Malaran Read online



  Malaran

  Storm Champion: Book 0

  Chris Momb

  Copyright © 2013-2016 Chris Momb

  All Rights Reserved

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Epilogue

  Call to War – Storm Champion: Book 1

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Chapter 1

  The war does not go well. Beyond all expectations, beyond all precedent, the Umpala clans have maintained their unity and have relentlessly pushed inwards towards the Core Worlds. It has become clear that the Empire is in actual jeopardy, and the Emperor has tasked me with formulating contingency plans. I have begun compiling candidate planets to serve as refuge worlds for the Mega Oikogeneia, the Great Houses. For my own house, I have chosen the world known as Nuevo by its inhabitants. Though not a particularly hospitable planet, all but one continent being inhabitable due to poisonous insects, it does have some advantages. In particular, is the fact that the current small population of residents there recently colonized the planet with the express purpose of establishing a low-tech society, fleeing the industrial nightmare of the world of Valencia to establish a simpler, more pastoral life. This would serve us well in avoiding the Umpala’s interest while we await the other contingency plans to bear fruit.

  - Archives of Lord Dakshu Pran Ashoka, High Chancellor of the Empire of Man (from 354 to 367 P.D.)

  Word had come of a starship, the first in almost five hundred years. The first since the Fall of Man.

  Armed retainers mounted upon vispas, a type of giant wasp, the largest of Nuevo's giant flying insects, patrolled the sky around Princess Malaran Ashoka's shining citadel, a lone jewel among the vast purple grassland of the Vastedad Morada. Concerns of war, of the return of man's ancient enemy, rattled through the halls of the fortress.

  The fortress, Citadel Buonarroti, had been constructed in a different age, crafted with both the superior technology and with the aesthetics of a time long past. Among many artistic touches, the energized battle-armor clad to many surfaces had been made golden and even ornate. The whole facility was a work of technology and of art.

  And deep within, technology and a different kind of art worked their magic, manipulating the energies of the Void. To many, it was magic.

  At the console mounted into the middle of the black obsidian floor of the Oculus Veritatis chamber sat Malaran, an athletic young woman with jade green eyes, raven black hair, and light olive skin wearing the simple black outfit of an acolyte. She reached out with her mind trying to see the starship, trying to glimpse if the enemy had returned. A subtle hum vibrated through the chamber, through the polished floor and into her legs, while her eyes peered into the Void between stars and between atoms. Her optic nerves harmonized with the quantum lattice, the scaffolding of reality, surfing the entangled wave functions leading into space, forming an image in her mind's eye.

  A dark vessel glides between the planets, coming inbound, coming to Nuevo.

  “Human or Umpala,” asked her gray-haired mentor, Prioress Kalima Maria Varma, her penetrating voice cracking through the near silent hum. Clad in a simple black hooded robe, the Calistite priestess stood nearby and monitored her student's progress. Malaran had risen to be an acolyte among the Order of Calista, but she always thought she sensed a hint of disapproval from Kalima lying there beneath the surface.

  Substructures adorn and protrude from the main body of the craft. At the back, one giant nacelle houses the engine.

  “Human,” answered Malaran after pondering the design for a moment. An imperial warship, but it was hard to say how big it was without any kind scale to compare it with. If she had to guess, she would say an Achilles-class battlecruiser.

  Both excitement and disappointment struck her simultaneously. Like the rest of humanity, she dreaded the return of the Umpala. A part of her, though, after spending most of her twenty years learning to interact with the Void and drilling endlessly through battle kata with staff and shield, hand and foot, did feel a slight twinge of regret. Another day would pass without putting this training to use, another day without walking in the footsteps of Calista.

  Yet a human starship had exciting possibilities as well. The Umpala had destroyed virtually all the human starships and crushed much of the key technology required for star travel, burning the Core Worlds and forcing what was left of humanity to flee to a scattering of low-tech planets like Nuevo that became known as the Refuge Worlds. Perhaps one of the other Refuge Worlds had rebuilt their technology. Or perhaps even the Defiant Captains had returned, those of the legend that refused to abandon their starships after the evacuation of the Core Worlds and instead fled into deep space. The thought of traveling the stars like her ancestors thrilled Malaran. Perhaps a new age had come again to humanity.

  “And you have not detected the pilot?” Kalima asked, on the verge of becoming an accusation, though her demeanor remained ever calm and steady.

  Malaran concentrated further. The Calistites had designed this round, orb-like chamber with the various artifacts of ancient technology embedded into the polished white walls and ceiling to aid in focusing the energies of the Void. A certain coldness penetrated her bones here, while occasionally across her skin flickered and tingled an invisible energy, more than electric, a frenzied symphony of subatomic and cosmic forces. The Oculus Veritatis chamber here in Citadel Buonarroti was modeled after the ones found in the ancient starships, used to enhance the abilities of the Sacerdotes Vacuum, the Priestesses of the Void, as they used Far-Sight, Fore-Sight, and True-Sight to navigate starships across the Void.

  Outwardly, the Calistites appeared the same as the Priestesses, but the Order of Calista had in fact splintered away from the Sacerdotes Vacuum five hundred years ago. They continued the study of the Void, and to outsiders, they still represented themselves as the same old Priestesses, but the Order of Calista had abandoned the pacifism of the Priestesses and became warrior mystics, integrating combat arts into their training. Few on Nuevo realized what they had become, still thinking the Order of Calista as just another officially sanctioned order among the Sacerdotes like the Order of Caritas or the Order of Eva-Tau.

  “No, Prioress," said Malaran, not detecting the pilot no matter how hard she tried. Kalima was using the arrival of the starship as a training exercise, refusing to tell Malaran what had been learned about the ship until Malaran discovered it on her own, and Malaran began to worry that she was failing because she was unable to detect the pilot. As part of her training, Malaran had on rare occasion touched minds with a Calistite in another chamber located somewhere else on the planet. The legend said that a fully trained member of the Order of Calista, a true Sacrator, could actually touch minds and communicate across the stars with the aid of the Oculus chamber.

  The pilot of this human starship would have to be Priestess or somebody well versed in the ways of the Void, and Malaran should have been able to detect her presence if not communicate. Malaran focused her mind, using the energies of the Oculus chamber to enhance Far-Sight, and tried to find the pilot before Kalima wrote her off as a failure.

  “Maybe the pilot is just not that skilled in the ways of the Void,” suggested Malaran. "Maybe their training has lagged on whatever planet they come from." Or perhaps instead of a Priestess, it was a Combat Navigator, somebody not that proficient with the Void but capable of pilotin
g the ship through short transits. Or maybe even one of the rumored Coven, those that according to legend had rejected the Sacerdotes to pursue more nefarious ventures.

  “Should I question the skill and training of the person who has quite evidently piloted a starship across the stars, or should I question the skill and training of a lowly acolyte whose accomplishments seem to be rather lacking in interstellar travel?” said Kalima.

  “Point taken, Prioress,” said Malaran a little sheepishly. Malaran did actually have some training as a starship pilot, but the lack of actual starships limited how far she could progress and tended to make it a lower priority than her other training. Piloting a starship across the Void used to be one of the primary skills of a Priestess, giving the Sacerdotes much status and power in ancient society, but the Order had different priorities on Nuevo, especially with the complete absence of starships.

  “I will find the pilot,” said Malaran as she focused her mind. One way or another.

  The focus zooms in, through the hull of the starship and into the main body, panning, seeking the pilot. Companies of soldiers armed with energy rifles drill in the great bay that houses the daughter ships. Docked within are many attack ships and troop carriers. The view pans further, and then it stops upon finding one of the command centers. Men in uniform stand around a giant hologram of Nuevo watching simulations. Wargames. A tall man stands apart, and others defer to him. Zooming in, his face dominates the field of view, blue, eager eyes filled with anticipation.

  In a blink, Malaran’s sight returned to the chamber, and she gasped. “They prepare to wage war.” She had assumed a human starship would be something to cheer.

  “Are you sure of what you have seen?” said Kalima. “The Umpala are long gone, and there’s nothing of great value here.”

  Malaran nodded and said, "Yes," recognizing that Kalima attempted to test her confidence more than anything else at the moment. “They come to wage war.”

  It was shocking, a part of her expecting a human starship to be saviors, not invaders, but she felt a tinge of excitement too. A chance to do something important. Being a princess had its advantages for sure, but being the fourth child and female doomed her to a life of boredom. She probably would have already been married off for political purposes had she not embraced the Calistites back when she was a child. In some ways, she had had no choice. The recurring dreams of Calista had begun when she was very young, and Father had encouraged her to explore their meaning. He even encouraged her to join the Order, though it had always been rather awkward for Malaran being both a princess and an aspiring Calistite, an odd intersection between House Ashoka and the Order of Calista.

  As of late, though, she had begun to doubt her future with the Calistites. The more she glimpsed the Sacrators and the Sacrator Superiores, the Elders, the more they looked like bureaucrats and politicians, constantly bickering – bickering about who had higher rank, bickering about who would lead each priory, bickering about who would lead each collegium, bickering about which collegium didn’t get enough respect, bickering about which priory didn’t get enough resources, and on and on.

  Even without the dreams, the story of Princess Calista would have resonated with Malaran very much -- ninth child of the Emperor of Man, destined to be little more than a footnote, much like Malaran. Then came Athene. While the Emperor and the rest of his family hid in their bunker, Calista joined the Agema, the Emperor's elite guard and shock troops, in battle with the Umpala hordes, large gorilla-like creatures with short dark fur and scaly, round reptilian heads. She assembled with the Emperor's vaunted praetorian guard and wielded the dark energy of the Void to hack through the Umpala while the mighty Agema held formation around her and held off the Umpala. In the end, as the last few Agema fell, Calista had ripped open a fissure into the Void, erupting a great storm of tornadoes while the rupture that penetrated into orbit devoured much of the Umpala fleet. But not enough. Athene, home-world of the Emperor of Man, fell, and soon with it, the whole Empire.

  Malaran knew the story well because she frequently saw it in her dreams. As far back as she could remember, every week or so, she would see the fall of Calista in her dreams. Father even enrolled her in a Calistite day school near his citadel in Bandarpor and encouraged her to learn more about Calista and about the new order of Priestesses that sprung up after news of her feats had spread.

  Malaran had remained for some time rather enamored with following in Calista's footsteps, crashing against the enemies of man and striking down her foes with the energy of the Void, standing heroically against another downfall. But lately, she had begun to wonder whether there really was any point. Five hundred years since the Fall of Man, yet there had been nothing but petty little conflicts on Nuevo. Civil wars, internal strife, rebellions, and police actions. The older priestesses among the Order of Calista seemed more concerned with internal politics than with heroic struggles to defend humanity.

  Malaran looked at Kalima, looked into her deep, penetrating eyes. The eyes of an Elder, of a Sacrator Superiore. “What have you seen? Why are they here, and why do they plan for war?” It was impossible to tell how forthcoming Kalima would ever be, and Malaran figured it didn’t hurt to ask.

  “Your father has been alerted,” said Kalima and pretty much left it at that.

  Malaran hoped Father would be more forthcoming with what he learned, but she doubted it. He liked to plot and scheme as much as the Order did, and he kept all of his machinations close to the vest. It went with the job of being Lord of House Ashoka and High King of Nuevo.

  It would be several days before the starship entered orbit, and Malaran wondered how well they would be able to defend themselves against a starship if they meant to wage war. Other than the series of ancient citadels scattered across the continent, Nuevo was a very low-technology world, not prepared to deal with imperial battlecruisers, even five-hundred-year-old ones. No one knew why House Medici had constructed the citadels on this relatively worthless planet long before the war with the Umpala, back during the age of the House Wars, but Baroness Valina Medici had been a mad genius, not only incorporating much artistic flair, like the golden battle plating, but also inventing and equipping the citadels with the vaunted Suppressor Field that supposedly protected the citadels against air strikes and missile strikes. But there were only thirteen citadels on the entire planet, and most like her own Citadel Buonarroti were out here on the desolate purple grassland of the Vastedad Morada.

  As all these thoughts raced through her mind, starting to get somewhat excited at the idea of defending Nuevo against invaders, she noticed Kalima looking at her with one of her mysterious looks, attempting possibly to penetrate the mind and soul.

  Malaran attempted to passively stare back, to wait Kalima out.

  Finally, Kalima said, "You are so young."

  Malaran frowned. "And spoiled?" Her position as both acolyte and Princess had always been awkward, and she was sure there had been some resentment. Special accommodations had always been made for her. When she had turned fifteen and graduated from the Calistite day-school near Father’s citadel in the capital of Bandarpor, Father made a special arrangement with the Order that established a Calistite priory here in part of one of the citadels.

  Kalima’s eyes continued to bore into her for a moment. "One might have said ‘dumb’ instead of spoiled," said the prioress with no change of expression.

  Not exactly the reply she expected, Malaran bristled. She had been called worse, but Kalima caught her off guard. Especially since Malaran had worked so hard her entire life to be the best at everything she did, especially in her education, trying to be worthy of all the perks and privileges she received as being a princess.

  A rare smile formed on Kalima's lips, and the slightest of shrugs stirred from her shoulders. "We have all been young and dumb."

  "Yes, Prioress, but not all have been a young and dumb princess?" Malaran asked, trying to figure out where this was all going -- what lesson she was supp
osed to decipher.

  "Princess Calista was three years younger than you are now when she fell at Athene," said Kalima. “And the Sacerdotes would call her much worse than dumb.”

  Malaran knew that the Sacerdotes, the Priestesses, tended to demonize Calista, once their greatest prodigy, for abandoning pacifism and rupturing the Void in battle, but she wasn’t sure what that had to do with Kalima calling her dumb. She waited to see if the prioress would elaborate on this point. She still wasn't sure what Kalima was trying to say. Malaran had her suspicions that the Elders tried to seem wiser by acting all mysterious and mystical.

  Instead, Kalima seemed to change the subject. "The Order of Calista have for five centuries prepared to be the defenders of humanity. To wage war against the Umpala when the time came. But within human affairs, we prefer more restraint. More subtlety."

  Malaran tried to show no emotion, but the words troubled her. Restraint and subtlety. Though both the Order of Calista and House Ashoka often conspired to mutual benefit here on Nuevo, the Order had its own agenda and goals separate from House Ashoka.

  "The Order has summoned me to Conclave," said the prioress.

  The nearest Calistite sacratorium lay hundreds of miles away. The priory here at Citadel Buonarroti was an experiment, an Ashoka fortress, Malaran’s personal fortress, in fact, housing a Calistite priory in part of the facility. Malaran spent most of her time as a lowly acolyte in the priory dormitory, but in an awkward accommodation between House Ashoka and the Order of Calista, on occasion Malaran would venture to the other side of the citadel to perform various duties as Her Royal Highness, Princess Malaran Athena Marissa Alicia Ashoka.

  Malaran nodded to Kalima. "Shall I accompany you?" Malaran often spent time functioning as one of Kalima’s personal assistants, seemingly more frequently than the other acolytes. Malaran often wondered if it was because Kalima thought the pampered princess deserved extra time being somebody else’s servant.

  Kalima looked down and adjusted her robe, and then looked back into Malaran's eyes with another of her mysterious looks. "Should you?"

  Malaran held back a sigh. This message she understood. The day had come. Choose one or the other -- the Order of Calista or House Ashoka. She thought she would have until the Day of Invocation, at least a year or two away, to make up her mind, but events apparently had brought this to a head.

  Malaran stared back into Kalima's dark, mysterious eyes and pondered the situation. You could always tell a Sacrator Superiore from their eyes. Some said that a lifetime of using Sight, a lifetime of the energies of the Void surging through the optic nerves, transformed their eyes physically and made them more imposing. Looking into those eyes, Malaran wondered what Kalima was up to. Had Kalima intended to influence her one way or another? Or maybe just baffle her into making her own decision? Is that what all the talk about ‘young and dumb' was about?

  She took a deep breath as she pushed those thoughts aside and tried to focus on the real question. Was she ready to give herself over to the Order, to serve them for the rest of her life? To abandon House Ashoka, especially at the brink of war while Kalima hinted that the Calistites might choose a different path?

  She had learned so much from the Calistites, but the older priestesses seemed like their lives revolved around internal politics. Had it been this way for five hundred years? Would this be her life if she joined them? A life of subtlety and restraint? She wanted a life of purpose. She was leery of the life of a princess because of the boredom and petty politics, but she had become increasingly concerned that being a Calistite wouldn’t be any better. Either way, she had pretty much given up on having many real friends, so she wanted a life of purpose.

  The big question was how did the starship change things? Could she just stand by and watch if Nuevo was attacked? But what if the attack never came and peace was made? Would it be better to be a princess or Calistite? Who would be more likely to travel the Void on that starship – a princess or a Calistite?

  "Would you like more time?" Kalima finally asked.

  "Yes," said Malaran with relief, thinking she might take a few days to ponder her fate. But then comprehension coalesced, understanding fully the question and answer. Recognizing the choice that she just made without realizing it at the moment.

  Malaran smiled to her old mentor. "I suppose I am young and dumb."

  Kalima smiled back briefly, though a somewhat sad smile, and then she strode toward the door. She paused for a moment, and then looked back to her former student. “The Sacrator Primus herself ordered Princess Calista to evacuate Athene before the Umpala arrived, but Calista disobeyed that order and remained to stand with her family.”

  Malaran saw some parallel in her own decision and wondered if she should be pleased that she was somewhat following in Calista's footsteps, choosing to stand with her family, but she still wasn't sure what Kalima was getting at. “Then my decision might be for the best after all?” wondered Malaran aloud.

  Kalima paused for a moment, then responded, “In the end, Calista was still unable to save her family.”

  That was definitely not the reply that Malaran was expecting, and as she processed what Kalima had said, it chilled her. She couldn’t help but wonder if Fore-Sight had somehow suggested to Kalima that her family would likely die. At the beginner and intermediate levels in the Order, Fore-Sight was primarily used for combat, to reveal the most likely actions that an opponent might do next in the next few moments. The Priestesses of old used it as they piloted starships, to avoid peril as they encountered the surging, erratic energies of the Void. But there was talk that the Elders, the Sacrator Superiores, could catch glimpses much further into the future. The Sacerdotes even had a collegium devoted to the study of Fore-Sight visions.

  As Malaran pondered all this, Kalima continued. “The greatest prodigy in the history of the Sacerdotes, one with great talent and skill, abilities beyond any other, still was unable to save her family.”

  Malaran tried to fight back a sense of dread. “What have you seen?”

  "Princess Malaran Ashoka," she said, "I hope you're ready for the storm that is to come." Then she walked out the door.

  Fifteen years together, and she was gone just like that. And at the brink of war. And after all her foreboding statements about Malaran’s family. Malaran didn't know what to think.

  She did know though that the starship came to wage war against her home and her family, and she was going to do everything in her power to wage war back.