“Perhaps that is why Etherus is be letting them go: to be getting rid of them. Do you wish to be sharing their fate?”
Lucien frowned. “If He’s letting them go because He knows for certain that they’ll die out there, then He’s not a good God at all. I think you’re inferring Fossian vindictiveness to His character.”
“Perhapsss,” Troo hissed.
“No, He’s letting them go because that’s what they want, and denying their petition would only multiply people’s doubts.”
“What is you to be telling your family?
Lucien shook his head. “They’re not on New Earth right now. I’ll have to send them a message. It’ll be easier like that, anyway.”
“And Brak?”
“I can’t tell him. He’ll try to stop me from going—and he’s a lot bigger than you are.”
Troo bared her teeth in an imitation of a human smile. “Maybe I is to be telling him.”
Lucien shot her a look. “Don’t you dare.”
“He is deserving of the truth. He is being your friend.”
“Everyone deserves the truth. That’s why I have to go.”
“And why I is to be going with you.”
Lucien glared at her. “You will not.”
She bared her teeth in another grin. “You cannot be stopping me.”
“No? I could leave you stranded on this balcony.”
“Mission is to be leaving in a month. I is finding a way down long before this.”
Lucien narrowed his eyes at her, and Troo narrowed hers back, mimicking his glare.
Lucien tsked in annoyance. “Fine,” he said, and jumped up from the bench, heading for the edge of the balcony.
Troo appeared beside him, walking on two legs, her teeth bared in a grin. “I is being your apprentice now.”
Without warning, Lucien fired a burst from his grav boosters and hovered up high above Troo’s head. “No, you is being in trouble with your instructors,” he replied, gazing down on her.
“You is liar to me!” Troo said. She sprang straight up, almost ten feet into the air, and swiped at his ankles, narrowly missing with her long claws.
Lucien increased the power to his boosters, and hovered up a few extra feet. He fixed her with a frown. “I’m sorry, Troo. You have a bright future ahead of you with the Paragons. I’m not going to let you throw that away by following me.”
“I is to be catching you!”
“Not if your instructors catch you first,” Lucien said. “I’ll be sure to let them know where you are.”
“I is ripping out your claws and feeding them to you!”
“Sounds painful.”
“You cannot be stopping me from coming!”
“Age of consent for a Fossak is four. You’re only two—a teenager in human terms. You have to do as your guardians tell you—and your guardians are your instructors. I’m sorry, Troo. I’ll miss you, but we’ll see each other again someday.”
“You better be hoping that we do not!”
“Two hundred years is a long time to hold a grudge, even for a Fossak. Take care of yourself, Troo.”
Lucien flew off, this time being careful to fly around the waterfall, rather than through it. He probably should have done that the first time, too, but he’d forgotten how much Troo hated water.
Lucien sighed and cast a glance over his shoulder. I’m really going to miss you, Troo.
Chapter 3
Lucien sat recording a message to his parents and his older sister while he waited to board the transport headed for Astralis. Under any other circumstances they would have simply jumped there from the nearest quantum junction, but Etherus had forbidden them from using any of New Earth’s junctions to get to Astralis. It was a small inconvenience to have to travel by transport instead, but also a subtle reminder that they were all leaving the life of privilege and ease that Etherus had given them. It was enough to make Lucien wonder if he was doing the right thing. His motives weren’t the same as the others who were leaving. He wasn’t trying to disprove Etherus’s deity—just the opposite—but even so, it felt like Etherus was turning His back on him, too.
It was almost enough to make him get up and walk away from the flight gate. He’d be in good company. Out of more than a billion original signers of the petition, only about three hundred million remained. The vast majority of those were devout clerics, which was why Astralis had been chosen for the mission. It was where the Academy of Sciences was located, and where most clerics already lived and worked.
The bot standing at the gate began the call for boarding, and Lucien hurried to wrap up the message to his family.
“Look at it this way: we’re immortals, so a few hundred years is nothing to us. I love you all, and I’ll see you again—I promise.” He flashed a hesitant smile for the camera and quickly sent the message.
He could only imagine the fallout when his parents opened that message and realized how long it would be before they saw him again.
Lucien summoned the hovering holocorder back to his equipment belt and stood up. He grabbed his duffel bag from the seat beside him and slung it easily over one shoulder.
Jogging over to the gate, he joined the back of the line of passengers waiting to board the transport. After just a few minutes, he reached the front of the line.
“Have a nice flight,” the bot standing at the gate said as it scanned him to check his identity against the passenger list.
He nodded and started down the tunnel with the others. The glossy white walls pulsed with silvery radiance, reminding him that the boarding tunnel was also a scanner. They were being checked one last time for concealed weapons and contraband. Lucien wore a stun pistol on his hip, and he had integrated weapons in the gauntlets of his exosuit, but as a Paragon, he was supposed to be armed.
At the entrance of the transport Lucien breezed by another bot standing there to welcome them aboard. He stepped into a spotless white cabin lined with rows of seats, two on each side.
Lucien shuffled down the aisle until he reached his assigned seat. He stowed his luggage in the overhead compartment and then squeezed by the woman already sitting in the aisle seat.
He sat down beside the window. It was a tight squeeze with his exosuit on. He took up both armrests between him and the other passenger, forcing the woman beside him to lean away from him and into the aisle.
“Sorry,” he said, glancing her way.
“It’s okay,” she replied.
He looked out the window, into the hangar bay. Ground crew scuttled about like ants as they cleared out with their equipment.
“You’re a Paragon,” the woman beside him said, drawing his gaze back to her.
He inclined his head in an abbreviated nod. “Champion third class.” The woman was pretty. Raven black hair. Blue eyes. Delicate features. Maybe this trip to the cosmic horizon wouldn’t be so long after all.
“I didn’t think any of you would be joining us,” she said. “Aren’t you supposed to be among Etherus’s most faithful servants?”
“What makes you think I’m not?”
The woman cocked her head, regarding him with a curious frown. “You’re coming with us even though your god isn’t. You wouldn’t agree to that if you didn’t have your own doubts about his divinity.”
Lucien arched an eyebrow at her. “Let me guess, you’re a cleric?”
“We prefer to be called scientists.”
“Of course you do.”
“The term cleric is a religious one, which implies that our beliefs are based on faith rather than observable evidence.”
“And yet our God is observable and you don’t believe in him,” Lucien replied, “so you can understand my confusion.”
“I believe that Etherus the person exists, but Etherus the god? Where’s the observable evidence for that? Think about it, what has he actually done that’s supernatural?”
“He created the first humans by mixing Etherian DNA with primates from Earth. He linked Etherian mind
s to those human bodies, giving us what we once thought of as souls. Then, after we had a taste of freedom in our human bodies, he resurrected everyone who had ever lived and divided them between Etheria and New Earth, depending where they actually wanted to live. Oh, and he foretold all of that in the Etherian Codices,” Lucien said.
“It’s not foretelling if you make it happen—that’s just good planning, and as for resurrecting people via stored consciousness, we were doing that long before we met Etherus. By supernatural I mean something that violates the basic laws of the universe.”
“He can appear anywhere, instantly and simultaneously—in physical form.”
“Something that could be accomplished by having a large number of physical bodies with access to quantum junctions. Through quantum comms those bodies could all share a massively parallel collective intelligence—an AI, perhaps. We created a god like this to rule us on Avilon, and we called him Omnius. Perhaps the original Etherians did the same thing, and they called him Etherus.”
“Why would the Etherians worship him if they created him?”
“Because they don’t ask questions. They’re not tempted to do anything wrong, remember? That’s another way of saying they’re all mindless slaves. For all we know, Etherus is the one who enslaved them and took away their freedom.”
“And then gave it back to them in human bodies?”
The woman shrugged.
“You want supernatural? The Etherians clearly have more advanced technology than we do.”
“Maybe they do, but we haven’t been allowed to study it, so we don’t really know. And again, evidence of advanced technology isn’t evidence of the supernatural.”
Lucien frowned. He was growing annoyed with this woman. “Their entire galaxy is shrouded in some way that we can’t even reach it on our own. Only God could hide a whole galaxy in plain sight.”
“Unless that phenomenon has more to do with the universe’s natural topology than intelligent design. It could also be technological. They might be spoofing the quantum signal, causing us to jump around their galaxy in circles.
“I’m just saying there could be a logical explanation that doesn’t require the supernatural. God is just an ancient concept that people used to invoke to explain the unknown, and to help them cope with their fear of death. We don’t die anymore, and our god isn’t helping us explain the unknown, so why do we need him?”
Lucien fixed the scientist with a glare. “I didn’t come here to listen to your heresy.”
“Then you’re on the wrong flight, Lucien. If you didn’t come to listen to heresy, then why did you come?” Suspicion shone in the woman’s blue eyes.
He looked her up on his ARCs: Tyra Forster, twenty-two standard years old, astrophysicist, 42nd degree cleric…. Lucien’s eyes widened at that. It was unusual for someone so young to be so well-schooled. He offered her a thin smile. “Well, Tyra—”
“Dr. Forster,” she suggested.
Lucien gritted his teeth. So she could use his first name, but he couldn’t use hers? “If you must know, I came here to protect a bunch of hapless, overreaching clerics—”
“Scientists,” Tyra corrected.
“—from themselves.”
“In that case, you can leave. We don’t need your protection.”
Lucien gaped at her, incredulous. “Have you ever been anywhere besides New Earth?”
“No—”
“Then you can’t even begin to imagine what’s waiting for you out there! Do you know how many hostile, space-faring species we’ve met since we arrived in the Large Magellanic Cloud?”
“To date, our technology has proven far superior to theirs. Were that not the case, I’m sure they would have found us in the Milky Way and annihilated us long before we came here and found them.”
“We’ve lost ships!” Lucien insisted. “Dozens of them.”
“Star galleons. Exploration ships, not warships. The Icosahedron was designed as a warship, and even one facet of it has more firepower than all of our galleons put together.”
“It was designed as a habitat,” Lucien corrected.
Tyra shrugged. “That, too. My point about firepower remains. Facets are also larger and better shielded than any ship we’ve ever sent out before. They have a plethora of short-ranged fighters and even star galleons to defend them.”
“Those should be really useful without any Paragons to fly them.”
“We have all the training programs and flight simulators we need in Astralis. If we can do math in eleven dimensions, we can certainly figure out how to push buttons in a cockpit.”
Lucien shook his head. “Your ignorance is astounding.”
“Funny, I was just thinking the same thing about you,” Tyra replied.
A bot came on the intercom, interrupting them with a briefing about safety procedures and escape pod locations. Lucien used that as an excuse to ignore Tyra.
She wasn’t as considerate. “I’m just saying, it doesn’t add up. If I were the suspicious type, I’d say maybe you signed on for this mission because Etherus told you to, and if that’s the case, then you’re a spy who’s going to end up in prison, or worse—marooned on some distant rock along the way.”
Lucien turned to her, shocked speechless.
“From the look on your face, I’m either going to have to give you the benefit of the doubt or an award for acting.”
“You are the most sarcastic, arrogant, pretentious, self-important, and… arrogant woman I’ve ever met!”
“You said arrogant twice. I only need one adjective for you—”
Lucien held up a hand in front of her face, and activated his suit’s aural dampeners. A hazy energy field sprang to life a few inches from his suit, effectively silencing Tyra, as well as any other outside noise. Her lips went on moving, but he couldn’t hear a thing, only the soft humming of the dampener, and the sound of his own breathing echoing off the inside of the field.
Much better. Whoever invented aural dampeners was a genius.
Trya abruptly stopped talking, having noticed the forcefield. She looked away and busied herself with a holopad in her lap.
After a few seconds, she held it up, and a single word typed in a large font leapt off the screen to hover in front of his face—
NAIVE.
Lucien smiled and looked away. He reclined his chair, and shut his eyes. He didn’t feel bad about taking up Tyra’s armrest anymore. His only regret was that he wasn’t a Gor like Brak, who would have needed her seat as well.
Lucien felt a flash of guilt at the thought of Brak. He hadn’t said anything to his friend. He’d just left. Of course, that was with good reason—Gors tended to resort to violence when other methods of persuasion failed. Lucien was bound to wind up in the nearest emergency room if he told Brak where he was going. He would send Brak a message after he reached Astralis.
Lucien risked cracking his eyes open, and saw his transport gliding out of the hangar and into a vast sea of stars. Tyra leaned over him to get a better look, blocking his view with the back of her head.
“Hey, do you mind?” His words echoed off the aural dampening field, and resonated loudly, making him wince. He considered deactivating the field to tell her to stay in her seat, but then he’d have to listen to whatever she said next.
Not worth it.
This is going to be a long trip… he thought, as he glared at the back of Tyra’s head.
Chapter 4
Lucien toggled his side window to show a view from the nose cam of the transport as they approached Astralis. The facet was a giant matte black triangle, all but perfectly blending against the blackness of space. As they drew near, a bright rectangle of light appeared as the hangar bay they were headed for opened up.
The final approach took half an hour while they decelerated from their cruising speed; then the transport glided to a stop inside the hangar and four boarding tunnels extended to join with the transport’s airlocks. A bot came on the intercom, welcoming them to
Astralis, and passengers began standing up all over the cabin. Lucien deactivated his aural dampeners and rose from his seat, too. He had to wait while Tyra retrieved her bag from the overhead storage. When she was done, she refused to let him out into the aisle.
He grimaced and looked away, calling on all the patience and courtesy he’d learned from his courses in diplomacy.
After a few minutes people began to debark, and Tyra shuffled along with them, giving Lucien a chance to step out and grab his pack from the overhead.
He shuffled along behind her, hoping she wasn’t representative of everyone he’d meet in Astralis.
When he reached the nearest airlock, Lucien spotted the bot who’d welcomed him aboard. The machine nodded periodically to the passengers as they left, saying, “Welcome to Astralis!” in a cheerful androgynous voice.
But when Lucien reached the threshold, the bot said: “This is the one, Doctor.”
Lucien frowned, wondering who the bot was talking to. Then he saw a group of people fanning out from the sides of the boarding tunnel, blocking his way, and aiming stunners at him.
“What’s going on here?” Lucien asked.
“You’re under arrest,” one of them said.
“On what charges?” Lucien demanded.
“Suspicion of treason, pending a mind probe to determine your guilt or innocence.”
Lucien noticed Tyra lurking at the back of the group, whispering to one of the men there.
“You!” he pointed at her. “You were interrogating me.”
Tyra stepped to the fore. “No, I was questioning you. Your answers defended your faith in Etherus, and your reasons for joining the mission were superficial at best.”
“Mr. Ortane, please step out of your exosuit,” one of the men with stunners ordered.
Lucien glared at the man, but made no move to comply. He could hear passengers whispering about him behind his back as they hurried on to the next airlock. “Etherus is not going to be happy about this. I’m a Paragon, and I operate under His authority.”
Dark Space Universe (Book 1) Page 3