Vontaura

VONTAURA

  VOLUME II OF THE GILAXIAD

  By

  JAMES C. DUNN

  Vontaura

  Volume Two of the Gilaxiad

  Copyright 2013 James C. Dunn

  Cover Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

  This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy and discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support. This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  ISBN-13: 978-1493570850

  ISBN-10: 1493570854

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  [email protected]

  CONTENTS

  Synopsis

  Part 1 Home Not Home

  Part 2 Blood of the Alignment

  Part 3 The Greater Threat

  Part 4 Something is Coming

  SYNOPSIS

  THE STORY SO FAR

  Vontaura is the second volume in the tale of The Gilaxiad.

  THE IÁSTRON RACE

  Volume I, Iástron, began with the fall of the Jovian moon Europa and with it the apparent destruction of the powerful-yet-misunderstood Iástron race: a grouping of meta-humans living in isolation from the rest of humanity. Fifty years later and darkness had crept back into the Four Systems of Sol, Proxima, Accentauria, and Accentaurib.

  THE TITANESE GUARD-IN-TRAINING

  Anna Berenguer was a young woman with dreams. Or, rather, nightmares. Tutored by her mentor, Callista – the sole remaining Iástron on Titan – she wished for nothing more than to become an elite Guard. When this dream was crushed, Anna left Titan with her sister Gílana and best friend Jon. However, things went from bad to worse and they quickly found themselves in the middle of a warzone. Following the death of Jon to the Crilshan assassin known as Gordian, Anna and Gílana were watched over on the vessel Stellarstream by Captain Diego Ferranti. It was on board the Stellarstream’s destination of the far outpost Aurora that Anna’s fate caught up with her.

  THE RUNAWAY CAPTAIN

  Antal Justus was a wanted man. A runaway from Earth. We met Justus and his crew of the Crimson Flux at the invasion of Rotavar and destruction of its moon. After losing one of his friends in the invasion, Justus left his crew and took the invitation of a stranger who offered an escape from the guilt. Little did he know of the real reason for the invitation. Justus quickly found himself in a far star system, inside a black-rock moon, orbiting the lightning planet Tempest-Beta. A secret very few knew, for within the black-rock moon called Erebus was an unimaginable life form, dark and evil. The scientists within Erebus had plans for the creature, and so sent Justus to the far outpost Aurora to capture the participants required. There he found Anna and the crew of the Stellarstream.

  THE GENERAL

  General Ruben Berenguer should have retired from leading Titan’s armies, not trying to combat the rise of the powerful world Crilshar, intent on the removal of the Systemal Alignment – especially Titan. His efforts to uncover the mystery of Erebus, the Weapon to Destroy Worlds, which he believed Crilshar had attained, were also fruitless. When his nieces, Anna and Gílana, disappeared during the destruction of outpost Aurora, he was torn between his duty and his heart. He nevertheless led the forces of Titan and its allies against the molten planet Crilshar in an attempt to stop the Dark Race and discover his family’s fate. But a great power was waiting for him in the caverns of Crilshar. The dark Iástron, Marrak Malizar, destroyer of the Iástron moon Europa, had set a trap. But so had Ruben Berenguer.

  EREBUS

  After Aurora, Justus brought a captive Anna, Gílana, and Ferranti back to Erebus. There the cruel professor Xerin Kramer, believing Justus to be a Iástron and a threat, sent he, Anna, and Ferranti down into the centre of Erebus, thinking it would kill them. Kramer kept Gílana after realising she was pregnant. Trapped and without hope, they were not going to die without a fight. Justus led Anna and Ferranti deep into the alien moon in order to find another way out, but they quickly found themselves separated. Justus and Ferranti lost their way and roused an army of evil from within the bowels of Erebus, while Anna discovered a force, pure darkness, at its centre when she placed an alien bracelet over her wrist.

  It was only because of Anna and the silver-black bracelet which had bound itself to her that they escaped. In a confrontation with Kramer, Peter Marx, the founder of the Iástron race, revealed himself. But Kramer took Anna and Gílana down to the lightning planet below. Justus and the other survivors followed, and they all bore witness to the awakening of the Zinn – dark, alien creatures who revived Erebus, not a moon but an ancient vessel. In battle with a terrifying creature, Peter Marx was left behind.

  Volume I ended with the destruction of the lower caverns of Crilshar; with Ruben Berenguer’s sacrifice in a desperate bid to destroy the dark Dishan Family and the wicked Iástron, Marrak Malizar. Upon Erebus and the lightning planet beneath, we left the survivors struggling with the loss of the Iástrons’ founder, Peter Marx; with the reality of their discovery of a malevolent alien presence; and the revelation that both Anna and Justus had received echoes of Peter Marx’s gift, finding themselves newborn members of the re-emerging Iástron race. The mystery of the Gilaxiad, revealed by the alien Zinn to be a dark prophecy, was left unsolved. Anna and Justus are separated, the Four Systems divided. A greater shadow threatens everything and everyone that lives.

  This second volume, Vontaura, tells the tale of the survivors of Erebus, Antal Justus’ journey to planet Earth, and the unfolding battle for the Four Systems.

  I

  HOME NOT HOME

  ONE

  SILENCE AND DARKNESS clung to the black vessel Thanatus. Icy stillness hung in the air. A dark-veiled woman stood over her pilots as they approached the looming planet’s lustrous skies. Her head hung low as the smouldering sphere surfaced in the distance, the craft’s engines slowing through a flustering howl. She adjusted her patterned veil, breathed out slowly. The tremor swelled beneath. She sensed its haunting rhythm, a palpitating opus ringing through her mournful seams. She felt her own warm blood, twisting and curving like the molten rivers meandering across the ever-shifting face of the world long known as Crilshar. Glimpsing the eclipsed outline of a shadowed region of the world, she breathed a sigh of anguish.

  Around the craft in which she stood, spiked barrage-vessels fell and hovered, orbiting above and across the surface, one memorable night of the Alignment year 4262. Dozens led her down into the dark atmosphere. Breaking through the toxic cloud line. Black smoke glowed molten red in the heavens, reaching up and covering the world like night. The craft continued on, past lava pits and black-mountain peaks until familiar structures appeared in the distance.

  She did not wait to arrive at the Crilshan base. Twisting through the craft she ignored the silver-masked men watching her pass. Lean and tall, she surpassed all on board. She spent several seconds examining her reflection in a mirror on the way to the rear egress. The black velvet veil draped across her face covered her entire countenance. No filthy Crilshan would look upon her face while she was here.

  ‘Six minutes, Mistress Sudana,’ her captain called, back along the walkway.

  She sighed again, heart beating faster as she activated a viewing block beside her. From it she could discern their whereabouts, and the molten canyons beneath grew wider, wide enough for the Thanatus to descend. And so down they headed. She watched with bated breath as they followed unpredictable tunnelling strips the armies were working on. Deeper and deeper they mined, farther below while burning air surfaced on the wa
y to the Dishan throne room.

  Sudana had never before conceded the necessity for prayer. A ridiculous practise, valued by few, it had crept up on her in recent days. Three had passed since the Alliance of the Four attempted to invade Crilshar. Three days since Sudana had heard the news and set out from Earth at once. No idea what to expect. What to do. How to prepare.

  The craft slowed to a halt, breaking down upon a rocky platform. Down the extending access ramp and out through the cold, dark channel beneath, Sudana watched through her veil the Crilshan sentries marching around her. A brief flash of her left wrist, the mark of her order’s Moon and Triangle enough to maintain their obedience.

  ‘This way, mistress.’

  ‘Your work here is done?’

  ‘Almost.’

  ‘Who is in charge?’

  ‘We three are what is left of the middle command.’

  ‘And the higher?’

  He gave no answer.

  ‘Where are the Dishan?’ she asked. ‘Where is my Córonat?’

  ‘In the throne room at the time of the attack.’

  ‘Take me there.’

  ‘Nay. The throne room is gone. Crushed.’

  A void filled her stomach. ‘But you are attempting to reach them. The mines are back behind us,’ she said, realising how far from the hollows they had trudged. ‘Why have you brought me this way?’

  Again she received no reply, and one armed gubar raised a thin finger, directing her ahead. There was no talking to these creatures. Before them stood a heavy door, engraved with wrought iron moulds resembling dark, legendary creatures found only in the myths of the deepest caverns. Several Crilshan soldiers stood before it, and they tensed up as they saw her approach. Her escort stopped, signalled for the door to be opened.

  The guards activated the door. It moved aside . . .

  The symposium within stirred, disturbingly quiet. Old, elevated candles set on dark spires lined the rounded circumference, while at the other end a crackling fire beckoned her over. She moved in; the door closed behind. Three men – two of which were Crilshan, the third she could not see – sat to the left of the hearth on tall-backed chairs. On the floor before the fire lay a body, small and still. To the right was set a single chair. In it sat an elderly man. She walked forward.

  ‘Stop!’ called a voice, and it sprang back off the smooth walls, encircling her in a familiar flourish of strength.

  Her heart stopped. Sudana fell to her knees. ‘My lord . . .’

  ‘Mistress,’ said Lord Malizar. ‘Come to me.’

  She was before him, shifting along upon her knees as though her feet could no longer carry her weight. ‘My lord?’ She looked up into his face amid the firelight. His eyes were sunken, his lips dry, his back hunched, physical trace of a significant effort, an excess of energy which had obviously weakened his body almost completely. His head rested in his hand, eyes closed.

  She could hardly speak. ‘I feared the worst. But you . . . survived.’

  ‘Survived,’ he said. ‘Endured. Lived to tell the tale. Call it what you will. I am here.’

  ‘But . . . how? The Crilshan gubars said the throne room was crushed . . . that you were all . . . that you had died.’

  An unreserved jeer sounded from one of the chairs beside. Sudana looked across at the Crilshan to blame. Wivartha Dishan, commander of the legions of Crilshar, sat back with one leg over the other, hands clasped on the knee joint. He sneered with a foul expression.

  ‘Something to say, Wivartha?’ she said.

  ‘Nothing to you.’

  ‘And I shall hope not.’ Malizar opened his eyes and stared at the Dishan. ‘You fail to remember I dismissed you from my immediate service. Your nephew will speak to me on your behalf now.’

  Beside Wivartha the second Crilshan stirred. Yux Dishan. Sudana had not seen the younger man before. Though not too young to hold company, Crilshar’s High Lord gave the impression of a child at odds with a parent: maladjusted, quiet, and out of sync with the room.

  ‘Yux Dishan is High Lord, Wivartha. You bow to him, you bow to me, and you bow to my mistress.’

  The smile melted from Wivartha’s mouth. Sudana smirked and turned back to her master. ‘How? How did you survive?’

  ‘The explosion,’ Malizar said, ‘detonated by General Ruben Berenguer and his band of Titanese traitors, was designed to bury us, to crush us all in the Dishan throne room.’ He breathed in with difficulty, chest rising before it filled fully with the bitter-warm air. ‘What he did not anticipate was a man of my ability . . . of my power. I alone held the mass of rock and earth at bay for all of three days. Long enough for the Crilshan forces still above to hollow out a channel and locate us.’

  ‘And it has weakened you tremendously.’ She alone could escape pointing out such a fact.

  ‘Not for long, mistress.’

  A whimper from the body lay sprawled on its front before the fire reminded the group that it was there. Its arm moved an inch.

  ‘Edgar,’ Malizar said. ‘Get our guest up. I am ready now.’

  The figure which had been sitting beside Yux and Wivartha Dishan moved at once. He clambered down and shuffled forward upon his knees. She knew who this man was: Edgar Mokrikov. Once prime minister of the desert world Rotavar. The weak, pathetic weasel. Worm snake. Sewer rat. He whimpered as he reached the body and turned it over. A young man, she thought. Mid-twenties.

  ‘Lift him up and bring him to me.’ Her master sat up in the chair and watched Mokrikov drag the boy across, snivelling as he did so. Malizar smiled at the terror on the paralyzed boy’s face. ‘Do you know who this is, mistress?’

  ‘A Rotavarian, my lord, by the looks of him.’

  ‘Would you like to tell her, Edgar? No? This, Sudana, is Chief Aleksey Vasily of the old Rotavarian defence. He brought me Ruben Berenguer. Unfortunately for him, he also decided to betray me. You have seen for yourself that such a decision never ends well . . . for him.’

  ‘He brought you the general? So Berenguer is also dead?’

  Mokrikov stood now, holding the boy’s body up. His eyes were wide with fear, while Mokrikov’s were closed, tears seeping from them nonetheless.

  ‘Ruben Berenguer is indeed long gone.’ He glanced at Yux. ‘The High Lord has seen to it that the body be destroyed, the general’s legend now nought but dust.’

  ‘And Maxim, I mean . . . Ximma?’

  ‘She chose to keep her allegiance, as so many of our Iástron children have, with her own world, not her own people. Do not be disappointed, mistress. Your old friend’s echo of immortality will not prevent a lifetime of exile in the bowels of the Retani prison moon Hellfire. For that is where she will remain.’

  Malizar leaned across and wrapped his hands around the neck of Aleksey Vasily. Mokrikov’s eyes tightened, tears pouring down his cheeks as he held the boy forward. She knew that Mokrikov’s echoed talent of repair would not work for Malizar. But the Dark Lord had his own way of healing himself. Vasily burned blood red, spluttering and writhing as the life was forced from his body.

  The old man before her stood tall and strong as he took this life and found his energy once more. Within seconds the body fell to the ground, Mokrikov collapsed back on his hands and knees, while Lord Malizar breathed out a cold, formidable breath which sent a chill down the spines of Sudana and the two Crilshans. She suppressed a shudder as he sat once again, no longer frail and verging on death.

  * * *

  Everybody waited tautly until he spoke again. And when he did, he seemed, if it were possible, more formidable than before, with a presence greater in ferocity and an air more crushing than the gravitational might of a Type One planet.

  Malizar stood. He gazed down at Sudana and drifted the length of the room. ‘Come, mistress. Walk with me.’ He looked back at Yux, Wivartha, and Mokrikov. ‘You three as well.’

  The five moved along a walkway, bordered on one side completely with a clear, synthetic casement. Not a word was spoken. Outside could be
seen the walls of the subterranean canyon in which the quarters were to be found. The adjacent room was as large as the preceding space, but from it hung an unyielding gallery hollowed out of the rock and lined with polished metal. The vista was truly incredible: in the distance descended a burning wall of molten rock, a weir of black-orange plunging into the magma-course flowing far below.

  Malizar stepped out onto the gallery first, Sudana by his side. Yux and Wivartha watched proudly at the power of their world, while Mokrikov skulked at the back.

  To the Dishan he said, ‘How many legions have you left, beneath, upon, and above this world?’

  ‘Enough to submit to your will, my lord. And to do what it is you desire,’ Wivartha said.

  Malizar ignored him and looked at Yux.

  ‘I . . . give my uncle permission to speak on my behalf . . . as commander,’ the young man said.

  Malizar proceeded as though he hadn’t spoken. ‘I want numbers before I leave here. Is that understood?’

  ‘Absolutely, my lord.’

  ‘We must move quickly.’ The Dark Lord paced now, only his silhouette visible against a backdrop of brilliant flame. ‘We must exploit the victory we have gained. Our methods must intensify.’ He halted. ‘I will prevail.’

  ‘What of the Retani warships?’ Sudana asked. She had witnessed many still in orbit above the planet.

  ‘They will be put to use. They are now under Crilshan command, further strength beside the Proximan war machine. Retani Iraan will return to the Retani tri-peninsula and supersede his father, with the purpose of entering the Dishan Alliance and supplying additional forces.

  ‘The time has come to take the Alignment worlds. You have abundant forces, even with the loss of the lower caverns.’

  Wivartha bowed. ‘Yes, my Córonat. Our generals are spread throughout the Four Systems. The orders will be dispatched immediately. Every last blockade will become an invasion.’