Legacy, p.1
Legacy, page 1
Legacy
Book 1 of Expanding Suns (TM)
David Aquinas
David Aquinas Publishing
Copyright © 2023-2025 by David Aquinas
All rights reserved.
No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
Contents
1. A Wrinkle in Space-Time
2. The Gift
3. Awakening
4. Trapped
5. Escape
6. Pursuit
7. Hunted
8. Sarpanya
9. Dark Waters
10. Guild House
11. Chance Encounters
12. Crucible
13. The Sarpan
14. The Chief Steward
15. Riotta
16. The Steward Hall
17. Jubilee
18. Raptor Attack
19. Dungeon
20. The Paramani
21. Interrogation
22. Ettirka
23. A Matter of Honor
24. The Test
25. The Queen's Champion
26. If you want to read more books by David Aquinas Then sign up for your free daily email newsletter at his website:
1
A Wrinkle in Space-Time
In the 50 thyear since the ascendance of paramani Kashendra Ashastra to the Emerald Dais to rule all humans, there arose a disturbance in deep space core ward at the heart of the Commonwealth of Stars. A virtual wind sprang deep in the ether between the continuums of n-space. It surged like an unseasonable storm in the climate of ever turning spheres of reality that made up the cosmos. It ripped through the layers of space-time, attracted and repelled by anchoring gravity wells, resonating with the hidden mirrors that sparkled like evanescent jewels with colors ephemeral and eternal, unbeheld by sapient eyes of any aliens in the Commonwealth.
A saren philosopher might blame the lowly humans; newcomers deemed primitive and irrelevant, yet they seemed to attract waves of discontinuity, pulsing between infinite potential and eternal stasis, the human enigma whose gift was unknown, but always seemed to draw trouble unto itself.
Now, the cosmic wind shook the webwork of reality called spacetime, and a merchant ship of one of the noble houses of the human worlds, whose people called themselves the Altari, shuddered as tendrils of gravity waves probed its hull.
The bridge crew at station tried to hold the ship on course, but something had gone drastically wrong for the merchant ship Castellan. Her captain, Jolanda ni Demarest, should not have taken a route so deep into n-space. Bad things happened pushing transit speeds so hard, but House Zayan had paid a triple bounty for a shipment of gravity impellers and fusion packs,and other goods illegally redacted from the manifest in return for personal considerations.
Captain Demarest had almost turned down the job, but everyone in the Altari Republic strove for wealth and status, and she ignored Zayan machinations, to gather a few more gold quants into her pension fund.
She wondered if Zayans were really human at all, but they always paid well,and she had been hoping for one more run before retiring.
The bridge, compact, had stations for three others and she called on them now. “Tac-O why have webeen forced out of jump?”
The tactical officer,a junior son of a minor house family, worked the board, hesitating, then inhaste answered. “A gravity wave anomaly has disrupted the jump lane.”
Felgercarb. She pushed the curse word away, fear rising. “Comm-O, any friendly signals nearby?”
The communications officer, a House Santander seventh daughter, answered. “No depot signals of anykind.”
The captain would have welcomed even pirates rather than fall into uncharted space. “Nav-O, are there any nexus points mapped or unmapped within range?”
A willowy, tall woman, a commoner, answered, slipping out of Galactic into the native languageof humans across the twelve home worlds and their colonies. “Na na, miravela samvar.”
So, we are lost. Navigators skilled enough to independently map solutions when the computers were confused were exceedingly rare, and usually snapped up by the Commonwealth of Stars Battlefleet.
The willow stiffened and lifted her head. She spoke in Galactic. The formality in her tone bespoke something worse. “I beg to report, my lady captain, that a gravitational-spatial disruption is in progress in the sun of this system.”
First Mother help us. “Helm, Prepare for jump.”
“Destination?” the helmsman intoned, her voice trembling.
“Random sideslip." The reverse of a wormhole scram outside the sidewall of a jump tunnel, and just as dangerous.
“Samson coils spooling up,” Tac-0 responded.
“Damage control, prepare for tidal overstress,” said the captain. If only we had a quantum champion on board to shift the probabilities.
Like a well-tuned machine, the Altari freighter crew, standing tall, gambled with the snapdragon hand fate had dealt them.
The probabilities were not with them and the Altari, who believe in no gods, had none to call on.
The sun brightened athousand-fold, and the expanding corona of a new supernova took the Castellan in its embrace and blew her into sparkling motes of flame.
2
The Gift
Nations and empires come and go, their life like dust among the stars, but family is forever. -- Constanzia Telluri, mother of Firehill of Altarsha
My father’s last gift to me was supposed to help train my visual spatial skills to become a starship pilot. My mother agreed to my practicing with it, but only if I kept my grades up.
The year after my 13th birthday, I sat at a picnic table on the patio of my home, fir trees whispering in the mountain wind above me. I had many math assignments to finish before my homework was done, but I was too excited by my sponsorship to the merchant guild civil space patrol. I would soon fly short missions with my teachers to the inner planets. I hoped to earn a scholarship to the merchant flight school.
I turned my gift, a hand puzzle about the size of kickball, over in my hands. In profile it appeared to have eight sides. My father gave it to me the previous year, before pirates killed him in a raid on his merchant caravan on a run to the outer planets. He had been a minor noble until he married my mother and lost his status. Though he could not command a merchant ship, he had been the best security officer in House Ashastra’s merchant fleet.
I twisted and turned the octagonal cubelets round and round under the overcast sky. The pieces gleamed of their own light in shimmering colors as I tried to envision their combinations in my head. Impossible.
My father explained it was a truncated tesseract, a four dimensional representation of an octagon. He told me when my math skills got advanced enough, I could write out the equations, but until then I should practice manually aligning the combinations.
He called it the omegaoctahedron, but I called it the O-ball, for short.
I tossed it to the ground and kicked it about. Each time my foot touched it, the surface stabilized, and I dribbled it around the table like a soccer ball.
"Kiryan!" my mother called from the kitchen.
In haste, I stuffed the O-ball into my backpack and opened my data pad to another math problem as she found me.
My mother had an oval face, olive skin and dark brown eyes framed by long black hair that she seldom let down anymore. Ever more worry wrinkles touched her eyes since my father's death.
The frown creases in her forehead smoothed out only when she was hugging me or working theoretical math calculations, or when she sang in that beautiful hypnotic voice that thrummed the chords of my heart every time.
"Did you do your math homework?"
I swallowed, studying the screen hard and mumbling. “Mmmm…”
She inspected my backpack. “Inside,” she said.
In the kitchen, I sat as she took the O-ball and set it on the table. The light had gone out of it and it manifested solidity and inertia, just a paperweight the size of a kickball.
“I told you before. Never take that out of the house.”
“But why?”
“Isn’t it enough that I ask you? Strange things make people talk.”
“It’s just a stupid toy.”
“Don’t speak that way about your father’s last gift to you.”
“Then why can’t I take it outside?” I had done it more than once before being caught.
"I want you safe.”
I evaded her gaze.
“She took my face in her hands and studied my eyes. "You can't neglect your studies no matter how much you miss him."
I shook my head. "It's impossible. How can you line up eight sides with seven discs?"
"Commoners almost never get into the upper tier schools, child. You have a talent for mathematics, perfect for work as a master navigator."
"I want to pilot ships, not check maps. The computers calculate the jump coordinates."
"Your father accepted his lot and did his duty. When the jump lanes shift and confuse the computers, a mind like yours, if trained to it, can save the ship from being lost. Don’t you want to follow his example and help where you are needed most?"
I frowned and shook my head.
“I do not say to ignore your father’s gift. The puzzle is more than a training tool. The aliens have kept a secret from humans. Many fear us. The puzzle is a key to why.” She laid one hand against the side of my face. I felt the tenderness and the sorrow in her eye s. “But you must not neglect your studies or seek ambitions above your station. I wish your father were here to convince you."
I wanted to find words to comfort her, but none came. “Mother, can we sing a song together now?”
She sniffed and nodded. As her lips parted, she drew in a sharp breath. Her neck jerked, eyes alarmed, her gaze drawn skywards.
My right heel itched like crazy. “What?”
“Come with me now.”
She pulled me as the floor shifted. I grabbed the O-ball and backpack as we fled our home. As we crossed the lintel to the outside, the beam cracked in two and fell behind us. A jumbling roar sounded, and the paving stones around the waterfall garden cracked. Fish leaped out of the pond to slap and jump on the ground. A coyote ran downhill yipping in fright.
I took one glance back towards the rumble and the sound of timbers cracking like firecrackers – my house collapsed into rubble. Gone were the Battlefleet pennants on the wall in my bedroom, and the statuettes of famous pilots.
The air shrieked with a rising wind, and we staggered. A cliff of rock above our home studded with Joshua trees cracked, gaps opening in it that swallowed the ancient trees that had survived thunderstorm, hail, blizzards, but not this.
Below us, a fissure opened in the pavement that widened and snaked down the street, parting it. People screamed and scattered, caught between falling buildings and the widening earth that swallowed them up. An old woman pushed a handcart, swaying on her feet as the street shook. A mother clutching her infant to her breast ran up to us, wild eyed, eyes darting and reached a hand out. She screamed as the pavement fractured and half the street fell away into a pit, taking her with it. Aghast, I stumbled as my mother pulled me back and dragged me with her. We ran.
Concrete power poles shivered like jello, wires snapping and sparking as the lines contorted like writhing snakes, electrocuting the hapless caught in their fall.
We were caught between heaven and earth with nowhere to go. Mother’s eyes searched, intent and she held out an arm, singing low. For the briefest seconds, a sinuous pattern glittered on her right arm, one I had seen a few times while working the puzzle of the O-ball.
“This way.” She pulled me without mercy, navigating the falling stone and twisting cables, the shifting cracks, with the foresight she tapped from the ancient songs. Men and women clutched at us as we passed like ghosts through hell. An avalanche of rock rolled down towards us from my buried house.
I thought we would make it down to lower ground, to plazas wide enough to avoid the falling buildings collapsing.
Mother pulled up short and gasped.
A hundred feet away, a woman stood. She wore a light armor combat suit, like I had seen in space marine recruiting posters, like the ones on posters in my bedroom. She was young, not much older than me, with long blond hair. The body suit had no marking or colors I recognized, black and tan. She ignored the mayhem as if she stood at the center of the eye of a hurricane and we with her. Something seemed wrong with the air around her, a shimmering of light barely visible. She pointed a gauntleted finger at us. My backpack pulled away, the straps pulling me around and dragging me behind it towards the strange woman. Fires erupted from broken gas lines, geysers of flame rising around us.
I dug my heels in; straining towards my mother who reached for me with her left hand. My heel burned as she stretched out her right arm and hummed, subvocalizing words in ancient Altari unfamiliar to me. The pressure eased and I took a step towards her.
I looked over my shoulder at the other woman.
She drew a pistol and fired. The plasma bolt sheared past my ear crackling like lightning. I flinched. My mother gasped. The force on my pack redoubled its pull on me and only my mother’s hysterical strength held me in place.
A fierce anger ignited in her eyes, and she sang. A twilight dark fell around us as if we stood in a circle of dusk. She sang aloud now her right hand stretched towards the enemy who was lining up another shot with her pistol. For a moment the tattoo of a feathered serpent flickered like lightning on the inside of my mother’s right forearm. My right heel burned like molten lava, and I bit my lip in pain.
My mother sang and a sheet of flame rose between us and the stranger. The force on me disappeared. Mother pulled me into a building that leaned at a crazy angle, shale tiles falling and breaking all around us.
“No.” I said, balking.
“Inside now.”
“We’ll be buried.”
“The only way out…Trust me!”
I hesitated, frightened. She dragged me by main force, as panicking I resisted, slowing us down. A cracking sound ripped above. Dust drifted down from the ceiling. She tried to pull my hand. I froze.
The crack widened and dust poured down on us. A horrible rumbling sound shook the air. Plaster fell in sheets.
“Kiryan!” she cried out as the ceiling caved in.
I awoke, blood trickling into my face from a gash on my head. A beam lay across my chest pinning me. My mother groaned. She stood up from the floor, eyes searching.
“Mother.” I forced the word out with the last of my breath.
She clawed her way to me. The side of her head was bloody, her beautiful black hair matted with it. She heaved at the beam, too heavy to budge.
She commanded. “Push with me. Lift.”
I tried. The beam was crushing the air out of me.
She staggered to her feet trying with all her might to lift the beam without effect. The blood had soaked the side of her head and trickled down her neck. Her skin turned pale, a deathly white. She fell to her knees.
I was afraid for myself and ashamed. She was hurt, and I couldn’t help her. My chest caved in from the crushing weight. I gasped but no air came. My lungs burned, and my heart pounded like thunder. Cold sweat drenched my clothes and my vision grayed at the edges, as my forehead bled.
My mother yanked the shoe off my right foot and ripped off the sock. She slumped forward, and with an outstretched hand her palm pressed against my right heel, the one with the dragon tattoo.
“Sing,” she whispered. She sang, a melody she had taught me.
I mouthed her words, barely able to echo them with my last breath, so dizzy, almost gone. My heel grew warm, then my whole body shivered, and images cascaded into my mind, thousands upon thousands of images of every conceivable place, strobing into me too fast to count. Stars and suns, trees, rain, storms, ghettos and sea docks, myriad peoples, and aliens as if suddenly I beheld every place everywhere at once. I was able to take a breath. My voice strengthened and I joined in her song.
More images raced through my mind, too many, too fast to understand. Runes of an ancient language whirling about in a lightning storm, rain falling, falling, falling, drowning the world. A roar of flame and flashing teeth and serpent eyes. Glowing white, fogs and mists choking slopes of ash, and the rising of a white-hot sun too bright to endure.
A pitiless guilt rose like a tidal wave for a nameless sin damning me forever.
“Push” she whispered.
The beam eased away in a single thrust of my arms.
“Mother, you did it.” She lay prone, unmoving. Shadows crossed the room as dusk fell over the ruined town.
The power was out. Outside wailed the screams of the dying, and moans of despair. Night fell, and in the mountains, things crept and stalked, and they were hungry.
In the flickering light of the fires, I turned my mother over, and her eyes stared lifeless. I fell across her body and wept, long shuddering groans, until I passed out.
3
Awakening
A lovely song in a grace-filled woman’s voice thrummed my heart. Distant, so distant, a trumpet called from the center of a burning light that exploded. I stirred. I blinked half-open eyes with lashes clotted by stinging yellow scales. A pink-blue glow of indirect lights around the ceiling waxed out, replaced by a white light bright in its bleakness. I lay in a strange bed. How long had I been here?
My bare arms and legs trembled, almost disconnected from me. I was naked under a thin cotton gown and sick to my stomach.
