raena’s eyes widened; that was new information.

  He nodded at her reaction. “I’d never heard about the conflict before, either; it seems the history must have been lost to modern Tarans during one of the Revolutions, like so much else.”

  An ancient war no one remembers? She swallowed.

  “A few months ago, when the aliens discovered that Tarans were trying to use their Gate tech, they sought retribution by causing all sorts of problems in the Outer Colonies, which everyone has heard about by now.”

  He paused for a moment before continuing, his face pinched with worry. “I don’t know how many classified details filtered down from the High Council briefing, but essentially the aliens opened more Gates and then initiated climate and topographical transformations using some kind of accelerated process for bio-optimization—like an advanced version of how we would prepare a planet for colonization. Except, having people already living on those worlds turned the tech into a devastating weapon.

  “The TSS stepped in to diffuse the situation, at which point we had a brief encounter with representatives of the alien race, calling themselves the ‘Gatekeepers’. We apologized to the Gatekeepers, then they gathered up their remaining artifacts and left. We’d thought that was the end of it.”

  She’d heard the overview from Ryan and her grandfather, but there hadn’t been that many specifics. “Wait, you spoke to them? Actual aliens, Dad! What were they like?”

  He smiled, but the tension remained around his eyes and in his shoulders. “I wish I could give you a definitive answer, but I can’t. The Gatekeepers that we interacted with were some sort of hybrid, genetically engineered to look Taran. I don’t know what their true form is, only that they’re xenophobic and had created the hybrids as a means to covertly study us. Now, they claim to be gone for good, and I have no reason to doubt them. The attack on the Andvari wasn’t their doing.”

  “So who, or what, was behind it?”

  “That’s why I reached out.” He hesitated. “The Gatekeepers told us something else, which we omitted in the official debrief. They gave us a warning—that we’d violated a treaty, and that the ‘others’ wouldn’t be so forgiving.”

  “In what way?”

  “As in, would come to destroy us.”

  Raena almost laughed at the sheer audacity of the statement. “That has to just be posturing, right? They can’t. I mean, Tarans inhabit planets spanning two-thirds of this galaxy!”

  “The distance is immense, yes, but we’re only talking about fifteen-hundred worlds or so. With the right weapon, in actuality, that’s not a lot of ground to cover.”

  Raena’s stomach turned over. “Okay, but why would they do that?”

  “For us violating the treaty—whatever it is. A treaty that we didn’t even know about until the Gatekeepers told us.” He shook his head. “I’ve been looking for months, Raena. I can’t find the original copy in any of the digital archives, not even with the Aesir. From what I’ve been able to piece together, there was a truce struck between Tarans, the Gatekeepers, and the other race involved in the ancient war. References to the agreement have given us th
e gist, but the actual verbiage is lost, as far as I can tell. So, I can’t tell you how we violated the treaty, because I don’t even have a copy of the rules.”

  Raena bit down on her lower lip while she listened. “Dad, I don’t know what to say,” she murmured, truly at a loss for words. Ancient, powerful aliens may be coming to destroy us?

  “So,” he continued, “we were told months ago that another race was coming for us. But, without anything to substantiate the claim, we’ve been waiting and watching. Unfortunately, the attack on the Andvari is now the first evidence that the threat might be real.”

  “What about the attack makes you think that? And how do you know it has anything to do with the Rift?” she asked.

  “Proximity and timing, which means it’s still speculation.”

  She could tell he was holding something back. “Why are you telling me rather than the High Council?”

  He took a slow breath. “Because of what Jason saw in the nexus. Though your own vision wasn’t related to his, you’ve looked into the nexus like he did. Like I did. You understand how the visions don’t make any sense until suddenly they do. No one on the High Council has been through that experience.”

  She nodded, her stomach knotting further as she recalled the mind-bending rite she’d performed during her first meeting with the insular branch of Tarans known as the Aesir.

  “That’s how I know you’ll believe it, without me needing to explain, when I tell you that we were wrong about our interpretation of what Jason saw in the nexus. It actually had nothing to do with the Priesthood. In fact, it was about what’s now on the horizon.”

  Her remaining calm evaporated.

  Though vague and brief, insights received while gazing into the spatial anomaly known as ‘the nexus’ were profound; her personal truth in the cosmic energy web had been precognition about her life with Ryan on Morningstar Isle.

  Over the years, she had spoken with her brother at length about his vision of a dark power spreading from the Rift. Her family had been convinced this prescience was about the Priesthood—a representation of how the Priests intended to harness the Rift’s power to ascend beyond their physical forms and seize control of everything in the galaxy. So, when her family had helped dismantle the Priesthood, they had taken comfort in the knowledge that their actions had stopped the symbolic darkness.