Copyright © 2017 T. Ellery Hodges All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by Damon Za www.damonza.com
ISBN-13: 978-0-9907746-3-1
ISBN-10: 0-9907746-3-5
Dedicated to those who wished Marty McFly had asked a few follow up questions when Doc claimed that The Flux Capacitor made time travel possible.
Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
CHAPTER FIFTY
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
CHAPTER SIXTY
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
CHAPTER SEVENTY
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
DEAR READER
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PROLOGUE
DATE | TIME: UNKNOWN | FEROXIAN PLANE
HEYER’S FEDORA CAST a shadow over his eyes as the sun began to set on the Feroxian plane. He crouched at the edge of a ravine, watching members of his brother’s adopted species gathering below. They would take no notice of his presence. He was high above, his dark clothes blended with the terrain, and their white eyes were set on the gateway humming at the ravine’s center.
A short time earlier, the vibrations had been imperceivable, but as they accelerated, their familiar sound had called to the tribe, telling them that one of their sons was returning. They approached in quiet humility, and the space within the ravine grew crowded as each entered and knelt. They bowed their heads, and pressed their right fists into the dirt.
Long ago, the ancestors of the Ferox gathering below Heyer had been told a story. A race designed with certain limits on their imagination, they could make little distinction between creator and god. So, when this story was told to them, it came from the mouths of their gods. These gods had said that this story was not like any other story—it was not a story at all, but the truth. The story had told the Ferox how and why they came to be, it gave them their roles, but most importantly—it told them who they served.
In this story, the gateway was an instrument of their gods’ will, placed on their world so that the Ferox could fulfill the purpose for which they had been created.
The generation gathering below were distant descendants of those who had first heard the story. To the Ferox who lived today, these gateways were more sacred than they could have ever been to their ancestors, as the eldest among them were not so far removed from a time when their gods had abandoned them—when extinction had seemed an inevitability. It was believed that those distant ancestors had insulted their gods, and that their kind had been punished with fear. Fear, that took the form of watching helplessly as their population plummeted. This had taught them a lesson never to be forgotten.
The news of their gods’ return came from Ends the Storm, the eldest Alpha leader among them.
“Our gods have returned and they speak through me. The thrum of the gates is restored. We have endured our punishment and we have learned its lesson. They grant our people their mercy. Their will powers the gates—their will is our purpose. Their will is our life,” Ends the Storm had said.
Any question of the truth he spoke ended when the first of their sons was chosen. Ends the Storm placed a stone in the son’s palm, and it had glowed red with the power of their gods’ will. The youth had swallowed, and stepped through a gateway that had slumbered all their lives. When he returned, he had reached fertility and carried his trophy. That was the day that all the Feroxian tribes believed. Ends the Storm was more than a leader, but something they only understood from their spoken legends. Those they had looked to for leadership beforehand pledged obedience to his divine decrees. Ends the Storm was their prophet—his words were the path to the promised land.
Heyer knew the story as one of the many shameful chapters in his species’ history. No gods had ever abandoned the Ferox, but it was true that the last living ancestors of the Ferox’s creators had returned to save them. No prophet had been chosen to speak the will of their returning gods—his brother had simply taken their most respected leader’s body in order to play the role. The Ferox below had no concept that alien technologies, as opposed to divine forces, were at work. In fairness, the smooth circular surface of the gateways appeared to be what the story had taught them. It looked like an ancient artifact, sculpted from the stone found within the ravine. It gave no sign that it was a complex machine, but took a simple shape, reminiscent of a sundial large enough for one of their kind to stand at its center.
As the vibrations intensified below, granular black dust that had been swept onto the platform by the planet’s wind seemed to levitate off its surface. The turbulent red and black globe of the portal took shape. Currents of excess electricity arced across the sphere’s liquid surface and the smell of ozone filled the ravine. When the light came, Heyer and those gathered below turned away to protect their eyes.
The vibrations stopped. Their hum becoming an echo rolling off into the distance as the Ferox turned back to the gateway. The corpse of the slain son now lay before them on the platform. Rakes the Claw had been a Red. One of a small handful of the tribe’s mid-ranking males that Heyer could recognize by sight. Injuries covered his lifeless form, but it was the gaping hole in Rakes the Claw’s torso that had ended his battle with the abomination on the other side—the challenger
had won.
Under the circumstances, time was a relative thing, but to the Ferox present now, Rakes the Claw appeared to have been killed quite recently. Blood still ran from his wounds—it drained out of him and pooled on the gateway’s surface. He had been brought to the threshold of fertility before he was slain. His neck was still swollen and his dead eyes were black. They shined, now, in the light of the setting sun.
The tribe hung their heads in a moment of respect for their fallen brother, and Heyer joined them in the gesture of silence. Though relieved Jonathan had survived another confrontation, he’d learned of this victory on the wrong side of the gateway. Seeing the toll his survival had on the Ferox tribe who called Rakes the Claw one of their sons made celebration a distant thought.
Eventually, the Ferox rose and began to disperse. As was their custom, those they called the Carriers of the Dead stayed behind. Before entering the gates, the deceased had chosen them. Should he not survive, they would remove his remains from the platform. They would wash his blood away, and take his body on a different path than the rest of the tribe. Their path would take them to a lake of exposed molten rock where the body would sink below the surface and slowly melt away. Much like the pallbearers of mankind, the request to carry the dead was given as an honor.
By the time the ravine’s last occupant had gone, the glossy black pillars in the distance cast long shadows on the planet’s surface. Heyer stood and, slowly, began descending from ledge to ledge with an effortless stealth. It was not long before he landed quietly on the ravine floor.
His brother’s vessel, similar to his earthbound equivalent, hid in plain sight by mimicking the terrain of its surroundings. Had Heyer not known where the entry was, it would have appeared as though he approached one of the many unremarkable surfaces on the ravine’s perimeter. Beneath his feet, there was a network of tunnels—caves formed during a period of the planet’s geologic history when gases had been escaping its core. These caves were where the Ferox took shelter. A male of the species spent a majority of his waking hours on the planet’s surface, but instincts lead him underground in moments of vulnerability. They slept, bred, and healed from injuries beneath the surface.
When the species had thrived, the females had often stayed below for long stretches after the birth of a child, the young needing the safety of the surrounding caverns and a community of watchful eyes until they reached a level of maturity. In the past few generations, Feroxian males had found fewer and fewer opportunities to achieve fertility, and as a result, the female’s long stretches below were far less frequent. They now occupied the surface nearly as often as the males.
Heyer could not enter the caves through the same surface openings as the tribe, especially this close to the sun setting. He may as well stroll into a wolf den. In order to avoid alarming the entire tribe to an intruder, his brother’s vessel allowed for an entrance only Heyer could open. Of the two, Heyer made the journey across dimensions when communication was required. This was a matter of practicality. Malkier’s role in the Feroxian leadership meant he could not be absent for long periods without attracting notice.
Heyer pressed his hand to the glassy rock and the surface rippled as though he had disturbed the reflection of a pond. Once the entrance finished altering its molecular structure, he stepped through, and the rock returned to a solid state behind him. The interior of Malkier’s vessel mimicked the natural caverns in the same manner as the outer ravine. The Ferox who entered these tunnels were never aware of crossing a boundary between true rock and the vessel’s projections. Heyer’s entrance appeared to be a small tunnel leading to a dead-end. Its narrow, restrictive size made it uncomfortable to the Ferox, but not a man. As such, it was seldom traveled by anyone but himself.
As he made his way to his brother’s quarters, he was thankful he had a last moment of solitude before undertaking the task that had brought him back to this planet. He had never hoped to outrun the corpse of Dams the Gate back to the Feroxian plane. Any chance of hiding the body was long past, leaving him no other option but to triage his brother’s reaction.
There were moments that Heyer fell victim to the delusion that time was a sentient being—an opponent whose agenda was usually counter to his own. Often, he could almost hear that being whispering to him: “I understand, really, I do, but this was never meant to go your way.” The actions of Dams the Gate, the rebellion that had brought about the adolescent Ferox’s death at the hands of Jonathan—these were not whispers. Rather, Heyer got the sense that time saw his efforts as a joke and could not stop laughing.
As he arrived at the familiar drop-off at the end of the corridor, he waited a moment, peering down and listening for any sign that his brother was not alone before dropping into the main chamber.
A light within the room illuminated a rectangular platform raised out of the floor’s center. His brother often used it as a table, but tonight, Dams the Gate’s body lay there as though the stone were an autopsy table. The corpse’s black blood had run, hardened into tar-like lines down the sides, and pooled where the edges met the floor. Heyer’s brother sat close by, staring into the remains as if seeing something that wasn’t really there.
The light illuminating the platform was coming from a window recessed into the wall behind his brother. The opening projected a visual persona where the artificial intelligence of Malkier’s vessel could be addressed. Her name was Cede, though, in reality, she had no gender. She was humanoid, to the degree that she possessed a head, arms, a torso, and legs, but her appearance was made in the image of a Borealis, the brothers’ birth-race.
When the brothers had been born into their natural bodies, they possessed translucent skin, and one could see their bodily fluids pumping, and the movements of their internal organs, muscle, and skeleton. Though it would seem an unsightly lifeform to gaze on in a mirror, their biology had been more like staring at precious metals. Cede’s skin was similar. Looking at her, Heyer could see the mercury-like fluid and the tissues like polished silver beneath the skin.
Cede’s face was not chosen at random, but had belonged to a woman named Sayira, their mother. Heyer had no memory of her, and felt no emotional attachment to the face or the name outside of a regret that told him he should. When the brothers were young men, he had been jealous that Malkier had been alive to know their mother. Over the centuries, seeing the pain her absence brought him, Heyer had grown to suspect Malkier envied him for just the opposite, Heyer having been spared from knowing the misery of losing her.
Cede’s projection was no mere avatar displayed on a monitor. Instead, she appeared to look in on them from her own chamber within the wall. Her room was brightly lit, and the walls a milky white with seamless contours, all a stark contrast to the bleak caverns that made up his brother’s home. The illusion was so real it seemed that Heyer could reach through the window and touch her if he wished.
Heyer felt it ironic that whenever he interacted with Cede, she felt more alien to him than mankind. It was a strange thing when one’s own species was so foreign that one could hardly tell individuals apart. Heyer knew the face of his mother. He would recognize his original face, and his brother’s, but when he saw historical records of his own species, he could scarcely tell one Borealis from the next.
After all this time, and despite all of his brother’s animosity for his own species, Malkier had never asked the A.I. to change her projection. Cede didn’t have the character, or perhaps programming, that Heyer’s own vessel possessed. She never displayed a sense of self, almost as if she’d been created to think the concept narcissistic. Perhaps, though, Cede had the capacity to see herself however she wished, and simply lacked the desire to be anything more than his brother’s tool—a means to an end.
Heyer heard his brother’s voice, then: “Thank you. That will be all, Cede.”
The computer nodded as her chamber disappeared, taking the light with it, a stone wall forming where her window had been.
“I know you are the
re, brother,” Malkier whispered.
Heyer closed his eyes, then exhaled slowly. The quiet flap of his coat and the muffled contact of his shoes’ soles touching the floor confirmed his presence. He bowed his head in empathy before Malkier, and the gesture required no false sentiment. He could loathe everything his brother had become, but could not abandon compassion in the face of this tragedy.
Malkier did not move, but sat, unblinking. The white slits of his eyes might have hid from the Ferox how lost his brother now was. The subtle manifestations of a Borealis’ suffering beneath a Feroxian shell were nearly imperceivable to his brother’s adopted species. But Heyer saw grief stewing in Malkier’s disbelief, as though a part of his brother was not ready to comprehend what was lying in front of him. Heyer understood—once he accepted what he saw, there would be nowhere left for Malkier to hide. He would have to take responsibility for the part he’d played in it.
Dams the Gate’s eyes, black and empty, stared lifelessly at the chamber’s ceiling. Closing the eyes was not a Feroxian practice, nor was grieving over the dead in such long duration. Heyer wondered if his brother had taken the remains under some false pretense, abused his role as prophet to keep the body from being cast into the molten burial grounds. Dams the Gate had been forbidden access to Earth, so it was unlikely he had chosen carriers of the dead. How ever the events had played out upon the body’s return, Heyer hoped his brother’s private grief remained unknown to the Ferox. Though unlikely, alien frailties within Malkier could give the few Ferox who questioned his leadership more reason to mistrust him.
Malkier looked away from the body as Heyer stepped closer. Now, he saw more clearly the injuries the corpse had endured. As Heyer’s eyes traveled down the face of the dead Ferox, he saw the faint reflections of light caught by broken links of chain. Shards of metal were embedded like shrapnel in the jaw and neck. When his eyes fell lower, mental alarms went off, and Heyer had to turn his face away from his brother to hide the storm of thought passing through him.
Jonathan had said he’d thrown Dams the Gate from the rooftop of an unfinished skyscraper. When Heyer had learned the Ferox’s name, he should have asked for the specifics. He had failed to imagine they may prove so dangerous.
The Never Paradox (Chronicles Of Jonathan Tibbs Book 2) Page 1