Five Empires: An Epic Space Opera Read online

  The pod rocked wildly as it was released from the starboard bay. Out of the corner of his fevered vision Michael could see Jake working furiously at a nav console. At length the pod ceased its sickening wobble and settled into a rhythm. Jake unstrapped himself and knelt beside Michael.

  His usual arrogant nonchalance had all but disappeared, replaced by a wide-eyed urgency. Michael felt he was looking at the real Jake Le Sondre for the first time. He felt a prick in his thigh and dully realized that the Nostroma was administering some kind of drug. The pain in his chest diminished almost immediately, and Michael felt himself washed up on an island of lucidity.

  “Too many questions, Jake,” he said in a cracked, hoarse voice. The Nostroma leaned over him with what looked like genuine empathy.

  “You can relax now,” he said gently. “You’ve restored your family’s name. A proud name.”

  “Bullshit,” Michael croaked. “I’ve been used from the start. A… vessel…”

  Michael felt his consciousness waver. A dark shape was crouching on the edge of his soul, waiting to embrace him forever.

  Jake sat back against one of the pod benches and sighed loudly.

  “You deserve to know why,” he said eventually. “It’s the least I can do for you.”

  The Nostroma seemed to collect himself before speaking.

  “My father was a brilliant man,” Jake began. “Full-time philosopher with a Support retinue. Ran a library in the Phisto system. That’s where I grew up. My brother and sister lived with my mother, Nils Le Sondre.”

  Michael was overcome with a bout of coughing that almost brought up his lung tissue. Eyes glistening with emotion, Jake settled him down before continuing.

  “Like most brilliant Nostroma, my father’s mind eventually broke,” Jake said. “Collapsed under its own weight. He just took off, babbling about a fold in the space-time fabric somewhere in the Quavar system. I was only eight, and couldn’t stop him. My father’s name is Dijon Prime. Brother to Ajon, our leader. He returned after a year looking haggard and decrepit, claiming he’d been gone for several decades. He’d lost the ability to communicate coherently. He was stripped of his Support retinue and cast out in disgrace. Rather than return to my mother, I chose to fend for myself on Phisto II.”

  Jake turned away, perhaps churning through painful memories. Michael’s chest sagged in a little further. He could only process the smallest parcels of air. He knew his time was imminent.

  “My father was cast aside like he was nothing,” Jake said finally. “Whatever he saw in Quavar changed him. Made him fearful of the future. He kept mentioning something about the Five Catalysts. Five figures with the power to restore peace to the galaxy. An Aegisi corsair, a Nostromic duellist, a Jajan paladin, a Cavan machinist and a Milk brawler. I believe I’ve found three of these Catalysts. You’re the first, kid. I knew it as soon as my brother began working on your sister. Your eyes took on a rare flame, one that I knew would repel the Cavan forces on Cerulean. You were the first trigger, and now I believe my father’s vision has come into play.”

  Michael was overcome with another bout of coughing. This time he released a meaty gout of blood and felt incredibly drained. His breath came in feeble wheezes. All he could do was rest his head on the floor of the pod and fix a bloodshot eye on the man he had dared believe was his friend.

  “That milkman we encountered is the fifth Catalyst,” Jake said wearily. “I’ve met him before. He has a part to play, but I need to know where the other Catalysts are first. The Jajan and the Cavan. Do you know anything, anything at all?”

  Michael didn’t feel as though his brain was capable of coherent thought at that moment, but Yashom15’s image flashed across his mind. Something told him the Cavan negotiator wasn’t who Jake was looking for. But he didn’t really know any other Cavans. He definitely didn’t know any Jajans. Unless…

  “My parents let my sister sponsor a sick Jajan pup when she was a kid,” Michael found himself saying. The pain in his throat was excruciating but he pressed on anyway. “One of those contraband pups liberated from a slaver ship.”

  Jake leaned in close. Michael could almost smell the desperation on his breath.

  “Did you ever see the pup?”

  Michael shook his head. “She was taken to some backwater monastery on Tranda IX. Nostromic order, can’t remember which.”

  Jake’s eyes widened. “Monastery of Fidelis Prime,” he breathed. “San Copara mountains.”

  Michael could feel tears sliding down his cheeks. The memories came thick and fast, as if they were seeping from a wound in his brain. His father asking Emilia why she insisted on spending a quarter of her credits on some “incubator baby halfway across the galaxy”. Her tears and devastation when she found out that the money hadn’t even been reaching the monastery for several years.

  A corrupt aid worker had siphoned off the funds for his own benefit. Finally, the strange, garbled com Emilia had received in the dead of night, years later, from a Jaj she suspected to be the child’s mother. Emilia hadn’t understood a word of the regional dialect and broke down in tears when the weak signal fizzled out.

  “Do you know if the Jajan is still alive?” Jake asked intently.

  If Michael had the strength to shrug, he would have. Jake nodded.

  “Must be close to fourteen Jaj years,” Jake mused. “A woman coming of age.”

  If she’s alive, Michael thought, finding it surreal to reflect on such matters while he lay at death’s door. Jake peered through the pod window and gave a low whistle. “Fucking milkmen are taking Tranquility,” he said softly. “It’s already started.”

  Michael was now too close to the dark embrace to care what Jake was talking about. These matters seemed minuscule all of a sudden, insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Even from the vomit-strewn floor of the escape pod Michael thought he could see down astral planes. The machinations of the stars and all their subservient bodies made some kind of chaotic, comforting sense.

  He looked at Jake, a fleeting shadow against so much grandeur, and knew that it was time. The Nostroma’s weather-beaten face filled his view, his eyes fathomless with grief and compassion.

  “I know you, Michael Danner,” came a voice through the black. “You’re a good man.”

  Michael reached out for Jake as he drifted away. He was overwhelmed with a feeling of love and companionship, glad that he didn’t have to face the abyss alone. Then he dipped his head into the winds of change. And was gone.

  28

  Jake closed the forager’s eyes but noted that Michael’s body was still pulsing faintly. He fought the urge to shed a few more tears.

  Strange - any other Nostroma would’ve killed Danner as soon as the boy revealed the Jaj girl’s location. But Jake had felt sorry for the young man even before his sister was murdered. There was an innocence about him that wasn’t made for this galaxy. The boy was strong but not resilient. Smart but not savvy. It had only been a matter of time before the First Catalyst’s life was under severe threat. Jake felt guilty to have played such a direct role in the current situation.

  Of course, the wider philosophical ground was sound - Jake had to ensure that the Aegisi survived the Cava05 deception and retained the ocean planet Cerulean. Michael Danner was the perfect means of achieving that. All that hate, all that raw emotion. Jake had molded that passion into something strong, something dangerous to the Cava05. It helped that the boy was the First Catalyst. If Jake hadn’t recognized that early, he doubted he would’ve taken much interest in him at all.

  So far, everything had fallen into place exactly as his father had predicted. It was important that Aegisi Councilors die. The Aegisi Republic couldn’t afford to have such duplicitous leadership at the top. Even The Brawler had recognized that.

  And what now? Jake shared an Aegisi escape pod with a dying man. How far could this thing travel? The Aegisi were a capable, sensible species, but Jake doubted the pod had drift capability. The Tranda system was a long
way away. At least Jake was familiar with the system. He could hit the ground running. He would find the monastery of Fidelis Prime and rescue the Jaj woman. The Second Catalyst.

  There were complications with Tranda IX. Last he heard, She was near there. The mere thought made him queasy. Also, the Tranda sector was on the other side of Nostromic space. If Jake’s calculations were correct, the Caravan of Light would be crossing his path. Just his accursed luck.

  Rubbing the bridge of his nose tiredly, Jake cycled through all the potential planets and way stations within range of the escape pod. He was sizing up a neutral supply station called Vista when the pod was bathed in emerald light.

  With a horrible sinking feeling he glanced out the window. There were five Nostromic corvettes out there, eagle class. In formation they looked like a flock of predatory birds. Decked out in forest green with a matte finish, each eagle sported the Nostromic insignia - a yellow flower on an emerald background.

  “Fuck,” Jake muttered, recognizing the fleet. Ajon Prime was on one of those ships.

  came a voice over Jake’s wrist com. The Nostroma typically didn’t waste time with coms protocol. The coming meeting would be short and brutal. Jake initiated some neural exercises that would help shield his mind.

  “I’m coming,” Jake said irritably, directing the escape pod to dock with the foremost eagle. There was no point in avoiding Ajon Prime. His leader. The pod dutifully positioned itself over the eagle’s airlock. The door hissed green and slid open way too quickly for Jake’s liking.

  Ajon Prime was sitting alone on the bridge. It was a subtle show of strength. He was telling Jake he didn’t fear him at all. Such was the mental ballet of the Nostroma. Jake hated playing the game but could feel his nebulous mind preparing multiple neural barbs. You can’t change thousands of years of conditioning, he mused.

  Ajon Prime was tall, even taller than Jake Le Sondre. He was also lanky, with long legs and gangly arms. Even in his utility suit he looked a little emaciated. His face was shrouded in a shaggy black beard and his hair was lustrous and straight. The tall man’s eyes were dazzling pools of night green - they could reduce the most resilient of men to trembling wrecks with ease.

  It was said that Ajon Prime was brain damaged and well into Nostromic senescence, which explained why he no longer needed drugs to maintain his extraordinary powers of cybomancy.

  The cybomancer’s greatest asset was his fierce, lethal intelligence. His mental acuity often asserted itself in unpredictable, tangential ways, pouncing on unsuspecting targets when they least expected it. Jake had only spoken to Ajon Prime on a handful of occasions - each time he’d walked away thinking he was at least two steps behind the rest of the galaxy.

  Ajon Prime was a supremely gifted man and a worthy rider in the Caravan of Light, but he was also irredeemably mired in ancient and obscure Nostromic traditions. Back in the dark days, the Nostroma were exiled by humans of all people, forced to survive far from the galaxy’s corridors of power. They were considered freakish and decrepit, a reputation they still struggled to shake even though they were now one of the ‘big four’ species.

  As Ajon Prime liked to remind everyone, the story of the Nostroma was one of very humble origins. He was immensely proud of what made the Nostroma unique and sought to exploit those differences every chance he got. This was why, among other things, the Nostroma opted not to support a conventional army of space, air, ground or water troops.

  Instead they deployed their cybomancer / duellist tandems throughout the galaxy to sow the seeds of Nostromic Doctrine. The Religion of the Mind was misunderstood and therefore feared by almost every other species in the galaxy, but the Nostroma had somehow avoided every major military confrontation of the last millennia. It was a record Ajon Prime was determined to maintain.

  Right now, the bearded man was looking at Jake with the kind of deliberately mild curiosity that made the duellist’s skin crawl. Jake could already feel a multitude of emotions snaking their way free of Ajon Prime like slippery eels, each of them worming toward Jake in search of weakness.

  Jake did what he always did when faced with a mental behemoth of his own kind - he thought of sex. Plain, dirty, rudimentary sex. It tended to anchor his mind to a physical plane and thus render him a smaller target. At length the Nostromic leader grinned and slapped the armrest of his pilot’s chair.

  “You been busy, Le Sondre,” he said in a gruff voice. “Your brother’s been telling me about your beachside adventures.”

  Jake could only guess what Fashon had told Ajon Prime. Technically it was futile for a Nostroma to lie to his kin, since the deception was almost always detected, but Fashon had a way of decorating his words with highly emotive inflections. Jake had no doubt that his removal of the tandem circuitry woven through his face would be viewed very dimly indeed.

  “What are you doing, Jake?” Ajon Prime murmured. “I had such high hopes for you.”

  The next best thing to lying was omitting the truth. Jake had no intention of telling Ajon Prime that he intended to follow the Catalysts across the galaxy. His father’s beliefs were outside the accepted Nostromic Doctrine and thus considered frivolous at best, treasonous at worst.

  “I need re-programming,” Jake said simply.

  “Oh, I can see that,” Ajon Prime replied. “The question is - why?”

  Jake felt a fresh wave of neural darts squeezing themselves into his brain. All of a sudden he wanted to kneel and vomit. His lips quivered and everything in the galaxy seemed pointless. And yet he was experienced enough to see his emotions for what they were - the product of a neural attack.

  He looked back at Ajon Prime, letting him know that party tricks weren’t going to loosen what he was carrying inside. His father’s legacy was stored so far within Jake’s mental fortress that Ajon Prime would need to kill him to get to it. And that was something the Nostroma leader wasn’t prepared to do. Yet.

  Ajon Prime sighed. “You had a good thing going with your brother. You could have become one of our better duellists. In time.”

  The neural attacks were over. Ajon Prime was now looking to set Jake on a straight path again.

  “I wanted to fuck the human girl,” the duellist said. “Taste her fear. Fashon got to her first and I didn’t like it.”

  The amazing thing about Jake’s confession was his sincerity. It was true. Women were one of Jake’s many weaknesses, and he resented his brother for assuming such complete control over the attractive Danner girl. It was one of the reasons he decided to break his tandem with Fashon. It was just a very minor reason.

  “You were sent to Cerulean to assist the Cava05 and strengthen our alliance. Instead you led an Aegisi rearguard action that saw them retain the ocean planet. All the while the Norgaardia watch us with interest. We have shown our first sign of weakness.”

  Jake had to admit it didn’t look good. Both men were believers in the Norgaardia footage. The main difference between them was that Jake didn’t trust the Norgaardia. Ajon Prime simply wanted to play the game. Win the Norgaardia challenge. The man was obsessed with the idea of ‘ascension’ to a higher plane of understanding.

  “Fashon got what he wanted from the Danner girl,” Jake pointed out.

  “True,” Ajon Prime said with a mirthless smile. “But the invasion of Solitude has now been delayed. Perhaps by months. And the Cava05 will need to commit vast resources if they want to dig the Aegisi from Cerulean. You’ve caused a hell of a mess. We aren’t any closer to our goals.”

  Jake shrugged. It was really his only play. “A good thing the Nostroma don’t engage in intergalactic politics,” he said.

  “A good thing,” Ajon Prime repeated, his smile becoming very chilling indeed. “Go. Spend some time at one of our monasteries. When you’re ready to return I’ll find another tandem for you. You will have your circuitry re-woven. I can’t have you wandering around naked.”

  “Yes, Ajon Prime.” Jake had suspected he would be allowed to walk. It appeared
like freedom, but only on the surface. Internal discipline was maintained through the threat of mind control. This was the first time Jake had thumbed his nose at the Nostromic Doctrine - further transgressions would result in full re-programming. Jake’s mind would no longer be his own.

  As things stood, Jake would be expected to spend significant time at his chosen monastery, probably more than a year. He would need to demonstrate a willingness to embrace the Doctrine once again before he was released in tandem with a cybomancer.

  “My mind is a flower, Ajon Prime,” Jake said, using the old language. He had turned to go when Ajon Prime cleared his throat.

  “Jake,” he whispered. “Cross me again, and I’ll bring pain into your life. Every day, a fresh artwork sculpted from your despair. I promise you this.”

  Jake nodded and waited to see if Ajon Prime had anything else to say. The bearded Nostroma had fallen silent. Jake made his way back to the escape pod, glad to be free of the most gifted cybomancer the galaxy had known.

  A charted path to the supply station Vista was still blinking at him upon his return. He gently disengaged from Ajon Prime’s corvette and waited until he was well in the clear before triggering the flight plan.

  Strapping himself in, Jake looked tiredly at the dying boy at his feet. Amazing that he was still alive. It was as if the Brawler had both irreparably damaged and strengthened the forager’s body at the same time. Jake felt a fresh stirring of hope. Perhaps he didn’t have Aegisi blood on his hands after all? But there was nothing the duellist could do beyond strapping the poor boy into an upright position. If Michael Danner happened to survive the journey, he absolutely deserved the best medical care Jake’s paltry savings could buy.

  As the pod gathered speed and began to hum, the Nostroma tried to ignore the fever dream growing rapidly inside his head. The disgusting, foul emotion, a dirty brown cloud that scudded across his otherwise tranquil sky, always emerged when he thought about Her. About them. A tandem he would cross the galaxy to avoid if he could. His sister and his ex-lover, working a tandem for the past thirteen years, now rumored to be traveling through the Tranda system.