by George Tome
In a blink, Baila’s hologram appeared again.
“Well, Medir? Was the delay enough to think about my request?” he grinned sarcastically. “What say you? Will you transfer Gill now and spare your ship, or do I have to send my soldiers to board you and get him out of there?”
“Fight!” shouted Gill. “You can do it!”
For the first time, the Rigulian looked at him with different eyes, letting him understand how much he regretted that he hadn’t believed his seemingly absurd story. He shook his head, abashed.
“I don’t want to fight,” he whispered.
“Nobody asked if you want to fight! Wanting is for smelling seeds, not for fighting! You take the fight when it comes, or you die like a coward!”
“You don’t understand,” he moaned. “After we defeated aging and diseases, we became more afraid of death than a creature like you. We can’t risk losing our eternity…”
“Then your problem is solved!” Gill exclaimed mockingly. “No matter what you do, Baila’s going to kill you to get rid of the witnesses. Now you can—”
“You’re wrong, Gillabrian,” Baila said, addressing him for the first time. “I don’t care if they get away!”
“We can’t keep you,” the medir told him. “Someone has to tell Sirtam what happened, and if we are destroyed, nobody will.”
“It seems that reason and common sense won!” Baila proclaimed, satisfied. “Finally, I’ll get my hands on you,” he exclaimed with the eyes of a hungry predator.
“Or maybe not!” Gill replied dryly.
“This time—”
“Take a look at your back,” Gill interrupted, smiling.
“Ha-ha, the little archivist—”
“The little archivist will show you his tail again, Your Greatness.”
Still grinning widely, Baila looked at a monitor in his lair, and the grin turned into a horrible rictus. A golden silhouette was approaching quickly, closing in on the Grammian fleet!
The Grammian ships were undecided on what to do next. In the end, they turned back to face the new enemy that had appeared out of nowhere. The first salvo fired from a great distance belonged to the Sigian vessel, and it ripped one of the gray ships to pieces. The terrible explosion threw fragments and hot gases in all directions. The others charged forward, but the second Grammian ship was sliced before it had the chance to open fire. It appeared that even after 1,250 years, their technology was no match for the Sigian destroyer… and the latter belonged to a whole different class than the Grammian vessels.
“What’s this?” asked Egar 9, astounded.
“This? This is Sandara!”
The destroyer jumped in the middle of its enemies. It was moving with a fury hard to describe, completely immune to the laser lenses touching it, mockingly blasting every bomb launched at it, without even bothering to avoid them. Hit after hit, the surviving ships ended up adding their twisted debris to the carnage. None of them tried to retreat, proving that the Grammians were at least much braver than the Rigulians, even when they had no chance.
More and more debris hurtled toward them, hitting the ship and shaking them off balance. Finally, Egar 9 managed to overcome his stunned stupor and rushed to the display table. Immediately, a green mist surrounded the ship, deflecting the fragments that hit it. The shards burned with spectacular flames, leaving trails along the fuselage.
Gill walked to the table display.
“May I?” he asked. Without waiting for Egar’s approval, he took the Sigian bracelet and activated it on his arm, pretending he didn’t see the grimace of protest on his companion’s face.
“We’ll meet again!” hissed Baila, swelled with rage.
“I hope, Your Greatness, I hope to the tip of my tail,” he replied with a satisfied smile.
Baila’s hologram disappeared from the room.
Once the fight was over, the sorry remains of the Rigulian fleet limped toward them as if attracted by a magnetar, smoking and puffing from their joints. They connected to Egar’s ship, whose segments detached to allow the link. At completion, they formed a single ship, much larger than before, riddled with holes and crumpled here and there, but able to fly on its own.
Egar’s sphere flashed to signal they were synchronized, and several holograms materialized in the chamber. Most belonged to Rigulians of wildly different sizes, but two were of a different species that Gill had never seen before—the two annoying Sarkens.
“Sirtam 4,” exclaimed Egar 9 after greeting them according to the protocol, “I bear terrible news! Grammia is the hidden world we all feared!”
“I know,” replied Sirtam.
“You know? What do you mean you know?” exclaimed Egar 9, even more bewildered by Sirtam’s answer than by the Grammians’ sneak attack.
“Two hours ago, Mitowa was bombed by a Grammian fleet that appeared seemingly from nowhere,” he told them. “We’re waiting for their ships to appear on Lacrilia any moment now.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Fight,” said the Rigulian, grinding his mouth plates together. “We have to protect the serums. Lacrilia is the most important roadworking planet in the sector.”
“All right, but… should we contact Rigulia 9?”
“We’re trying to call them, too,” Sirtam sighed, “although I have no doubt they’ve learned about it—that is, if they’re not already under attack. Who knows how many distortions the Grammians have in the galaxy?”
“Sirtam 4, our mission on Antyra wasn’t a failure,” continued Egar 9. “We found an ally who knows more about Grammia than we do. You better listen to him!” he said, pointing at Gill.
Without further introduction, Gill told them the story of the forgotten Sigian war and his fight with Baila’s army. He spoke without interruption, omitting some “minor” details about Sandara’s nature and especially about the worrisome potential of the kaura dead to expand into gods, to avoid causing them even greater shocks than those they already received.
The only explanation they requested was for Gill to tell in detail how the Sigian bracelet worked. Gill explained as best as he could and made some distortions to jump around, which left their eyes bulging in wonder.
When he finished, no Rigulian dared to disturb the silence, realizing for the first time what a perfidious enemy they were fighting.
Finally, Sirtam cleared his throat and said, “Antyran, you have our gratitude! We’re very lucky to have found you. We’re going to stop the synchronization now, to prepare for battle.”
“What are my orders?” asked Egar 9.
“Come to Lacrilia. If… if you find us alive, help us leave the planet.”
“I got it. Good luck,” the medir said.
The holograms disappeared, leaving them alone.
“You will allow me to get back on my ship, I hope?” asked Gill.
“Of course,” replied Egar 9 with a friendly smile.
Gill felt the warmth of an un-Antyran happiness at the sight of her bright face on the destroyer’s display wall. He wanted so badly to hold her in his arms that he would have gladly died to be able to do it. His constant running from death tired him so much. He knew that his place was with her, on the other side of existence.
“Sandara! You did it, you…” he trailed off, choked with emotion, unable to say another word.
Sandara stopped her wild impulse to jump at his neck and smell his skin, to cuddle on his chest and feel a bit of steadiness in the ocean of uncertainty, remembering at the last moment that she was dead, and he was alive. The boundary of death gaped between them, and she had no way of crossing back for him. She sighed.
She asked him, barely moving her lips, “What happened?”
“A galactic war has started!”
“I thought so,” she whispered, bowing her head.
“You know… the deletion,” Gill babbled, “you have to postpone it. I need you more than ever. We all need you,” he corrected himself, striving to compose a voice as woeful as poss
ible.
“I’m sure you’re terribly sorry about that,” she teased him.
“I can’t hide anything from you!” he exclaimed, bursting into laughter.
“Don’t you ever forget this,” she said, smiling playfully.
Far from Gill’s view, tens of thousands of Sandaras were hiding among the trunks of the tekal forest, tormented by the desire to see him, to speak with him, to hug him… tormented by their decision to remain hidden… tormented that Gill had no clue of their existence, of the whole deluge of clones…
“What did he say? What did he say?” they whispered.
“The galactic war has started,” the murmur of the terrible news slipped from one to another, sneaking like the shadow of a nifle.
“The galactic war has started!”
A word from the author:
Dear reader,
The story you just read is the final step of a long, winding road I started to walk many years ago.
It took me over ten years to reach the point where I was content enough with the novel to have it published. All my life I was a perfectionist and I couldn’t let something out of my hands before I did all I could to make it better. I can only hope I succeeded with my first book.
I hope you had as much joy reading the story as I had writing it. And in case you really liked it and feel like wanting to help, please consider sharing it. You could share the website of the book www.thesigianbracelet.com, review the story or spread the word in any way you may think fit. For me, the most important thing is to reach as many book lovers as possible and I’m counting on readers like you to make this happen. Not only will this allow many book readers to discover it in a way I can’t reach, but it will allow me to follow my dream of becoming a full-time writer.
I didn't contact any publisher to show them the book. Not that I was afraid to knock on their door—but I believe in the opportunities that the Internet has brought to us, in the possibility of being involved in the whole process and keeping my creative freedom, instead of relinquishing them to a company.
That's why I don't have a PR machine to help me get this story out—and that's why your help can make a huge difference. Ultimately, it would mean that the next novel of this series will hit the shelves much faster than this first book—which I hope is something you would like to happen.
Notes
[←1]
The city’s strategist, a position granted for life by Antyra’s Council.
[←2]
The star system had three inhabited worlds, of which Antyra I was the cradle of Antyran civilization, and the other two were recent colonies.
[←3]
Raman was the last baitar of the ancient world—and undoubtedly the mightiest ruler in history; he had managed to crush all the opposition and unify Antyra under his iron fist. As a baitar, he was the harbinger of the Ussybayales Mysteries, the head of Antyra’s old religion. The baitar title was inherited by the first newborn, forced by tradition to adopt a male sex.
[←4]
The council that had ruled Antyra ever since defeating the temples in the “Kids’ War,” some 652 years earlier.
[←5]
Antyra’s capital.
[←6]
The Antyran temples were built in the shape of a chopped pyramid. The pilgrims reached their tops by climbing the broad staircases adorned with artistic stone rails. The rituals took place on the top platforms, under the “Dome of Mysteries.” However, in the last several hundred years, the Karajoo tradition had changed slightly, and the Bailas held their speeches atop one of the murra trees.
[←7]
The god of senseless deaths.
[←8]
The litany was the story of the god who liberated the Antyrans from Arghail’s darkness. According to the Book of Creation, Zhan himself broke Beramis’s vow of slavery and took him to the sky as a reward for his sacrifice.
[←9]
Small, fusiform, flying creatures hunted to extinction by the tarjis, who suspected that they became the eyes of Arghail by flying over the vitrified cities. Their sticky feet and nasty habit of rubbing them on the gills of the Antyrans didn’t help them become more popular, either.
[←10]
The baskis were blind reptilian creatures that dug deep tunnels underground. The Antyrans used to search for their nests before building the domes because the animals knew how to avoid the groundwater.
[←11]
Mythical creatures of the old legends, the guvals were described as massive, grayish beasts; their brown, daggerlike teeth and their immensely strong bite meant they could crush any armor or helmet as if crushing an egg.
[←12]
It’s true that the Antyrans also called the administrative buildings belonging to Zhan’s temples “domes.” All of that happened because the Bailas had a fixation on spheres and semispheres, imposing their use in architecture at the dawn of Zhan’s age.
[←13]
Ropolis was the capital city of the mining world, Antyra III.
[←14]
The Antyran kids didn’t have a well-defined sex; their hormonal fluctuations amplified one trait or another. In the long-forgotten past, even some adults played the male/female trick by changing their sex at will. To this end, they employed the smell of some legendary aromas, like Echita, Vask, or Terapi, concocted by the greatest aromaries of antiquity. Needless to say, the sinful recipes were all lost in the mists of time—mostly because the new gods didn’t appreciate the old customs at their just value. Right after Zhan’s coming, the maturity ritual was born. The youngsters had to pick from two seeds and inhale a constraining hormone, irreversibly morphing their sex during a “slightly unpleasant” transformation. Some unlucky ones required surgery and sometimes ended up with nasty scars—mostly losing their tails due to the constriction of the blood vessels, dooming them to remain single for the rest of their lives.
[←15]
Antyra’s unification became complete after Raman defeated the grahs in the largest battle of history—the Battle of the Black Hill—and the utter destruction of their beautiful ice capital, Zagrada.
[←16]
Feathers.
[←17]
Gravitational winds falling from the Roch-Alixxor’s plateaus.
[←18]
Spiny shrubs of spherical shape, sometimes rolling huge distances under the vardannes.
[←19]
Baila IX issued a decree to confiscate the kids, in order for them to be raised by the temples. In a few days, rebellions started on the whole planet. After two years of brutal civil war, the Treaty of Alixxor robbed the prophet of his worldly powers, and the winners formed a council named Shindam.
[←20]
Beasts of burden with six legs, and a tail that ended in lethal bony spikes.
[←21]
Dome communities ruled by the initiates, where the Shindam’s laws were thoroughly disdained. They didn’t have an occupation other than mumbling incantations and hatching offspring, dutifully delivered to the temples when they reached the age of two, as Baila ordered.
[←22]
One of the Guk founders.
[←23]
Most of Antyra’s plants were green, but the more archaic forms like siclides and some species of jagged herbs had a purple hue. Recent research had discovered that they evolved from the ancestors of the purple bacteria lurking in the atmosphere.
[←24]
Despite their heavy armor, the chameleons were able to jump over short distances by passing air from their flight tanks into their fusion cores and ejecting the resulting plasma through downward-pointing nozzles.
[←25]
The gods of the old religion. After Zhan’s coming, no one dared to annoy the gods anymore, if only for the lack of restraint shown by the tarjis—particularly those living in corias. They enthusiastically dismembered anyone foolish enough to offend the gods by not observing the proper reverence when talking about them. It was a wonder the aromary art didn�
�t disappear altogether, along with the taste for blasphemy of its legendary storytellers.
[←26]
Antimatter energy packs.
[←27]
In order to travel faster than light speed, each ship would unwind and compress the space at the front, then dump the tangled strings behind for recombination. Flying in a formation called a “distortion front,” the ships were able to use the space deformed by their neighbors, adding their own distortion for a cascading effect. The larger the group, the higher the speed—all up to a limit, of course, given by the propagation distance.
[←28]
The planet became the Antyran granary after a giant irrigation project tamed the unforgiving desert around the Orizabia’s ocean crater.
[←29]
The acronte was the Shindam’s dictator. The position was held for life, which was generally true for all the council’s seats. Traditionally, the Shindam's electors invested the most boring and lacking initiative of them all as acronte—a difficult thing to determine, considering how boring and lacking initiative they all strove to be.
[←30]
Spears carved from the wood of murra, the trees of Zhan.
[←31]
Empathic stalkers, spies, and elite fighters, they did under the cover of darkness all the nasty things the temples didn’t dare to do in broad daylight Their unparalleled talent to murder at the prophet’s orders and usually escape unpunished gave them a disproportionate influence in society. They had a penchant for killing the Shindam’s reformers, depriving the council of any chance to change things for the better.