Twilight Serenade Read online

  Twilight Serenade

  Book Six of the Earth Song Cycle

  By

  Mark Wandrey

  PUBLISHED BY: Theogony Books

  Copyright © 2018 Mark Wandrey

  All Rights Reserved

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  Get the free prelude story “Gateway to Union”

  and discover other titles by Mark Wandrey at:

  http://worldmaker.us/

  * * * * *

  Get the free Four Horsemen prelude story “Shattered Crucible”

  and discover other Theogony Books titles at:

  http://chriskennedypublishing.com/

  * * * * *

  Cover Design by Brenda Mihalko

  Original Art by Ricky Ryan

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  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.

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  Dedication

  To the fans of the Earth Song series. Your words of encouragement are like water falling on the desert sands, I never get enough! I hope this book rewards your patience. Don’t worry, there are many more books in this universe!

  To my test readers, valiant among the heroes, Alijah Ballard, Robert Boyer, and Abby Smith, you have my eternal thanks.

  And of course, to my wife, Joy, and son, Patrick, my love forever.

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  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

  Interlude

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Interlude

  Part II

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Part III

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Titles by Mark Wandrey

  Excerpt from Book One of the Salvage Title Trilogy:

  Excerpt from Book One of In Revolution Born:

  Excerpt from Book One of the Kin Wars Saga:

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  Prologue

  The Kaatan emerged from the tactical jump a picosecond after it disappeared a hundred light years away. Over time, the ship’s master had become far more adept at the operation. In the early days, the ship had to be at a relative standstill. Now she could jump while traveling thousands of times the speed of light with the gateway appearing a scant few thousand kilometers in front of the needle-shaped bow.

  Lilith shook off the aftereffects of the tactical jump which were far less profound now that she’d jumped so many times. She floated in the center of the spherical CIC and took stock of her ship. Everything was perfect.

  Next, she scanned space, using stars and stellar phenomena to identify her location to within a few kilometers. She’d emerged right where she wanted, a dozen light years from her home, Gamma Orionis.

  “Everything go okay?” Kal’at asked over the ship’s intercom.

  “Yes,” she said. “We’re almost home.”

  “Great,” he hissed back. Lilith could see him in his quarters over the internal monitors. If the reptilian could have smiled, he’d have had an ear-to-ear grin. “I cannot wait to be home again!”

  Lilith broke the connection. The part of her modified mind that handled the ship’s operations finished reviewing their course and dropped it to cruising speed, just under 15,000 times the speed of light. They’d be home in six hours.

  With everything operating almost automatically, she turned her thoughts to a few days earlier, to a star system not too far away.

  “What to do?” she thought. Some truths were liberating. Some were dangerous. Some were confusing. And some didn’t make any darned sense at all.

  “This is certainly the latter,” she said. A nearby screen showed a planet in great detail. She had gathered an incredible amount of data in the few seconds she’d been within scanner range. There was a little redshift distortion from the speed she’d been traveling, but not enough to account for what she’d seen.

  Lilith thought through the possibilities. Maybe she’d been in the wrong system. She examined her data and compared it to the People’s star charts and her personal records. She was certain she’d been in the correct system. There were no other systems with population densities that great within 592 light years.

  Maybe her scanners were wrong. Not a chance. Anomalous signal data was possible but picking up EM signatures of that intensity and misinterpreting them was not.

  She accessed archived human records. Unfortunately, they were incomplete as the humans had not made all their data available. However, she did find a few old, digital images, some of which were within a few orders of magnitude of what she considered normal resolution. The images had enough detail to allow her to make comparisons. They were… close.

  Lilith spent a few more minutes studying the images, and she decided they were close but not exact. The land masses and other planetary features were perfect matches, but a few other things—artificial things—were not.

  “I’m going to need access to more records,” she decided. “This will take some time, and I don’t think it would be a good idea to let Mom know about it yet. She won’t react well. At all.”

  The ship continued through space toward home. Lilith spent the remaining travel time in deep contemplation.

  * * * * *

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Octember 24th, 534 AE

  Office of the First, Ft. Jovich, Peninsula Territory, Bellatrix

  Thousands of Rangers had trained in the fort since it became operational, and Minu had almost designated it as the primary training center shortly after being named First a month earlier. Then she’d made the deal with the Traaga. “Seemed like a good idea at the time,” she mused from the balcony.

  The scene fifty meters below was like something Dante might have written about. The training floor, over 150 meters on a side, could be configured into any training environment from vacuum to underwater. It could be divided into ten smaller rooms and one section was fit with shields to allow for full power weapons drills. But it hadn’t been built to train the semi-anthropoid Traaga.

  Thousands of the four-limbed creatures scurried, climbed, jumped, and investigated everything they could lay any of their four hands on and, generally, ignored the training.

  “I do not understand what you were thinking,” Var’at hissed as he skittered over from a nearby lift. Minu glanced at him and si
ghed. “The Traaga are one of the most unreliable species in the Concordia.”

  “They want to learn to fight and ally themselves with us,” Minu explained. “And since they have a thousand beamcasters, and they really pissed of the Tanam, it’s only fair to try our best to train them.”

  They heard a loud crash below them as someone tipped over an equipment bench. Yells from the Chosen trainers were followed by squeaks of surprise from the offenders. “And what if they shake the fort to pieces?”

  “Funny,” Minu grumbled and walked toward the lift. Curious, the Rasa leader followed.

  As the lift’s hoverfields lowered her rapidly toward the floor, the cacophony became so loud she could no longer hear the lift’s mechanism operate. “Good grief,” she moaned, “it sounds like a life or death fight in a lobster bar.”

  The first humans who’d laid eyes on the Traaga described them as equal parts crab and starfish, with a dash of chimpanzee and a splash of crazy thrown in. They were rare, partial vertebrates with primitive skeletal structures under their dermal coverings. And they were arboreal, covered in thin but nearly waterproof layers of feathers that resembled fur up close. Their four limbs, each with three reversible joints and complicated, grasping, ‘chimp-like’ hands, were arranged around low-to-the-ground central torsos. Their heads, which telescoped out of the tops of their torsos, had large pairs of independently tracking eyes, long feelers, and sharp mouthparts made for eating plant matter. Minu suspected their strong torsos protected their brains and other vital organs, making the Traaga hard to kill.

  “I understand their brains are in their central body cavity,” Var’at spoke over the dull roar, echoing her thoughts. She nodded. “Maybe that explains why they have such a hard time using them.” Minu found it hard to disagree with him.

  The hoverfield set her on the training-level floor, and she stepped out. She tried to march in militarily but didn’t come close. How could she with her belly sticking out twenty centimeters over her belt and her feet hurting? She couldn’t help thinking that carrying Lilith was a lot easier, but she’d only carried her a few weeks before the Kaatan took over.

  Minu walked up to Gregg and his command staff, who were standing with their hands on their hips watching the kloth and pony show. They’d obviously given up trying to regain control. Gregg sensed someone behind him and glanced over his shoulder. When he saw her, he jumped slightly. “First on deck!” he barked.

  “Crap,” Minu moaned inwardly as Gregg’s staff came to rigid attention.

  “At ease, Chosen,” she said. Gregg glanced at her swollen stomach then questioningly at her. “Three months. Don’t get excited.”

  “You sure there’s only one in there?”

  She snorted and nodded her head. “Yes, the doc is quite sure.” She turned and looked at the riot of activity that should have been an organized training session. “This is a cluster fuck.”

  “Full blown,” Gregg agreed. “Nothing works. We tried organizing them into squads and platoons, but they don’t seem to grasp the concept. Everything is a game or competition to them.”

  Minu nodded thoughtfully. The Traaga were commonly hired for off-world construction contracts. Their arboreal nature, complete lack of acrophobia, and radial body design made them incredible high-steel workers. Memories of watching the Traaga work together gave her an idea.

  “Where’s their commander, Bob?”

  A minute later, Bob came skittering down a vertical wall with almost no visible handholds like he was walking on a sidewalk. He? Minu didn’t even know if they had genders. Bob was instantly recognizable by the intricate, swirling paint patterns along the corners of his thorax and down his legs. For the first time, she noticed others sported paint patterns, as well.

  “I respond,” he chirped through her translator.

  “You report as ordered,” she corrected him. The being’s head bobbed in understanding. They couldn’t salute very well, so it was a compromise. “Have you settled on a name yet? I’m tired of calling you Bob.”

  The Traaga looked from Gregg to her, then nodded. Gregg coughed, and she wondered what was up, until the Traaga answered. “I wish to be known as Patrick.”

  She considered for a minute, looking quizzically from Gregg to Patrick and back. A few of the command staff snorted in amusement, and she scrunched up her face, trying to think of why the name sounded funny. Gregg grinned and started quietly singing, “Who lives in a pineapple—”

  Minu choked and snorted, shaking her head. “Asshole,” she sputtered, and everyone started laughing. The Traaga commander curiously observed the mystifying humans. “One of these days, you’re going to give some critter a name, and it’s going to figure out what you mean and rip your head off.”

  Gregg stopped chuckling, and a distant look came into his eyes. “One time, Aaron started calling a Beezer ‘McDonald’s’ after that old burger store on Earth—” he stopped when he saw Minu look away. “Shit, Minu, I’m sorry.”

  “He’s not dead,” she said quietly, “not in my mind anyway.” She put a hand on her swelling abdomen. Or in my heart, she added silently. She addressed the aliens’ leader. “Patrick, when you work on a contract for another species, you always work in groups of four, correct?”

  “Yes, that is correct.”

  She turned to Gregg and cocked an eyebrow.

  “Squads of four?” he asked. Minu nodded. “Huh,” he said and looked at the craziness.

  An hour later, Minu walked back toward the lift, feeling like she was waddling. In her wake a thousand Traaga were organized into groups of four. Four Traaga to a squad, four squads to a platoon, four platoons to a company, and four companies to a battalion. It was somewhat non-standard, but it was working. It seemed natural to them, and while it would take time to figure out who the leaders were, it was progress. Groups of sixty-four Traaga moved in something that resembled a formation.

  Gregg glanced over from where he was talking with Var’at and saw her heading toward her office. “I don’t know how she does it,” he said to his former enemy.

  “She understands people,” Var’at replied.

  “People?”

  The Rasa leader looked at the Traaga and shrugged. “I blame the translator, but you get my meaning.”

  “I wish she wasn’t so alone.”

  “Doesn’t her daughter return tomorrow?”

  Gregg nodded and returned to his duties.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 2

  Octember 25th, 534 AE

  Bellatrix Orbit

  Despite the Kaatan being her home, the place she’d spent almost all her life from conception onward, Lilith smiled as she returned to the Bellatrix star system. Floating in the center of her CIC, all senses linked into the powerful warship, she swam through space as the ship dove toward the star lighting the planet where her mother, Minu Groves, was born.

  The ship slowed to a few multiples of light speed as it passed the ringed world of Valhalla. Vulcan and Vega, the two worlds in the system other than Bellatrix, were elsewhere. She was only aware them in the mathematical equations and time indexes that danced in her cybernetically-enhanced mind. Her quantum communicator chirped a few moments later.

  “Is that you, Lilith?” hissed a Rasa voice.

  “Yes, Var’at,” she replied. “I am pleased the advanced detection network is up and working.”

  “We’ve been working for many weeks on Remus to assure its function. Since we modified the computer networks to attempt the movement of Bellatrix anyway, it was not a stretch to install the tachyon sensors without the human’s awareness.”

  Lilith nodded and made notes in one of the thousands of files she kept in secret places in the ship’s databanks. “And replication of the batteries?”

  “Well underway,” Var’at replied in a satisfied voice. “Tell Kal’at the designs were very adequate.”

  “I am here,” the Rasa scientist replied over the network. “This would not have been possible without the Kaata
n’s computers and Minu’s expertise.”

  “It was my pleasure.” Lilith closed her eyes as she really didn’t need to see to fly the ship and took a deep breath. Her analysis of the system’s flyby had gone no further, and now that she was home, she had to tread carefully. She moved the images to deep memory and locked them away under a spot-written, ninety-bit script code. There would be time later.

  The detection array she and Kal’at had helped the Rasa build on Remus was undetectable to her and all the instruments on the Kaatan, and that was just the way she wanted it to be. Her people were at a critical juncture of their lives within the massive Concordia. They were expanding in power and influence thanks to the Rangers and the other Chosen, and the demands from the Tog had all but ceased, leaving humanity to pursue whatever venture it wished. But as they moved out, others within the Concordia had taken notice.

  Recently, the humans had come into conflict with the Rasa, eventually defeating, then allying with the former enemy. After the Rasa lost their home and most of their people in a war with the T’Chillen, they settled on Bellatrix.

  A few years later, the humans fought a brief but brutal war with the Tanam on the Beezer leasehold. The Tanam had intended to take out the Tog and eventually the humans, but Minu had defeated them.

  Next came the mission to find a medical codex that would save Pip. It was Minu’s first encounter with the T’Chillen and resulted in their getting the Kaatan. Lilith was born on that mission. Unable to fully operate the ancient ship, the medical intelligence had used the time distortion effects of faster-than-light travel and, in days, aged Lilith enough for her to operate the ship. Her brain was a hybrid of natural, human matter and computer implants.