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  BARANAK:

  STORMING THE GATES

  A Novel of The Above

  Van Allen Plexico

  Copyright 2015 by Van Allen Plexico

  White Rocket Books

  www.whiterocketbooks.com

  This one is for Mary Brown.

  A stand-alone novel, this book is also the second volume in the “Above” series and is a part of the “Shattering” saga.

  Cover art by Mark Williams

  The Shattering/Legions Saga

  by Van Allen Plexico

  The Above:

  Lucian: Dark God’s Homecoming

  Baranak: Storming the Gates

  Shattered Galaxy:

  Hawk: Hand of the Machine

  Falcon: Revolt Against the Machine*

  The Shattering/Legions Trilogy:

  Legion I: Lords of Fire

  Legion II: Sons of Terra

  Legion III: Kings of Oblivion

  The Legion Chronicles:

  1: Cold Lightning

  2: Red Colossus*

  * forthcoming

  The Above

  (higher energy; slower movement)

  Shortcuts (Paths) across spacetime

  - Our Universe -

  The Below

  (lower energy; faster movement)

  Realm of demons; the underverse

  THE ERAS OF THE SHATTERING UNIVERSE

  First Pax Machina

  First Terran Empire

  First Dark Age

  Second Terran Empire

  Terran Alliance

  Second Dark Age

  The Young Empires

  Second Pax Machina

  Shattered Galaxy

  THE SEVEN WORLDS OF MANKIND

  During the First Terran Empire and First Dark Age,

  in order from the Earth outward, as linked by the Gates:

  Earth

  Original Imperial capital and most populous world.

  Tolkar

  Fortress and factory world.

  Majondra

  Second-most populous and wealthy world.*

  Sarmata

  Verghas

  World ruled by expansionist military regime.

  Trinity

  Evergreen

  Last-colonized, most sparsely-settled world.

  *Victoria

  Primary moon of Majondra and home of the Baranak family.

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  The Baranak family,

  in descending order based on age:

  Louis (deceased)

  Constantine, Commander-in-Chief of Military Forces of Majondra

  Justinian, younger brother of Constantine and Second-in-Command of Majondran military

  Aurelia, younger sister of Constantine and family liaison with the Church.

  Octavia, younger sister of Constantine and Majondran government official.

  Jerome, younger brother of Constantine, high-ranking military officer and twin brother of Alexius.

  Alexius, younger brother of Constantine, high-ranking military officer and twin brother of Jerome.

  Gaius, son of and military aide to Constantine.

  Stephanie, youngest sister of Constantine.

  Others of note:

  Corindar Jeras, priest of the Church on Majondra

  The Sister Superior, high priestess of the Church on Sarmata

  Corinda Helaini, priestess of the Church on Sarmata

  Jon Salas, Captain of the Majondran Navy ship Marata

  Maxillus, Lord Steward of Majondra

  The Immortals:

  Istari, the Renegade

  Elendi, the Mastermind

  Orondi, the Oracle

  Udasi, the Judge

  Aleuvi, the Assassin

  Yadrui, the Farseer

  Dormor, former Hand

  Kratok, former Hand

  Hadog, former Hand

  “It is more shameful to distrust your friends than to be deceived by them.”

  —Confucius

  “As big as an elephant is, a whale is still larger. Everything’s relative. Even gods have their spot on the food chain.”

  —Jim Starlin

  “There are none of you, good doctors, could cope with my family anyway.”

  —Corwin of Amber

  ONE

  My father burned.

  I watched in horror as the unearthly crimson flames consumed him. Within moments, his features were obscured by the awful intensity of the fire.

  Desperately I fought toward him, despite the intense heat, casting about for anything that could beat back the flames. But I knew that it was too late, even before he toppled limply back into the burning remains of the tent. The cloud of smoke and debris that arose around him served as a macabre sort of punctuation to his struggles.

  He was gone.

  My world reeled under me, shifting off its axis. Now I was truly alone. My only ally swept off the board, all that remained were my uncles and aunts, those vipers. Cutthroats, backstabbers, religious fanatics and bullies. My family.

  And here I sat, in that family’s own armed camp, on the cusp of interstellar war.

  War. I hated the very word. The idea, the concept, the thought itself. I was never cut out to be a soldier. I wanted nothing to do with battle. How was I supposed to deal with war, now that a war had landed in my lap?

  In the past, I’d always had Dad to turn to. But no longer. Never again.

  I dropped to one knee, running my soot-stained hand back through my hair.

  How had it come to this?

  It had begun, at least for me, scarcely an hour earlier, when my father, quite alive and brimming with confidence, stood poised to conquer all of humankind.

  The message arrived that he had called a secret meeting in his tent. Obediently I gathered up my few belongings and hiked through the thick grasses of the moon Victoria to the location of his temporary command post. The sun was setting when I reached his tent, casting jagged shadows across the camp. No sign of my uncles, but other high-ranking officers including generals and admirals stood around waiting, some glancing up at me curiously as I approached.

  And then I heard the words, just above a whisper.

  “The General’s lapdog.”

  I whirled, facing the man I knew had spoken them. Commander LaToy. A short, thick, muscular man in his late forties but appearing younger. He stood near two of his cohorts, two more who had never respected my father’s rise to command or my own place within the service.

  “You have something to say to me, Commander?” I asked.

  He stepped forward.

  “You heard me,” he growled back. “You don’t deserve to wear that uniform. The only reason you have it is because the General—”

  I punched him.

  It was swift, brutal. He had no chance to react, to move. My fist caught him in the jaw and sent him back into his two buddies, all three of them going down in a heap.

  LaToy, back on his feet instantly, charged towards me.

  “That’s it,” he growled. “I don’t care whose son you are. You can’t—”

  “Gaius.”

  The voice had come from within the tent. Everyone froze.

  “Gaius.”

  I hesitated, glancing back at LaToy. He eyed me with hatred and bitter anger, which roughly corresponded to my own feelings for him.

  “Daddy’s calling,” he hissed. “Time to pretend to be a soldier again.”

  “We’re not done,” I replied, before turning and moving towards the tent.

  The flap opened slightly and my father’s broad face appeared. Seeing me, he gestured for me to come inside.

  “Close it,” he said as I followed him in, and I did.

 
He seated himself in a folding canvas chair and leaned back, peering at me, taking me in. I did the same of him.

  Constantine Baranak, he was. Older now than the way I tended to remember him in his absence, his face had grown lined and hard, sharp and tough, like the rest of him. His eyes still shone with passion and fierce intelligence, as they had for as long as I’d known him. Lank hair once blond but now gone silver-white hung to his shoulders. He wore a black uniform with little decoration save the gold stat bars and pips that indicated his rank. On the small table before him lay maps and charts, notes and holos that I assumed related to our upcoming campaign, whatever that might be—and I’d yet to speak with anyone who knew. As I waited, he steepled his fingers before his lips, breathed deeply, and motioned for me to sit, which I did.

  An overwhelming sense of anticipation and excitement crept over me. I felt that, at last, I might be about to learn why he had gathered all of our world’s military forces here, on the moon of Victoria, and what great crusade he intended for us to embark upon. As the supreme military commander of our homeworld, Majondra, he had ordered it so without the slightest explanation as to why. Now all our ships waited up in the sky above us, prepped and poised for battle, and all our soldiers camped and drilled across the surface of this moon. And all of us, soldiers and generals and admirals and even me, his only son and assistant, wondered what terrible, unimaginable threat might possibly exist that could require such a mighty mobilization.

  A couple of minutes must have passed, during which neither of us spoke. I knew well enough to wait, to allow him to begin the conversation. He would do so when he was ready, and not before. Sounds of practice rounds being fired and the rumble of heavy equipment came to us from far away, but in the immediate space around our tent, there was only an anxious, nervous silence.

  Finally, when my nerves could scarcely take it any longer, the quiet was broken by the terse words of a guard outside.

  “My lord Baranak. Corindar Jeras is here.”

  “Yes.”

  The tent flap opened and in came the priest I’d seen visiting my father on numerous occasions in the past. He was tall and thin, like my father, but with wavy reddish brown hair and a thick beard, and appeared to be somewhere in his fifties—younger than my father but probably twenty years older than me. His eyes flickered from my father to me, and I was somewhat taken aback by the burning intensity they held. He wore the deep red robe of a corindar, the highest level of priest on our world. The golden emblem of the Church of the Burning Stars hung on a chain about his neck.

  “Jeras. Welcome. Sit, sit.”

  The priest nodded to my father and pulled up a chair across from me, such that we formed a triangle. He started to speak, but my father stopped him with a raised hand and reached for a small device lying on the table in front of him. Clicking it, he activated distortion screens around us. The sounds of his armies drilling outside faded into silence. Then he settled back into his chair again and focused his attention on the priest, waiting. I was already perching forward on the edge of mine, anxious for news.

  “I came as soon as I could,” Corindar Jeras began.

  He smoothed his robe with his right hand as his left reflexively stroked his beard. His eyes moved back and forth from my father to me; his words, as they emerged, were hushed but seemed loaded with great import.

  “They have done it,” he said. “The breakthrough we believed was imminent—it has happened. Within the next forty-eight hours, the Gates will be fully operational again.”

  A broad smile spread across my father’s face—not just happy, but almost predatory—and he laughed once, then again.

  I sat unmoving, dull incomprehension slowly giving way to utter shock. I looked from one of them to the other, unable to believe what I thought I had heard. They could not possibly mean…the Gates?

  Corindar Jeras turned to me then, his expression an odd mixture of amusement, piety, and—beneath it all—a strong sense that he was gauging my reaction, studying it carefully, looking for…something…in it. I did not know what that might be.

  The moment passed. The corindar brought his hands up and clasped them under his chin.

  “Praise to the burning stars,” he intoned. “Our empire, so long severed, will shortly be restored. Our long night of isolation is nearly at an end.”

  Then he smiled at me, and winked.

  “What do you think of that, eh, Gaius?”

  I still couldn’t quite believe it.

  “The Gates? You mean…” I gestured vaguely at the tent’s ceiling, attempting to indicate the sky above, the space beyond. “The Gates themselves?”

  “None other,” my father said, laughing. I had never heard him laugh so much in all the years before this combined. “Nearly six hundred years of isolation—about to end!”

  Jeras nodded, saying to me, “My brothers and sisters in the Church have labored for generations to gain a fuller understanding of the Gates. While they still have not mastered the technology by any means, they have managed to find a way to reactivate them, at least on a limited basis.”

  “The Seven Worlds of Mankind have been severed from one another for too long,” my father said. “We now possess the ability to reunite the old Empire, to allow travel and communications among the Seven once more. The age of darkness is over!”

  I tried to let all of this sink in, but I found it too incredible, too momentous, to easily accept.

  Roughly a thousand years earlier, the first of the Gates had been discovered, by accident, out beyond the orbit of Earth’s moon. Passing through that mile-wide, invisible gate led, almost instantaneously, to a similar location near another Earth-sized planet—but this one located in a star system so far away from Earth as to be, for all practical purposes, unreachable by any other means.

  Mankind rapidly colonized that planet, and named it Tolkar. The logistics of colonization were ridiculously easy, requiring little more than a trip from Earth to a little beyond the Moon. Very soon afterward, explorers found another gate near Tolkar. This gate led to a third planet, Majondra, which became my family’s adopted homeworld. Then later a gate from there was found, leading to Sarmata, and then one from Sarmata to Verghas, and then from there to Trinity, and finally to Evergreen, the apparent end of the chain, last of the Seven. Humanity had discovered a remnant of ancient super-technology that allowed for the settlement of a series of inhabited worlds stringing out across the galaxy. For over five hundred years, the Seven Worlds grew in wealth and in population, and a mighty Empire arose, centered on Earth, governing and dominating all of them. At the same time, the Church of the Burning Stars came to be founded on Sarmata. With Imperial approval and encouragement, it dominated the spiritual life of most of a human race now spread across seven far-flung planets.

  For five centuries, all went well—better than anyone could have hoped or imagined. The Seven Worlds prospered, the Empire prospered, the Church prospered.

  And then the unthinkable happened.

  The Gates, all at once, ceased to function.

  My mind still reeling from the possibility of their being restored, I hit on something my father had just mentioned. “You said the Seven Worlds have been severed from each other. But we’ve never known that for sure—that it wasn’t just our gate that stopped working. For all we know, we were the only ones cut off.”

  “We know it now,” my father replied. He looked at Jeras, who nodded.

  “Our holy technicians have been able to open the Gates enough to observe through them for a matter of weeks now—all the way out to Evergreen, at the end of the line. During that time, we have learned a great deal about our sister worlds.”

  Jeras looked at me and smiled.

  “At last we know the answer to the question that has bedeviled us for so very long: What has become of our sister worlds?”

  I waited, as anxious as anyone to learn the answer.

  He spread his hands.

  “Each of them lost the use of the Gates at th
e same time we did, some six hundred years ago. We have not been left behind, as we feared. All shared the same catastrophe—the loss of contact with all the others.”

  “And in the time since? What has become of them?”

  “Each,” he replied, “has suffered a different fate.”

  I frowned, leaning forward, hanging on his every word now. “How so?”

  “The Imperial governments on each world swayed, and most toppled,” Jeras said. “None emerged from the sudden crisis quite the same as it had been before.”

  My father was nodding.

  “And so you see the problem, do you not, my son?”

  He sat back, poured three glasses of wine, and passed two of them to us.

  “What might seem to you at first to be a great and glorious day—the return of the Empire—will instead, in all likelihood, usher in complete chaos,” he said. “A reopening of the Gates will find not seven brothers eager for reconciliation, anxious to submit to a single rule. It will instead, overnight, place seven utter strangers at one another’s throats.”

  He sipped his wine, his eyes never leaving mine, measuring, judging my reactions.