Aurora Resonant: The Complete Collection (Amaranthe Collections Book 3)

by G. S. Jennsen

  To the Directorate, every new discovery brings with it a peril that could wrest control from the Primors, upend the perfect balance they have created or even destroy them completely. Therefore, the discovery must be either brought into submission or eliminated before it has the chance to do any of those things.

  Valkyrie: Circumspection and prudence are doubtless wise policies, but such an overweighted risk profile defies logic rather than follows it. What events could have created such a paranoia in them?

  Mnemosyne: When we encountered the Anadens, they had already become fundamentally as they are now, and they are not forthcoming with their secrets. Their legends tell of a great war against a terrifying alien enemy in which they emerged victorious, heralding the beginning of their intergalactic empire.

  There are always seeds of truth in legends. If I were to speculate, I would hypothesize that this enemy truly was terrifying, and the war cost them much, but most of all their innocence. Their sense of wonder.

  Valkyrie was silent for a period, deep in contemplation. Mesme had grown more forthcoming with her during these weeks than it was with Alex or Caleb; she attributed this to nothing beyond the relative similarity of their natures.

  It did not reveal secrets to her it kept from them, but it did talk with greater openness—and the more Mesme talked to her, the more she gleaned from what it did not say.

  Valkyrie: This is why you created Aurora, yet kept it bereft of other intelligent life, isn’t it? You hoped if Humans were not forced to undergo such a trial, they would retain the better of their characteristics, the ones the Anadens lost: curiosity, wonder, ingenuity. You hoped that in doing so, they would become something greater and more formidable than the Anadens—or possibly something kinder and more generous.

  Mnemosyne: We created Aurora to study our enemy.

  Valkyrie: Acknowledged. Yet only the simplest beings act with but a single purpose. The Katasketousya remain a mystery to me in many respects, but I am confident in asserting that you are not simple beings.

  This time Mesme was the one who fell quiet for a span. She allowed it the space to deliberate on the answer.

  Mnemosyne: In our quietest moments? In the long silence of aeons where we could do nothing but watch? Of course it became a hope, a fanciful wish. A dream we told to ourselves as reassurance of the rightness of our actions.

  Valkyrie: And have you realized the error in your premise?

  Mnemosyne: There was no error. We simply ran out of time.

  Valkyrie: Then your error is two-fold, Mnemosyne.

  If Alex had issued the challenge, Mesme would have closed off, muttered something about ‘relevance’ and ‘perhaps later,’ and swooped off into the void. But as she’d noted, the alien seemed comparatively comfortable with her, and instead it challenged her in return.

  Mnemosyne: Enlighten me.

  Valkyrie: It is the triumph over adversity which drives Humans forward, not the absence of it. If they don’t encounter challenges from the outside, they will create them within. Conflict—struggle—is what makes them who they are. Do they fear adversity? Absolutely. But they also crave it, and in its absence they become dulled.

  The mistake the Anadens made after their victory over this terrifying enemy of legend was to outlaw conflict not only from external influences, but among themselves. I suspect you are correct and they did this out of fear, as it is the driving force behind so many choices sapient beings make. Yet if fear still drives their actions today, then it was done for naught.

  Mnemosyne: I admit, the Humans of Aurora have been stubbornly resistant to harmony over the centuries. Nevertheless, they have moved beyond their internal conflicts to unite in common purpose and goals these last months.

  Valkyrie: Incorrect. They—some of them, those upon whom such things turn—have come to recognize that consummate harmony and likeness of mind is neither possible nor required. Conflict, ingrained as it is in Human nature, may be inevitable, but it is the fight against conflict which gives rise to war and destruction. The better course is to allow small differences room to breathe, pick one’s battles very carefully and know there are causes which will matter far in excess of any petty disagreement.

  This is where Humanity’s vanguard stands today.

  Mesme’s silence lasted not quite so long now. I will consider your words—at some length, I suspect. What was our second error?

  Valkyrie: You did not run out of time. In fact, your experiment ran for precisely the amount of time it needed to in order to achieve its most laudable goal. The conflict you unwittingly created with your invasion delivered Humanity its greatest triumph over adversity, and today they are already not merely kinder and more generous than the Anadens. They are also greater and more formidable.

  Mnemosyne: The Humans have progressed impressively this last year. None is so willing to admit this as I. But I’m sorry, Valkyrie. They are not more formidable than the Anadens. You have scarcely begun to witness the extent of the power the Anadens wield.

  Valkyrie: Watch them, Mnemosyne. They will prove you wrong.

  17

  ERIDIUM II GALAXY

  LGG REGION VI

  * * *

  NYX ELASSON-PRAESIDIS SPARED ONLY A BRIEF, dismissive survey of the remains of the Cultivated planet in Sector 4A of Eridium II.

  Stripped of its crust, the formerly molten core had solidified in misshapen protrusions upon being exposed to space and its star’s heat. In time the planet would crumble, possibly forming a few comets in another dozen millennia as its orbit failed and it surrendered to the pull of the star’s gravity.

  But that would happen later; today it continued to struggle along in a wobbling orbit. Useless to her. She checked the timing on Aver’s arrival and the Theriz Cultivation…it had likely been useless to him as well.

  The planet’s satellite listed badly. It was destined to crash into the disfigured core, and far sooner than the planet’s final demise occurred. Composed of the most basic of basalts and feldspars, the Cultivation Unit had deemed it unworthy of expending the effort to harvest.

  The moon thus remained intact, and the listing was instead a result of the damage to the planet. The satellite had been minimally colonized by the native species.

  She landed at the largest structure on the lunar surface and stepped out of her vessel, protected from the ravages of space by a considerable amount of diati. A quick scan of the buildings revealed no life signs, and she didn’t go inside. If Aver had somehow died here, he would have undergone automatic regenesis. This had not occurred, thus he had not died here.

  Fourteen small vessels were tethered to a landing pad beside the habitat. She forcefully powered them up one by one and studied their systems. The native dialect made analysis difficult, but after inspecting several ships she was able to cross-reference the data enough to judge it all pertained to intra-stellar locations and calculations.

  Until she reached the ninth vessel. Its navigation system contained unique coordinates overlaying Communis figures.

  She stepped back and walked slowly around the vessel with a critical eye. It was functionally identical to the others on the pad. Primitive, crude. Nothing to mark it as special. So how did it come by Communis-rendered coordinates?

  This was the key. She knew it with the certainty that came from the thousand iterations of genetic refinement which had crafted her into the perfect investigator, tracker and analyst. Aver was inferior, but he would have possessed skills sufficient to discover this vessel and identify the same anomaly.

  The trail Aver had followed from this ship and the data it contained had led him to his denouement. She would not be so sloppy.

  She committed the data to memory then quickly checked the remaining vessels. Finding no further anomalies, she returned to her own ship and lifted off the surface. Considering the scattered remains of the primitives’ base below, she gestured in the direction of the surface.

  Cascading explosions rippled across the pad as the ships’ engi
nes blew one after another in rapid succession, and the resulting debris ripped into the habitats until they lay in shredded ruins.

  Satisfied, she departed for the coordinates.

  In minutes she floated in empty space on the outer edge of the heliosphere of the system. The primitives had built no structures here; they’d left behind no artifacts. By sight and all other measures, there was nothing here.

  It remained possible something had been here, something since removed. Before or after Aver’s arrival? By Aver himself? Space wasn’t like a solid surface that retained traces of what once existed long after an attachment vanished, and here no evidence remained to be found of past objects or events.

  But the Communis data in the ship at the lunar habitat included more than simply coordinates. Appended to the coordinates were two distinct wave frequencies.

  Precisely calibrated wave functions served many purposes, but one of them was to act as keys. She created the wave and sent it forth, then considered the portal which opened out of nothingness in front of her.

  She didn’t need to consult the Annals to know it was Katasketousya in origin, for it was an exact copy of the entrance to their Provision Network.

  She could muse that this wasn’t the answer she’d expected, the Katasketousya being what they were, but in truth she’d held no expectations. During an investigation her mind was a blank slate, etched upon solely by the evidence she discovered.

  An additional wave frequency remained unused. Perhaps its use came later, elsewhere, perhaps not. Perhaps it was a passcode.

  She fired her ship’s weapon at the portal and watched the energy bounce off its shimmering surface. Now she activated the second wave and fired again. The energy passed through and did not emerge out the other side.

  She studied the shimmering plasma barrier before her in growing suspicion. Portals such as this one acted as passages to spaces cosmically apart from their own. An incidental effect of the dimensional shift created was to prevent regenesis for a consciousness whose body expired while on the other side.

  It could be a trap. A singularity might be waiting just through the portal, and this marked the end of the line. The fact it was hidden and needed special information to access meant it was unquestionably nefarious in nature.

  Aver had been foolish to traverse it blindly, especially when there existed a known portal matching this one which did not have a singularity on the other side—the entrance to the Provision Network. It was passcoded as well, but the Directorate knew the code, and their Primor would provide it if requested and justified. That portal was not guaranteed to lead to the same place as this one did, but it represented a far more prudent intermediate step in the investigation. A lesson Aver had learned too late.

  The decision as to her next step took an additional twenty seconds, as she must be sure.

  KATOIKIA

  TRIANGULUM GALAXY

  LGG REGION VI

  Katoikia could be described in totality by a single word: barren. The descriptive applied equally to the terrain and the structures built upon it, of which there were few. While Praesidis architecture tended toward minimalism and Machim’s was unapologetically spartan, most of their cities appeared opulent by comparison.

  Nyx recognized how it had come to be so. The Katasketousya had lived their lives in the stars for more epochs than the Anadens had ruled Amaranthe, and they had long ago abandoned their homeworld in all but the most utilitarian respects.

  Though she had mentally admonished the deceased Inquisitor for not traversing the Provision Network Gateway, and that option was certainly open to her, she was electing to take a more direct approach.

  No matter the form of the corruption lying beyond the portal in Eridium II 4A, the Katasketousya were the perpetrators of it. Ela-rank Inquisitors were investigators, while elassons such as herself could better be described as…solvers. Having identified the source, she would solve the problem.

  Scrub grass dotted the brown landscape surrounding the tower, one of two hundred such complexes—part sanitarium, part living tomb—housing the physical bodies of most if not all the Katasketousya living today. Safely ensconced in stasis chambers which kept their bodies operating, the pseudo-physical manifestations of their consciousnesses were allowed to run free.

  Nyx landed several meters outside the tower, disembarked and glided to the entrance. The security system performed a genetic scan, and the door opened for her.

  All Accepted Species facilities were obliged to allow entry by elasson-rank members of any Dynasty, without question or challenge. Privacy was not a concept which carried any real meaning in Amaranthe, for nothing lay outside the reach of the Directorate.

  She strode down a hall to the transit tube and ascended to the fourth floor, where she was met by a Katasketousya—presumably a medical monitor of some sort, as it was thus far the only sentient presence in this mausoleum.

  Inquisitor, welcome. Your visit is most unexpected. What can I—

  “I require a stasis chamber. Any will do.”

  Our reserve supply is located on the first floor, in the far right corner of the building. I can take you there now, though I wish to inquire what—

  “Not an empty one. An occupied one.”

  The Katasketousya quivered and retreated toward the wall. I do not understand.

  “I require a stasis chamber occupied by one of your kind who is presently off flitting about somewhere.” She moved past the agitated swirl of lights into the lab and went three rows down to stop in front of the third pod in from the aisle. “Here. This one will do.”

  But you cannot remove it from the lab environment without—

  “It contains self-preservation functionality, yes? It can sustain itself and the body it contains for…up to a decade, I believe?”

  Well, yes, technically, but—

  “Good.” She sent a cluster of diati out to encompass the stasis chamber.

  Ship.

  A tornado of crimson light formed, then it and the chamber vanished.

  Inquisitor, please. These chambers and their inhabitants are my charges and my responsibility. If you would take a moment to explain where your interest lies, I will endeavor to assist you in any way possible. There’s no need to engage in such…violence.

  Such a squeamish creature, to view her actions as violence. No, the violence would come later.

  Her gaze drifted down the row. “Actually, I believe I’ll take two. Insurance, you see.” She repeated the process.

  Once the second chamber had disappeared she pivoted and, with a curt nod to the caretaker, gathered diati around herself and teleported directly back to her ship. After securing the chambers in the lower hold so they didn’t become damaged during the flight, she set a course for the Milky Way.

  18

  * * *

  THE GREATEST OF THE ANADEN WARRIORS was a man named Corradeo Praesidis. He was not their supreme general, but instead a skilled strategist who displayed a keen mind. A decisive actor who studied the nature of an adversary until he understood it as much as any ordinary being could hope to achieve.

  We determined that, as he represented the best hope for the Anadens, so too did he for us.

  But the merging did not go so well as we expected.

  We had believed our long observations had taught us all we needed to know about the species, but the reality of an organic mind, of flesh and consciousness bonded together, of physical existence and its mortality, proved mystifying beyond anything we had ever experienced. We struggled and fought as Corradeo struggled and fought us in turn, resisting our increasingly agitated attempts to form a sympathetic bond. He exhibited an uncommonly independent mind and a fierce spirit, to an even greater degree than we had expected.

  These very characteristics had led us to choose him as our vessel, yet they nearly resulted in our undoing, to the doom of all.

  He suffered, and we perceived it far more viscerally than we were prepared to process. We suffered, and the foreign se
nsations we could not absorb were expelled as energy.

  Structures and terra firma were damaged. Lives were lost.

  In the end we had no choice but to subsume ourselves completely to him—to act as his vessel rather than he ours—in order to reach a stable communion. Anadens as a species were a stubborn sort, and this man above all others refused to be ruled.

  The deeper connection which resulted opened up new opportunities, however, and in due course we learned to communicate with one another. Not in so crude a manner as through words, but on a more profound, intrinsic level.

  We taught this man how to access dimensions beyond those he saw, then how to manipulate them, then how to control them. He assimilated this knowledge with the zeal of the desperate.

  Now equipped with the power to shape the fabric of space itself, he wielded this new skill as a sword, using it to fashion weapons which the Anadens deployed to withstand, then push back, then crush the Dzhvar out of existence.

  The Anaden victory was unparalleled, a watershed event not merely in their development as a species but in all of cosmic history.

  We might have left them to their own devices at this juncture, but we found in the intervening years we had become accustomed to a physical, corporeal existence. Tied to the flesh, we experienced the world around us in wholly new and unanticipated ways.

  As we were eternal, the passage of time had no significance for us, and we resolved to stay for a while.

  Our companion was agreeable to this, as our presence had gifted him incredible talents—talents he wished to use to protect his people against future threats.

  For though the Dzhvar had been the first enemy strong enough to threaten the Anadens’ existence, they were not the only dangers waiting in the vastness of the cosmos.

  SIYANE

  LARGE MAGELLANIC CLOUD GALAXY

  LGG REGION 1

  Caleb awoke with a startled jerk. For the briefest moment he felt detached from himself—out of time or out of body, he wasn’t certain which.