by Trevor Gregg
Destiny Reckoning
Trevor Ames Gregg
Contents
Previously, on Altered Destiny…
Prologue
1. Loss
2. Asleep
3. Rendezvous
4. Return to the Council
5. Only a Ship
6. Thessell Hydra
7. Decompression
8. Saeli
9. Doubt
10. Reunion
11. Uploaded
12. Revelation
13. The Den
14. Smoked
15. The Lech
16. Separation
17. Arkanon and Arshara
18. Utien
19. Holograms
20. Lodgings
21. Sharing
22. Joraq’s Request
23. Future-Past
24. The Traveler
25. Azoria
26. Requests
27. Alliance
28. The Vid-itorium
29. Fighting Bot
30. Bot-Fight!
31. Evac
32. Dual Timeline
33. Master Dralok
34. Jellified
35. Eastern Garden
36. Demonstration
37. Weapons
38. Shared Memories
39. Sharing
40. Next Phase
41. Tricked
42. Heston
43. Hand-to-Hand
44. Music
45. Courage
46. Darkness
47. Bloodlust
48. Benjam’s Battle
49. Interlude
50. The Gaidan
51. Held Prisoner
52. Ow!
53. Stolen
54. Question and Answer
55. Variables
56. T-Minus Five Minutes
57. Jealousy
58. Nanites
59. Get Their Attention
60. Silent Mob
61. Mind Share
62. Back to the Future
63. Skeevers
64. Infiltration
65. Access
66. Giant Bot-Fight!
67. Release the Serkins
68. Nabbed
69. Rocket Man
70. Slumber
71. The Garzok System
72. Seventeen Thousand
73. Leapfrogging
74. Still Naked
75. Empty Time
76. Warm Welcome
77. Slaughter
78. Unwelcome Memories
79. Blast Radius
80. Procyon
81. Impact
82. Allies
83. Brawl
84. Eggs
85. Uh-oh
86. Altered
87. The Future
88. Rooftop Dance
89. Egg Tower
90. The Portal
Epilogue
Note to the Reader
Cover art by Charlie Wilcher
[email protected]
Copyright © 2019 by Trevor Ames Gregg
All rights reserved.
This book is dedicated to my wonderful wife. Thank you for your hard work and support throughout the years, I couldn’t have made it this far without you.
Previously, on Altered Destiny…
Altered Destiny begins with the introduction of a new villain, a Crevak pirate named Vlanchek. He turns out to be the supreme leader of all of the Crevak Tribes. And he seems to be working with a mysterious liadi boy, Darius. They’re up to no good, we can tell that much.
We then return to our heroes, freshly woken after the detonation of Benjam’s mysterious time bomb. Everyone is whole again, despite the death and destruction that had just befallen them. However, Elarra has a new vision and sees another end to the galaxy. She is too shaken from her vision of this new threat, this Kirugi, to discuss it.
Alis discovers her beloved Ashari is whole again, although something isn’t quite right, she won’t admit to herself the only suspicion she has. Garloks. They don’t seem to have done much more than rewire the ship’s controls, and she has no time to pursue them, so she ignores them for the time being.
Then Alis discover the Ashari is unable to warp, its antimatter core is drained. So they are forced to use an alien warp gate, leading to an unknown destination. Thankfully they come out in known space, but unfortunately smack in the middle of a Crevak-Consortium battle.
With their awesome ship, Kyren, Alis, and the others turn the tide of the battle and drive away the attackers, saving the Consortium. But as thanks, they get tractor-beamed into the Starhammer and arrested. A crazy saurian intelligence officer believes they are the spies who killed her husband, and wants to see them locked away to rot.
Just when they look completely screwed, Alis’ mom, Geri, a Consortium super-spy, shows up and puts the verbal smack-down on Evil Yiu. They are about to escape when they discover the Ashari is no longer aboard the Consortium frigate. Then the Captain of the ship decides to keep them all until they can reach an Arbitrator.
However… remember those garloks Alis was suspicious of? Well they got out of the Ashari and onto the Starhammer. Somehow the first thing they monkeyed around with was the self-destruct sequence. So the ship gets primed to blow. They manage escape on Geri’s shuttle, but Evil Yiu will not be deterred. She pursues them in a fighter craft.
They warp away, but not before sustaining major damage. Winding up at some random coordinates, their shuttle rapidly decompressing, they look to be utterly doomed. Someone responds to their mayday though, and saves them. They are about to board their rescuer’s ship, when they realize it is… dun-dun-dun… Tharox! Yes, Mr. Bald Bad-Guy from the first book is back.
But, since the Epsilon Computer was removed from the timeline by Benjam’s time-bomb, Tharox never found it, never claimed its forces for his own. He never launched his campaign of vengeance against the galaxy. It seems their paths were destined to cross anyway.
Geri reveals that the centuries-old peace between the Crevak tribe and the Consortium has disappeared, replaced by another brutal conflict. The Crevak have a new weapon, one which is turning the tide in their favor. They are capable of killing an entire ship with one single beam.
Elarra is concerned about another threat, though. The one she calls the Kirugi. It seems that this beast, hundreds of meters tall, with eggs that launch into space, will somehow overrun the galaxy if not stopped. She has hope, though, as a giant robot appears in her vision, fighting the monster.
Needing the guidance of her people, she leads them to the liadi home world of Duniya. Tharox is urged to help by his ship’s artificial intelligence, Isa. Who, it turns out, is the artificial imprint of his late wife’s mind. So, finding himself with no excuses, Tharox gives them a ride to Duniya.
Unfortunately, the supposedly warm welcome they receive turns out to be a trap. Elarra is separated from her companions and then her memories are sucked out by the strange chair-device, the rho’kar, and given to the liadi council.
The council, led by… big surprise… Darius, decides that, based on her memories that they have seen, that she is an anathema for having survived her visikaji, her death-vision. She is to be put to death in the morning.
Meanwhile, the others are taken to a sketchy construction zone, apparently to be done in. But of course the raxi, the liadi’s clone guardsmen, underestimate the heroes and fall victim to their own weapons.
Kyren and the others then stage a daring rescue of Elarra, aided by the mysterious council member Saeli, who claims to be on their side. After a car-chase and running gun battle, they make it back to Tharox’s shuttle and are burning into the sky, heading back to Isa. But the liadi launch a few missiles.
The shuttle has no countermeasures and they appear to be doomed. But Alis, the extreme pilot and engineer that she is, manages to eek enough speed out of the shuttle to evade the missiles. They manage to escape Duniya and decide to return to Regalis, Benjam’s home, so he may have access to his lab and its resources.
Of course, they are greeted on Benjam’s doorstep by a squad of raxi, a hit squad sent by the liadi precogs. Geri is such a badass, though, that she takes out the whole squad. Turns out being a spy does make you pretty cool.
Benjam reveals that although his lab is quite advanced, he does have limited computing power. As such, it will take a long time for him to run his analysis of the time bomb’s effects.
Just then, the Crevak arrive and immediately engage the Consortium forces stationed there. The new Crevak battleship with the strange red sphere weapon also appears, decimating the Consortium ships. Regalis is ordered to evacuate, and the battle does not look like it is going well. Geri decides to stay and help the Consortium fight. After all, Alis’ father and brother are in the fleet currently battling the Crevak.
Isa offers Benjam access to her substantial processing power, and they decide to escape and work on Benjam’s research while they travel to their next destination. Deciding they need more information, Benjam convinces them to return to the Knowledge Archive on Darlos. He believes his friend, the Lorekeeper Milos, will be able to help.
But the Crevak are tipped off by that rat Darius, and invade the capitol of Darlos before they reach it. The vile Crevak destroy the city and bury the archive under a mountain of rubble. Luckily, though, the Crevak main force has already moved on by the time Isa warps the Radiant Star to Darlos.
Thanks to some fancy flying by Isa and some tricky maneuvers compliments of Alis, they get to the surface and manage to escape their Crevak pursuers. Making their way on foot to the archive, they encounter Crevak that Tharox mercilessly dispatches, revealing his utter hatred for them.
Once inside the destroyed Knowledge Archive, they find no active terminals. They do find, however, a flighty young woman, who doesn’t believe they aren’t with the Crevak. Eventually catching up to her, they discover she is hiding refugees, and is the last keeper of the Knowledge Archive.
After they gain access to the data they were seeking, they launch an escape, managing to save most of the refugees. Tharox goes off the rails and starts chasing down the Crevak, all while fighter craft are inbound. Kyren has to reign him in and they make their escape just in time.
They wind up on the same planet that Saeli happens to be on. Big coincidence? Not! Turns out he wants to let Elarra share her visions with Kyren, by way of a pair of rho’kar he happens to have on his ship.
They learn from both Elarra’s visions and the Knowledge Archive data that they need to obtain some ancient tech called katerwans, to allow them to masquerade as Crevak. All so they can locate information on the new Crevak weapon. And so Elarra can kill Darius.
Believing there to be a marketplace dealing in ancient tech, they travel to the backwater planet of Vargos and ride the space elevator to the surface. Of course, they immediately run into trouble and are nearly mugged, when they are saved by the ever-so-badass Hubbell.
It turns out she is a mercenary and relic hunter, and happens to know where there may be some katerwans. The catch? The ancient station where they are supposedly stored is intermittently bathed in deadly radiation from a nearby pulsar. That, and the security systems are likely still active too. No big deal, right?
After encountering not only the remnants of the security system, but a strange alien monster as well, they finally find a box of tech. It contains the katerwans, but also some other goodies as well. Hubbell takes her cut of the tech and goes on her way.
Now that they are prepared, they locate Darius’ ship from the tracking beacon Saeli so graciously gave them. They plan to infiltrate the alien space station from which the Crevak’s red sphere weapon was obtained. Using the katerwans, they physically turn into various Crevak races. Kyren gets to be a lizard-like thevar, Alis a demonic-looking dimak. Elarra morphs into some lumpy-faced dwarf, and Tharox is brought along as a Trojan Chewbacca, wearing rigged handcuffs.
Quickly separated by race, they are all sent to different sectors of the station. Tharox is taken to a torturer, who is supposed to extract information on the Consortium. Tharox slips his bonds and quickly ends the torturer's existence, then proceeds to go on a Crevak-killing rampage.
Alis is led away to be with her own demonic kin, while Elarra activates the stealth belt, one of the goodies from the excursion with Hubbell, and goes invisible. Lucky for Elarra, too, because the katerwan’s effect ends prematurely. Unfortunately, the same happens for Kyren and Alis too.
Alis, when revealed, hides within an energy shield generated by another belt. Kyren uses his own belt, a warp generator, to warp away to an unknown location within the station. He finds a mysterious AI who keeps rambling about the “platypus routine,” and their meeting seventeen thousand years earlier. Kyren finally agrees to activate this mysterious protocol, and discovers he now has a complete arsenal of security bots at his disposal.
Just in time, too. He locates Alis just before her shield is overwhelmed, and dispatches several bots to save her. The interface is somehow perfectly intuitive, as if he had designed it himself, Kyren notes. His intervention allows for his companions to make it back to the ship. Elarra reveals that she killed Darius, and now the raxi are following her orders. They sacrifice themselves to remain behind and hold off the Crevak long enough for the rest to escape.
The station blows, but now Kyren has a strange alien data core, which seems to have exactly the information they were looking for. Suddenly, the phone rings. It’s… Geri! And she’s found the Ashari! And she wants to steal it back! For a rather grim reason, though, it would seem. Geri has a suicide plan to destroy the Crevak flagship that is laying waste to the Consortium fleet.
They just happen to have a data core with the technical information on the Crevak weapon in their possession. Examination by Alis and Benjam reveals a weak point, at which a modification could be made that would cause the weapon to burn out. They rendezvous with Geri and she reveals their plan to steal the Ashari back.
They execute the plan but Geri wasn’t prepared for the battle-scarred veteran who was aboard. The veteran thwarts her plan but quick thinking by Alis and fast action by Kyren save the day. Successfully stealing the Ashari, they head for the engineering bay to pick up Benjam and his latest creation, a teleporter beacon.
Once onboard, they head for the battle already in progress. The Crevak are wiping out the Consortium ships, one by one. Geri manages to fly the Ashari, thanks to its new stealth tech, right up to the flagship. Kyren, Alis, Elarra, and Tharox don their space suits and board the escape pods, which also have stealth technology. Geri makes a close pass and launches them in the pods.
Elarra veers off course as she has a vision, and lands far from the others. By the time she makes it to the exhaust port they used as an entry point, the others are deep within the ship. But she discovers her powers have changed, and now she can see the future almost as it is happening.
Harnessing this newfound gift, she infiltrates the ship and locates Kyren and Alis just after they have sabotaged the weapon. Unfortunately they were separated from Tharox. As they are trying to find their way from the ship, they are confronted by the mighty Warmaster Vlanchek, of the Crevak Tribes. He casually whips up on them and is set to kill them when Tharox intervenes.
The others flee while Tharox and Vlanchek fight in brutal hand to hand combat. Kyren attempts to use his warp belt to open a portal to the latest gizmo Benjam had built, which is sitting aboard the cargo hold of the Ashari. Unfortunately something in the ship’s hull is blocking the signal.
Traveling out of the depths of the ship, they approach the hangar bay, hoping that will allow the warp signal to get out. But an explosion separates Kyren and Elarra from Alis. The same exact way as Elarra�
��s vision had shown her.
More explosions rock the ship indicating it is about to go critical. Elarra convinces Kyren they have no time, and must flee, so he opens a portal to the Ashari. They escape the ship as it goes nova, and believe Alis to be lost forever.
Meanwhile, Tharox, while unable to defeat the mighty Warmaster Vlanchek in hand to hand combat, does manage to keep him occupied long enough to be unable to escape the destruction of his own ship.
But what about Alis?! Well, we see that she did manage to escape the exploding ship by commandeering an enemy shuttle. But she is now falling from orbit in a burned out craft, destined for a meteoric end.
As the others mistakenly grieve the loss of Alis, Elarra has another vision. This time, she sees Kyren as the one controlling the giant robot. She sees that there is something that they can do to fight. She sees hope.