Empyrean Rises Read online

  Empyrean Rises

  By Spencer Pierson

  Copyright 2018 by Spencer Pierson, All Rights Reserved

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to real persons, events, or places are purely coincidental. All rights reserved.

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  Table of Contents

  Empyrean Rises

  Part 1 – Endings and Beginnings

  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

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Part 2 – Gateway

  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

  Chapter 18

  Part 3 – A Step Beyond

  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

  Chapter 18

  Authors Notes

  Books by Spencer Pierson

  Sneak Peek into Empyrean Sol: The New Commonwealth Book 2

  Part 1 – Endings and Beginnings

  If your ego starts out, 'I am important, I am big, I am special,' you're in for some disappointments when you look around at what we've discovered about the universe. No, you're not big. No, you're not. You're small in time and in space. And you have this frail vessel called the human body that's limited on Earth.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Chapter 1

  Time: Undetermined

  Location: Undetermined Distant Galaxy

  Grand Magister El’ra Solan continued to orchestrate the work on the mighty engines orbiting one of the suns of their last solar system. Massive, planetoid sized satellites that dipped into the center of the raging furnace, pulling out great streams of energy. Even with his mind so occupied in a thousand different tasks, he was not too busy to miss the emergence of the Herald ship as it entered between the fifth and sixth planet. It immediately came under attack from vestiges of the imperial fleets as well as those battle platforms that were within range. Huge energy lances thrust out into the void and splashed against the Herald’s shields. All of it ignored as insignificant. Instead of retaliating, it began to broadcast the same message it always sent upon entering any system, whether it contained life or not.

  It was not a demand to surrender, nor was it a request of any sort. Instead, it was simply a statement. The same statement El’ra and all of his people had heard over the vast, yet all too brief, time since they had first encountered the ships of the Heralds.

  The scheduled cleansing of this system would commence.

  From the very first moment, the message had been presented clearly and in the receiving language of any species or empire that heard it. Even to the point of those listening to the same broadcast that spoke or perceived a language in any different way, they all understood.

  No further explanation or reason was ever given. No attempts to talk had ever been acknowledged. The Herald appeared, broadcast the message, and then about three rotations of the imperial home planet later, a huge enigmatic Herald’s fleet would appear and lay waste to everything. Even down to the smallest fabricated atom or molecule. They had that short of time, and a few days afterward, until the end of their species.

  El’ra watched through several of his mind shards as the remnant of the imperial fleet tried in futility to breach the Herald’s shields. Every sensor and instrument they had recorded each microsecond, processed through the most powerful computer and dimensional AI systems they had, but nothing changed. They had been studying the Heralds for the extensive amount of time it had taken to work through the Telgra empire’s once-vast space and in all that time, nothing had been revealed. No weakness or hesitation. The end of the Holistic Telgra Empire was at hand.

  They had received their first hints of the Heralds through observations from further along the galactic arm of their galaxy. Several stars exploded within close proximity to each other. They were not stars that were close to the end of their lives, and many of them just didn’t have the mass to turn into the nova they became. Even after registering the destructions, it was clear that some other energy had been introduced that made them end themselves.

  The Telgra knew the race that inhabited that section of space. Dominated by a fairly advanced race of mononoids that was known to be benevolent and kept intermittent contact with the Telgra. After attempted contact through normal channels revealed nothing, they sent stealth craft and probes two thousand light years to find out the cause of this, fearing some sort of artificial calamity. Most had not returned, but a few did and came back with terrible news. A large section of the galaxy spinward from them was barren of all life. Everything had been scoured down to the bedrock.

  Several of the Telgran scout ships had found small holdouts of the now-dead race. Made contact, and then found out the awful truth. The Trith had decided to fight rather than run, and in their death throes, they had exploded several of their stars in an attempt to stop the Heralds. Not even that had worked. Part of the information that had been sent showed several Herald ships that had been in close solar orbit when the star had gone nova and come unscathed through the massive destruction.

  The Telgran had immediately begun building ships both to fight the invaders and to start sending colonies far off in the other direction in the hope to flee the imminent destruction. They had millennia since the Heralds did not hunt for any particular species. Instead, they swept through every system in their path, systematically clearing even the smallest planetoid before moving onto the next star in their way.

  They had hope that they could elude the Heralds through distance, staying far ahead of them in the galaxy. For thousands of years, they practiced this, sending fingers of colonies far away, and also sending the periodic fleet back to attempt to sting the Heralds. Then they discovered the Heralds were coming from the other direction as well. They were literally sweeping the galaxy, and the Telgra were caught in the jaws of their galaxy-spanning maw.

  They and all those they had collected on the way in their bid to survive were doomed. Though it would take another millennium, they were trapped. They couldn’t even jump into already swept systems, because the Heralds left behind guardianships that were impossible to evade. They could only watch as their once-massive empire crumpled and was devoured.

  Now, on these last few days, in their very last system surrounded by barren, purged stars, Grand Magister El’ra Solan was the only remaining rul
er of his once proud people. All of their grand technology had done nothing but buy them time.

  Time for one last gambit.

  El’ra Solan began pulling his shards back into himself, letting their information fully merge with his own personality. He had sent them out in preparation for the fall of their last system, fully formed replicants of himself made from smart molecules. Each was every bit the same as the original. When they returned, they merged their experiences with his own as they became one being once again.

  He had let them stay for as long as he could, well into the systematic destruction of their last imperial fleet. They had begun to reduce several of the natural planets and artificial orbital constructions to dust. Hundreds of billions of beings, gone in a fury of fire. His ‘real’ self was located on a platform that had been constructed to exist within the inner chromosphere of the star itself. A large station, it was one of many designed to collect as much of the sun’s energy as it could and store it for one vast task.

  To send El’ra Solan out into the universe, as far as they could in as random a way that they could in hopes the Heralds would not be able to track or follow. They did not know if the Heralds would care, but they could take no chances. The Telgra suspected that their galaxy was not the first that the Heralds had cleansed, nor would it be the last, but if he could, El’ra hoped to find a way to stop them.

  Saying his last goodbye’s to his companions, many not from his own race, but all of them vested in this latest attempt at stopping their doom. El’ra stepped into a thickly walled, unassuming chamber that did not even hold a couch to allow his scaled bulk to recline on. He would not be there long enough. The Herald ships were closing in on the shaping stations that would channel the energy needed.

  In an instant, everything that was El’ra Solan was reduced into energy and information. Then, the massive engines of the station, backed by long-cycles of energy collected from their star, fired. It created not a wormhole, but something even more obtuse. A break in the very fabric of space-time, far into the depths of what lay beyond. Reflecting off of sub-dimensions that even the Telgra barely understood, it burst out into that void beyond.

  The scientists only knew that the burst would eventually break back into their own universe, but far, far away from this galaxy. One of the few things they could say was the energy used somehow translated into distance, guaranteeing that El’ra would appear an unimaginable distance away. How he might be re-incorporated, they had not a clue.

  But it was their only hope.

  Thus the last of the Holistic Empire of Telgra ended, and the story of another began.

  Chapter 2

  Time: May 20, 2018 A.D.

  Location: Portland, Oregon

  Alex Drake drove his Model S like a bat out of hell. The care careened along the exit road from Highway 26, taking the branch road that almost immediately plunged into the picturesque landscape that could be found only twenty miles outside of Portland, Oregon. He was forced to slow down only a little once he’d left the highway, sending gravel flying over barbed wire fences as he took turns like a mad-man. More than once the tires had come too-close to weed covered ditch, but did not fall in. He was fortunate it wasn’t raining today but even if it was, he doubted he would have slowed down.

  He just had to get home as quickly as possible.

  His younger sister, Piper Drake, had called him out of his meeting with the Dubai engineering team a half-hour ago. He cursed himself for every mile that the car sped, cursed the timing, cursed everything.

  His grandmother’s house was too far out in the country for good connectivity, and this meeting had been pivotal. They were sub-contracting with one of the Swedish engineering companies to develop a new island in Dubai and had run into several unexpected problems. Erosion, tidal forces, current direction. Everything that should have been solved by the many works of wonder that had already been constructed there, but with this new site, there was something different. The ocean was simply not cooperating no matter how much sand and rocks they added. It had caused the projected construction cost and time of the new land they were creating to skyrocket, even above what the wealthy there would wish to pay. He’d been forced to travel into town for an emergency consultation, and of course, this had been when his grandmother had taken a turn for the worst.

  He felt the wheel rumble and shake in his hand as he turned onto the long gravel road that led up to the spacious farmhouse. An old craftsman style that he’d helped renovate only a few years ago with his substantial income. The lower part was a cool mint siding that covered the first floor, with the upper being showcased by off-colored brown shingles topped by a slate roof. The lawn and surrounding areas were rich in green grass and carefully maintained shrubs burgeoning with the clean smell of spring.

  Alex felt the car slide as he came to a stop, skidding alarmingly in the round-about in front of the doors before coming to a rest. He was already opening the door, leaping out almost before the gravel stopped moving and bolted inside. His athletic frame took the stride quickly, slamming open the door of the house with urgency before taking the stairway upstairs two at a time.

  “Piper!” he called, “Piper, I’m home.” He prayed feverishly it wasn’t too late. His grandmother had been home for the past two weeks on hospice and hadn’t been expected to last much longer. He knew the hospice nurse, Helen Harken was in the house so his Sister wasn’t completely alone, but he knew he had to be there both for his grandmother and for his younger sister.

  After their parents had died, the matron of the family had taken them into her home, raising he and his sister as her own and giving them an almost fairytale life out on her small farm. Still, the old woman had made sure to fill their lives with love and full enough of adventures that they had both been filled with curiosity for the world.

  Now, she was dying, or perhaps already dead. The thought made Alex’s blood cold, but as he moved down the wood-floored hallway and stood at the doorway to the room, he was thankful to see the patient eyes of the little old woman that meant so much to him.

  “Alex,” his grandmother Colleen Drake said, holding a shaking hand out toward him.

  Piper was sitting by the bedside. The seventeen-year-old was tall, blonde, and currently sunken into herself with a tear-streaked face flush with sadness. Nurse Harken, professional and calm, stood off to the edge of the bed and tried to make herself as small as possible. She met Alex’s gaze, her eyes telling him it wouldn’t be long as he crossed to the bed and took the shaking hand as carefully as he could.

  “Grandmother,” Alex said slowly, trying to stay brave himself but hearing as his voice shook lightly. “I’m sorry it took so long to get here.”

  “Pish posh, Alex, it’s not your fault. You have to live your life, and you can’t just sit here on the edge of an old woman’s bed.”

  “I can. I should have,” Alex answered, cupping his other hand over her frail one and starting to talk faster. He could feel the guilt washing over him but didn’t know how to stop it. “it was just bad luck that…”

  She shushed him, shaking her head and giving him a faint smile. It broke his heart all over again, seeing the women he had respected through so much of his life laying there in such frailty. “Alex. You have to be stronger than that. It will be all right. Life will go on. I know you’ll grieve, but don’t you dare take too much time to do so or it will become your life. I know how obsessive you can get, and Piper will need you.”

  Alex grudgingly looked up, catching his sister's eyes and seeing her fear and despair. It was precisely what he needed to see, and slowly he nodded. “I will, Grandmother. I swear it.” Reaching across the bed, he took his sister's hand, and the three of them stayed like that, talking quietly amongst themselves as the hours passed.

  They could both feel the strength leaving their grandmother as they talked, each moment coming with shorter sentences and shallower breaths. Then she was just listening, holding their hands as they spoke to her, recounting all
of the happy memories they had. Alex knew they had been lucky. The hospice had prepared them for pain and lack of lucidity, but their grandmother had retained her mind until the end.

  In one last moment between words, she smiled, took the last breath, and then passed on. The nurse gave out an almost silent breath before walking over and lifting the old woman’s hand. She held it there with her eyes downcast, unmoving until finally, she gave the nod. Reaching over, she closed the old woman’s eyes and stood back from the bed, a single tear sliding down her cheek as she did so.

  Alex stood and looked down at the peaceful face of his grandmother. In a moment, everything was different. Dubai, his degrees, his plans, even his dreams. All evaporated in the presence of this last great act of life. It was almost as if the world had taken its breath and held it, leaving Alex trembling in its wake.

  He began to take a step, intending to walk to Piper’s side and take her in his arms. She was already trembling with her eyes closed and he knew she needed him. They needed each other.

  Then he blinked.

  As suddenly as his grandmother’s passing, time seemed to shudder to a stand-still, and in-between his eyes closing and opening, the fading light of the day that was entering the room became the dark of late evening. The one lamp that had been sitting near his grandmother’s bed was on, though the bulb was purposefully dim to keep the light from being overly harsh. Now, it was the only illumination. The light that had moments before been shining through the two windows along the side of the room was no longer there.

  It was so shocking that Alex almost forgot that his grandmother had died a moment before. Inside his head, he felt a strange buzzing sensation, almost like electricity from a live wire. It was fading but provided his mind something to focus on as he finished the step he’d begun. The press of his foot against the floorboard provided yet another focal point. The absence of light yet a third, making him dizzy as each moment twisted together into an unusual clarity.