Scions of Change (Cadicle Vol. 7): An Epic Space Opera Series Read online

  SCIONS OF CHANGE

  CADICLE: VOLUME 7

  by

  Amy DuBoff

  SCIONS OF CHANGE

  Copyright © 2017 by Amy DuBoff

  All rights reserved. This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. No part of this eBook may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles, reviews or promotions.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  www.amyduboff.com

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  Publisher: BDL Press

  Cover Illustration: Copyright © 2017 Tom Edwards (www.TomEdwardsDesign.com)

  ASIN: B06XZF11TZ

  Copyright Registration Number: TXu002058268

  First eBook Edition: June 18, 2017

  Kindle Edition

  Table of Contents

  Part 1: Destiny

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  Part 2: Revolution

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  Additional Reading

  Acknowledgements

  Glossary

  About the Author

  Part 1: Destiny

  CHAPTER 1

  The apparent void of space was alive, if one knew how to see. As Wil Sietinen gazed into space from the surface port on Earth’s moon, his consciousness roamed in the distance.

  It was one of the luxuries he allowed himself now that so much of his life was spent confined in the TSS Headquarters facility. With his children training as Agents, he rarely left, lest he leave them unprotected. Too much was at stake to take any chances with their safety.

  So, he left his physical form and roamed the depths of space, projecting his consciousness farther than many ships had traveled. Over the years, he’d continued pushing himself to see how far he’d be able to go, and with practice, he no longer had the need for Seconds to serve as a tether. He’d surprised himself with the results, particularly when he reached the outer boundaries of the galaxy’s Orion Arm. At first, he had considered trying to span the unfathomable distance to the Andromeda Galaxy, but he ultimately decided that anything he might find there would be irrelevant.

  His next venture took him deeper into the Milky Way Galaxy, toward the core. He passed by the network of Taran worlds and through the ruined corner of space previously occupied by their Bakzen enemies—so twisted from their Taran roots that they may as well have been the aliens his people had come to see them to be.

  Though Tarans often talked about themselves as populating the entire Milky Way Galaxy, that was a considerable exaggeration. At best, their territory occupied a quarter of the galaxy, with the occasional rogue world beyond. Since the advent of advanced terraforming techniques millennia prior, new planets could be colonized so long as the conditions and the star were sufficient. Moving planets into orbits more ideally located in habitable zones had even been possible in past ages of the Taran civilization, and he marveled at some of those efforts as he passed by.

  Where Wil was going, though, was beyond the Taran realm. Somewhere out there were the Aesir. They had left Tararia before the last revolution that brought the sinister Priesthood into power, and he suspected they still possessed all that technology that had been suppressed in recent years.

  He’d made an agreement for the Aesir to wait to test his children, as they’d once tested him—but the agreement was struck before the Priesthood had captured his daughter, Raena, and her boyfriend, Ryan, for their perverse genetic experimentation. Only after their escape had Wil realized that Raena didn’t need those five years to prepare for the Aesir’s test. She was ready from the moment of her Awakening, and he wanted her insights. The problem was, he was afraid if she discovered the true extent of her abilities, she might take a path that would lead her away from Tararia, where she was needed in their generations-long plan to unseat the Priesthood.

  But, the Priesthood had relayed information that Wil needed verified, and the Aesir were the only group capable of offering informed commentary. He wished to meet with them outside the circumstances of a test, to see if a partnership of any sort was possible.

  However, he had no idea where they called home. The galaxy was simply too vast for him to search. He’d been calling out to them for months, hoping for a reply, but none had come.

  Wil halted the movement of his consciousness in his journey beyond the edge of his civilization. He wasn’t sure exactly where he was, but something told him to wait.

  “Are you there?” he questioned in the void.

  No reply came, only the eternal background hum of the energy that formed the basis of reality.

  He was about to return to his physical self when a whisper broke through the darkness. “Why have you come here?”

  At last, the Aesir had answered his call. A tingle of excitement rippled through his mind. “I wish to know what future path to take.”

  “That is something that she must see. You have already seen your truth.”

  Wil had been prepared for that answer. “May we meet with you?”

  “You told us to give you time,” the Aesir replied.

  “That was before what I know now.”

  The Aesir didn’t reply for a minute. “The Priesthood fears you won’t do what needs to be done for the future of all Tarans.”

  “The Priesthood reached out to you?” That was a possibility Wil hadn’t seen coming. When the two organizations diverged more than a thousand years prior, his assumption had been that they’d severed all contact. After all, the Aesir hadn’t communicated with anyone—as far as Wil knew—in hundreds of years before they came to test him as a young Agent. However, perhaps that was not the case. The notion of the Priesthood and Aesir working together on any matter was unnerving.

  “You already know your line holds the genetic key. The Priesthood’s analysis has raised concerns.”

  “You’ve messed with us enough,” Wil replied. “The genetic legacy of our people won’t mean anything if our entire civilization collapses. The Priesthood will enslave everyone if we let them.”

  The Aesir waited again before replying. “We agree. Eliminating the Priesthood must be the top priority. But, our future is still at stake. The Bakzen were not our only threat.”

  A chill gripped Wil’s core. “What do you mean?”

  “Travel to the rift and you will see. Only then can we meet with you.” As quickly as they’d appeared, the Aesir’s presence vanished.

  Wil’s consciousness traced back to his physical self, and he returned to his surroundings with a gasp.

  He found that the spaceport was still deserted, as it had been when he’d begun his projection. When he checked his handheld, he discovered that only half an hour had passed—it seemed impossible to have covered such a vast
distance in so little time.

  Shaking off the aftereffects of being disconnected from his physical self, he began processing the Aesir’s cryptic words. There’s something for me to see in the rift, and Raena needs to go with me.

  Raena and Jason already got enough attention within the TSS as the children of the High Commander and Lead Agent, so he was hesitant to plan a trip to the rift just for them. Furthermore, he’d tried to avoid the rift as much as possible, finding the intensity of energy within it to be too strong a reminder of how his own abilities had been used for destruction during the war. He was reluctant to go back, but everything the Aesir had stated in the past had come true. If they were going to venture into the final standoff with the Priesthood completely informed and prepared, then they’d need the Aesir on their side.

  What, Wil pondered, is a good excuse to go to the rift?

  * * *

  The twenty members of the Primus Elite Trainees floated in the simulated starscape within the spatial awareness chamber deep inside TSS Headquarters. Raena Sietinen glanced at the other side of the circle of Trainees and caught Ryan’s eye, telepathically flashing him a smile in his mind.

  He returned her smile with a mental caress, careful not to have his external gaze linger on her for too long.

  “Looking forward to our upcoming field trip?” Raena asked him.

  “Absolutely,” Ryan replied. “Ever since we learned about the rift, I’ve wanted to see it in person.”

  “It’ll be wild.” Raena’s parents had told her about the enhanced energy within the rift, and she was quite curious to see how that would feel.

  “Attention!” Michael, the Primus Elite’s primary trainer, shouted out loud and in their minds.

  Raena’s arms straightened at her sides. “Back to work.”

  Ryan smirked, and she realized her tone had been more sarcastic than she’d intended. However, even after several months in the TSS, it was still difficult for her to see Michael in any way other than the close family friend he’d been to her while growing up on Earth. She respected him as a mentor, but she didn’t share the same awe of Agents as some of her fellow Trainees—after all, her own parents were the High Commander and Lead Agent of the Tararian Selective Service.

  Michael pushed off the wall near the entry door and took up position in the center of the circle with a set of six metal spheres, each the size of his fist.

  “I’d like to spend some more time today honing your electromagnetic sensitivity,” he said as he fanned the spheres around him in the center of the circle.

  “Those are new,” Leon commented.

  “New tools for new exercises.” Michael waved his hand over the spheres, causing blue lights to illuminate around the equator of each. He then telekinetically drew himself toward the facet of the icosahedron functioning as the ceiling relative to the group’s current orientation. Adopting a position in space perpendicular to the students, he requested a volunteer.

  “I’ll go,” Raena’s brother, Jason, offered.

  Raena playfully rolled her teal eyes at him. He grinned back.

  Michael sighed. “This is getting boring. I need some fresh guinea pigs!”

  Next to Raena, Tiff tightened her short, dark brown ponytail. “Isn’t New Guinea a country on Earth? What does a pig from there have to do with anything?”

  Raena laughed. “I’m so happy we ended up with a trainer who grew up on Earth, too. For once, I’m not the one left out of the loop with idioms.”

  Tiff wrinkled her nose and narrowed her brown eyes. “Idiom or not, it doesn’t make sense. What’s so special about New Guinea’s pigs?”

  “Geography and pigs have nothing to do with the phrase,” Raena sighed. “Just… never mind.”

  While they were talking, Michael had telekinetically drawn Jason into the center of the circle and arranged the metal spheres around him, from head to foot, his sides, and front and back.

  “Now, Jason,” Michael explained, “I’m going to activate the spheres in sequence and I want you to point to the one that’s emitting an electromagnetic pulse.”

  “All right,” he acknowledged.

  “For the rest of you, try to test your own perception of the pulses. It will be more difficult without having the pulses around you, but hopefully you can get some indication,” their instructor stated. “Everyone, close your eyes.”

  Raena complied with the request. She visualized the spheres surrounding her brother and the energy signatures of the students in the circle. Her mental map lacked detail, but she was confident in the placement of everyone.

  A moment later, one of the spheres lit up with a bright flash—the one to Jason’s right. Then the one by his feet. She watched the energy signatures flash around all the spheres, and then two at a time.

  There was no way Raena would publicly admit that she was able to so clearly visualize the minute differences. Jason’s perception was also well above normal, and Ryan’s skills had grown quickly, as well, but they were anomalies among an already exceptionally gifted group. Most of the other students were doing well if they could just tell there was any sizable electromagnetic signature to an object.

  “Very good, Jason,” Michael stated. “You can open your eyes, everyone. Did you have any sense of the movement pattern?”

  “Yes, there was some sense,” Ryan volunteered. “That was easy, right?” he added privately to Raena.

  “Oh, totally.”

  “It’s all pretty fuzzy,” Ned, one of Ryan’s roommates, said. “I can’t tell what I’m sensing.”

  Jason was eyeing the spheres, clearly apathetic about the exercise. “Is this an ateron coating?” he asked.

  The question caught Michael by surprise. “Yes. How do you know about that?”

  “I’ve spent some time looking over the specs for crafts with direct telepathic relays,” Jason replied. “Ateron absorbs energy, correct?”

  “It can. Why do you ask?”

  “Well, basic electromagnetic sensing is an important skill when you’re just starting out and all, but that in and of itself isn’t very useful. Shouldn’t we be more concerned with detecting and manipulating energy signatures through an intermediary?”

  Raena groaned inwardly. “We agreed that we weren’t going to jump ahead in front of them,” she chastised him.

  “It’s been eight months. I’m sick of twiddling my thumbs,” he replied.

  She had to agree with him there. “What do you have in mind?”

  “I’m still working that out.”

  “Intermediary relays are an advanced skill,” Michael replied to Jason’s question.

  “Okay,” Jason continued aloud, “but what, in theory, would a person do to practice those kinds of skills?”

  Michael’s gaze flitted from Jason to Raena and Ryan. “Are you three conspiring amongst yourselves?”

  “Didn’t I ask a valid question?” Jason countered.

  Their instructor sighed. “One exercise would be networking the spheres—feeding energy into one and using it as a transfer conduit to the others.”

  Jason flourished his hand and rearranged the spheres into a roughly pyramid shape in front of him.

  The other Trainees gasped at his controlled use of telekinesis.

  “Now you’re just showing off,” Raena said with a mental tisk.

  “Like you don’t enjoy it yourself.” He flashed a mischievous smile in her direction.

  “So, something like this?” Jason asked aloud. He began feeding energy into the top sphere and it cascaded through the others until the six spheres were all glowing with subtle white light.

  “Yes, exactly like that.” Michael crossed his arms, his pale blue eyes slightly narrowed.

  “But, I imagine the next step would be to work together in a team,” Jason continued.

  Several students around the circle openly gawked as he rearranged the spheres into a triad with one point near himself and the others in front of Raena and Ryan.

  “Sorry,” Raena o
ffered privately to Michael and then sent a low-intensity telekinetic stream into her sphere.

  She detected Jason and Ryan doing the same, and soon the group of spheres at the center of the triad was glowing brightly with the combined energy.

  “Yeah, that would be the next step,” Michael muttered. “Are you finished?” he asked the three of them.

  Raena released her energy stream, and Jason and Ryan did likewise.

  “Yep. Just working on our skills,” Jason said.

  “Well, that was a wonderful demonstration,” Michael stated with thick sarcasm. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get back to my actual lesson plan.”

  “Of course.” Jason smiled as Michael returned him to his place in the circle.

  Michael went over a series of exercises with the class for the next fifty minutes. It was all painfully simplistic as far as Raena was concerned, but she played along for the good of her team. When the time was up, Michael dismissed the class and helped the students toward the wall containing the gravity lock.

  “Raena, Jason, Ryan, hang back,” Michael requested.

  The other Trainees piled into the gravity lock and the door sealed.

  Michael looked over his star students. “I’m not sure what to do with you.”

  “What do you mean?” Raena asked.

  “You’re first year Trainees,” Michael replied with a shake of his head, “you shouldn’t be able to network the spheres like that.”

  The three of them looked at each other.

  “But we can,” Jason said slowly. “I thought the Primus Elites were all about pushing limits?”

  “Yes, but…” Michael faded out. “It’s obvious you’re bored. I think we need to add in some training for you outside of the other group activities.”

  Ryan raised an eyebrow. “Instead of, or in addition to?”

  Michael shrugged. “Not sure yet. I’ll have to talk with Command.”

  “Is it actually a question for Command, or for our parents?” Jason asked, crossing his arms.

  “A little of both.” Michael shook his head. “I know better than to insert myself into the middle of the dynamics at play here.”