Sonata in Orionis (Earth Song Cycle Book 2) Read online

  Sonata in Orionis

  Book Two of the Earth Song Cycle

  (Second Edition)

  By

  Mark Wandrey

  PUBLISHED BY: Theogony Books

  Copyright © 2018 Mark Wandrey

  All Rights Reserved

  Get the free prelude story “Gateway to Union”

  and discover other titles by Mark Wandrey at:

  http://worldmaker.us/

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  Cover Design by Brenda Mihalko

  Original Art by Ricky Ryan

  * * * * *

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  * * * * *

  To Chris Kennedy for taking this series, very much a diamond in the rough, and giving it a good polishing. And to my wife, Joy, to whom I owe everything.

  * * * * *

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Part II

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Part III

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Part IV

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Titles by Mark Wandrey

  Excerpt from Book Three of the Earth Song Cycle:

  Excerpt from Book One of the Revelations Cycle:

  Excerpt from Book One of The Psyche of War:

  * * * * *

  Prologue

  Bellatrix Archives

  Founders Section - Hard Copy

  Subject - Mindy Harper

  Number of Entries - 1

  I’ve never liked writing these sorts of things; it’s not my style. Sure I kept a journal; most of us ‘Founders’ did. Still, Billy kept after me to write a letter to the future. “The following generations deserve to know,” he used to say, like an ex-cop turned farmer would have a firm grasp on history. That was before he died. I decided I owed it to him, at some point, to do as he’d asked. Every good wife should follow her husband’s advice, at least once in their lifetime. And since I’m not getting any younger, I guess it’s about time.

  One hundred and forty-four of us came through the portal twenty years ago. Most survived the first year, and then came the kids. Good grief, we had kids! Well, most of us did, and by several men. We decided it was the only safe way to preserve the genetic integrity of our species. Naturally the men liked the idea. We looked for, and found, a few other groups, or tribes, as we call ourselves now. Our best guess is there were fourteen portals on Earth, which meant two thousand sixteen people came through, tops. But in the intervening years, we only found six portals. One was abandoned, so we have no clue if anyone made it through.

  Most of us women are having as many kids as we can. I have five, four by Billy. We did the bare minimum we could to spread our genes, Billy with a mutual friend’s wife, me with the friend. We’ve been among those who had a harder time putting aside a monogamous relationship. Others didn’t have as much trouble. Regardless, the average over these years has been seven kids per woman, by three men. Mayors get these kinds of statistics. The last census showed a population of four hundred and twelve, but that included cross migration from our friends in New Jerusalem.

  I think we’re going to make it here, on this new home. We are 245 light years from the corpse of Earth. Even though twenty years lay between then and now, I still remember the appearance of the portals from our unknown saviors, now known as the Avatars. There were even a couple of sightings of the aliens, if the accounts are believable. I don’t know. The portals left behind after our rescue are still here, silent and monolithic. Our few scientists, led by Leo Skinner, are sure the portals still work, but not for us. What are the Avatars waiting for? If they wait much longer, we’re liable to be reduced to a subsistence level existence. Maybe that’s what they want.

  I was mayor for ten years before retiring. I imposed my own term limit, and strongly suggested my replacement do the same. Tam Worthington, the current mayor, wasn’t born on Bellatrix, but he was only fifteen when Earth died. He doesn’t remember watching the planet being torn apart through the portal. I do. You never forget something like that. The meteor must have been more of a freak than we thought. We’d expected an extinction level event, but that 12-mile wide rock cracked the mantle like a bullet through a melon. I saw the continental shelf split before the portal failed. Earth is probably nothing more than an asteroid field now. Billions of lives, gone in minutes. Who can conceive of what those last moments were like as the planet was torn apart? A few poets and song writers have tried. I don’t like to think about it much.

  I spent a lot of nights in front of the telescope they gave me when Billy died. They even built a small observatory on my little island retreat. It was to have been our retirement villa, a place to grow old together. Instead, I live by myself. Most of my children are gone, one after the other. Yeah, we’re averaging seven kids per couple, but three of them usually don’t live to adulthood. This is a harsh place, and we’ve almost run out of medical supplies. Frontier medicine and herbalism are taking over. They reuse needles and scalpels that were meant to be disposable.

  There wasn’t a lot of extra time early on to observe the stars, my former profession, but I still managed to make a few hundred observations. Some nights, I just stared at the distant spot of Earth’s sun, Sol, wishing I could see what remains of our old home. It’s hard to believe the light we can see from the Sol system is from a time when the Earth was still alive. America wasn’t even a country yet. No one had flown an airplane, driven a car, or made a phone call.

  Since retiring, I’ve taken many more readings, dutifully entering and cataloging them, even the more curious anomalies that don’t make any sense—a constellation that shifted a bit, or a star a degr
ee off from where it should be. My observations can’t be off; I’m the one that figured out this was Gamma Orionis. I’ve saved all the data and notes. Maybe some future astronomer will make sense of it; I only hope there are future astronomers to do so.

  It’s not all bad news here. The crops have flourished, our livestock are doing better than expected, and the planet turned out to be more suitable for us than we’d hoped. Even the Kloth are more controllable. Billy died building the walls to control the Kloth’s seasonal migration, directing them away from our most fertile farmlands. Prospectors managed to find a few iron deposits. Bellatrix is larger than Earth but has almost the same gravity. The core is probably copper, because we find a lot of it…or maybe it’s just a small, cold, iron ball. We finished the first railroad between Plateau and the Jewish settlement this year. A steam engine huffs and puffs back and forth carrying goods and people. These are small signs of progress, but even in progress, there’s regression. We use steam engines, not electric or diesel. Can’t blame our engineers for this, though, as there doesn’t appear to be any petroleum buried on this world. And the engine is copper, not steel.

  That’s all I really have to say. I’ve made some good decisions and more than a few bad ones. I didn’t choose to be a leader, but they gave me no choice. I’ve tried to be a good one. None of us really have a choice. This is home now, forever. That humanity has a future, at all, is a miracle of sorts, and we’re all grateful—as grateful as refugees can be, at least. I’d hoped to see our saviors and thank them before I go, but that doesn’t appear to be in the cards. History will judge me however it wants; I hope it isn’t too badly. After all, I’m only human.

  Maybe I’ll go out and explore a little bit before I get too old to camp on the ground. I’m only 49, and time waits for no woman.

  Historical Note by Dr. Eva Osgood, PhD, Quincentennial Founders Celebration Committee Chairman, Plateau:

  No further records of a personal nature were ever located for Founder Mindy Harper. In this letter, she mentions an astronomy record and a journal, neither of which has been found. It is possible they exist in some private collection. Since her death on March 22, 0022 AE, a considerable amount of research has been done on the Founders. Though she is the most famous of them, and the one given the most credit for our tribe’s rescue from Earth, she remains largely an enigma, even 500 years later, now that the Avatars have returned.

  * * * * *

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  May 15th, 514 AE

  Keeper’s Academy, Tranquility, Plateau Tribe

  It was Friday afternoon, the last day of school for the semester, and it was glorious outside. Minu Alma glanced out the window to see the nearly cloudless sky glimmering. From the fourth floor of the Keeper’s Academy, where she’d attended school since turning five, she tried to will the clock to hurry. It wasn’t so much that she wanted to go have fun in the beautiful weather; she just had better things to do than sit through a lecture on history she’d heard a hundred times before.

  The dean, Edgar Portman, stepped up in front of the class and looked them over. A balding man in his sixties, he’d seen Minu in his office more than once. He caught her sparkling green eyes, his own eyes narrowing in annoyance, and she turned back to face him, casually flicking her long red hair. She thought for a second that he smiled at her, but then it was gone.

  “Another graduating class,” he said as his gray eyes took them in, one after the other. “In the thirty years I’ve run this school, I’ve seen hundreds of young people like you move through our halls.

  “Not many in the early days saw the need for a school. As a people, we were more concerned with survival. Bellatrix isn’t the planet of our species’ birth, and to them it seemed a ferocious place to live, filled with dangers both visible and invisible.

  “When the meteor destroyed Earth, and the Tog rescued us, we created tribes from those who’d managed to adapt and survive. There were twelve portals, each offering escape to 144 souls. Some never made it here; others perished within days, or years. Of the 144 who made it to Plateau, only 132 made it to the second year. But more were born every year, and we grew and thrived.

  “Time worked its will on humanity; time, and war. Only nine tribes survived the first 50 years, what we now call the Colonial Era. That period was just long enough for the third generation to be born, grow up, and go to war. The Chaos Era followed, and in those years millions were born, and millions died. Two hundred and fifty years slid by, and we lost much of that early history. It is mostly remembered as a time of fighting, death, and desperation. The descendants of the mighty nations of Earth were reduced to fighting with swords and bows.

  “Finally, we climbed over the bodies of our forefathers and out of the Chaos Era. No one knows how many died in those centuries, but two more tribes faded into history. With the wars over, we began to prosper once more. Scholars and scientists, many trained in this very academy, moved out to plant the seeds of civilization. The Enlightenment Era was underway.

  “The hundred years of that era went by in a blur and saw the reintroduction of electricity, the abandonment of standing armies, the rebirth of industry, and the discovery of the Great Bore Mines, the only large-scale sources of iron on Bellatrix, left by some long-gone civilization. Medicine and literature returned, and humanity heaved a collective sigh of relief. At last, we were coming back; we were human again. Historians glanced at Earth’s historical records, and guessed our new civilization was roughly equal to that of 1920s Earth, about eighty years before the end. The first dirigibles flew. The Bellatrix Council was created. They were heady times.

  “The Enlightenment Era came to an end when scientists made their first, hesitant attempts at creating an artificial satellite to orbit our world. Though we’d called this planet home for four centuries, no one knew what it looked like from space. Their work must have been the trigger that told the Tog we were ready, because that very week they returned. We’d almost forgotten them; there was so little about them in the aging computers of our saviors. They welcomed us into their family, and we discovered our rescue came at a relatively small cost. They believed we were ready to begin repaying that debt. The Tog chose the best, brightest, and strongest among us to represent humanity. The few differences between the remaining tribes faded during the Chosen Era. That is where we are today.”

  Portman paused to look them over. Minu glanced around and found another young girl daydreaming the way she’d been. Portman cleared his throat, and Minu’s head jerked around. Dean Portman continued. “Fifteen is too young to make your own way in the world, but long ago, our Plateau Tribe decided that fifteen would be the age of adulthood—in most ways, at least. While you might be finished with your primary education, you are not ready to be adults. Many of you will doubtlessly go on to a pre-university, others to specialized trade training, and maybe a few others will try to don those incredible black jumpsuits.”

  Minu unconsciously sat up straighter. He’d been looking right at her as he’d said that last, and her pulse raced. “Are there any among you with the mettle to be Chosen? Of course, everyone knows that this is a Year of the Choosing. You might also know that no other educational institution on this world has produced more future Chosen than this one. Hopefully, some of you will continue that tradition.” He skewered her with his piercing eyes. “I have confidence you will make us proud, no matter what you do as Alumni of the Keeper’s Academy.”

  They broke into polite applause. Whether Dean Portman had finished or not was irrelevant; the applause closed his speech. An assistant handed him a box full of diplomas.

  * * *

  Minu stood with a few of her friends for pictures. Parents with clunky, chemical emulsification cameras stood proudly beside those wielding expensive Concordian-made digital jobs. No one observed caste or status that day. For Minu’s part, she always did her best not to notice such things, something that was not always easy, considering her own station.

  A hu
sh fell over the crowd for a moment, then a group began to approach the knot of graduates, causing a great deal of commotion. All 40 of her classmates looked at the stir, then glanced at her. Some seemed amused, a few excited, and many more rolled their eyes. Minu counted herself among the latter as her father broke through the crowd.

  “First Among the Chosen!” Dean Portman said and came over to bow. Chriso Alma returned the bow, then shook the man’s hand.

  “At ease, Dean,” Chriso laughed, his chiseled features breaking into an uncomfortable smile. He seldom smiled, and Minu often wondered if he really knew how. “I still remember bending over your desk and having my bottom flailed more than once.”

  “I doubt it was more than once,” the Dean chuckled, looking ill-at-ease. You simply didn’t talk about spanking the First Among the Chosen. “Your daughter learns just as quickly as you did,” he said congenially, “I have high hopes she will pursue the sciences.”

  “That would be wonderful,” Chriso said, the smile increasing and a genuine twinkle appearing about the eyes.

  Dream on, Minu thought as she stepped toward her father.

  “Congratulations, daughter,” he said as she came close.

  “Thank you, Dad.” He handed her a small ornate wooden box made by the Peninsula Tribe. She opened it, and her breath caught in her throat. Inside was a small golden necklace, adorned with a single, half-carat sapphire. The necklace was a family heirloom he’d ‘given’ to her as a child, but that she hadn’t been allowed to keep. It was far too valuable. Legend had it the necklace belonged to none other than Mindy Harper, the most famous of the Founders and her direct ancestor. The sapphire, a very rare find from the mines on Bellatrix, dated back to the early Colonial Era.