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  It’s Always Darkest

  WAR OF THE THREE PLANETS (Book Eight)

  First Edition

  © 2017 by Justin Bell

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

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  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  EPILOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  Athelon doesn't get much rain. Sure, once in a while, we see some sprinkles, and, maybe once or twice a year, scattered thunderstorms. They are an event to look forward to.

  I've been here in this corner of Braxis for a few weeks now and the rain has been a constant, almost endless thrashing of rainwater pounding down on the trees and drenching the grass.

  In my Bragdon form it feels nice. My rough, gray skin craves the water, and being able to stand out in the grass and be fed from above is a treat. Even now, as I crouch in the long, wet grass and move slowly forward or slink through thick trees, the rain is just a fact of life. It's not something to even be thought about, except for the fact that I'm thinking about it constantly.

  "You're distracted, Brie," the booming voice snaps me back to reality.

  I look up at Rorjak as he stands before me with his elbows bent and his closed fists pressed to his hips. He glares down at me with narrowed eyes as thick rain drops spatter his head and shoulders.

  His left shoulder is a dull, metal joint, and here, without a tunic on, I can actually see it bolted and stitched into the leathery skin at his arm and collar bone. My stomach does a short forward flop, but I manage to hold myself together enough to nod back at him.

  "Sorry," I say. "Hard not to be."

  "I understand. But you need to learn focus. That will help you tap into these abilities more reliably."

  "I seemed to do just fine at the research lab," I reply, remembering my near seamless shift from Bragdon to Reblon and back as I narrowly escaped the plasma meltdown with only some burnt hair to show for it.

  "Reliably, Brie. I said reliably. You did very well at West Swamp, but we need to be able to count on you."

  I feel my cheeks flush. With the Yarda Resistance, I felt like one of the most skilled and dependable combatants on any particular mission. Here, Rorjak is treating me like a raw recruit, someone who they are allowing to serve with them, not someone who is owed anything. For the most point, it works. In spite of these strange abilities I have, I am a raw recruit. I don't truly know what real combat is like, and I've been mostly muddling my way through.

  Crouching with my elbows on my knees, I clench and release my fingers. I can feel the shifting of the muscles in my forearm. I try to touch the fibers with my mind.

  Is it my mind? It's an advanced computer chip, if what I've heard is correct. If I can trust what Rorjak tells me. Why can't I? I do trust him...I think.

  These abilities aren't so much abilities as they are computer software, programmed into my genetic code and integrated with my own body's built in circuitry. That, of course, doesn't explain why my ability to tap into these programs has been so spotty lately.

  "Brie!" Rorjak shouts and leaps at me, coiling like a striking snake. Immediately I jerk left, then leap right, but I'm too slow, and he barrels into my left side, which ignites in pain as I'm thrown backwards into the trees behind me. My spine bends around the narrow trunk of a particularly solid young sapling.

  "Was that really necessary?" I ask through muffled groans as I pick myself up off the grass.

  "You remain distracted," he snarls at me, stepping towards me and extending his hand. "Your abilities have made you sloppy. Even though they're unreliable, you lean on them. You expect them to come when you need them."

  "I'm just going by track record."

  "Well, the first time you're wrong may very well be the last."

  He's right. I know he's right. I was never a soldier by choice, it just kind of happened thanks to these cybernetic reflexes and this encyclopedia of knowledge injected into my brain. None of this explains why my powers have been difficult to tap into in the past, or how I can make them more dependable.

  "You need to rely more upon your Bragdon heritage and less on this—" he gestures towards the back of his head as if trying to swat an unseen insect.

  I nod.

  "We are creatures of instinct, of wile, and of cleverness and stealth. Use those to your advantage. You've crafted this style of barreling blindly into conflict without thought. It will serve you badly in the times ahead."

  I nod again.

  "You need to ignore your impulses and start relying on your birthright, your Bragdon nature. You are one of us, after all."

  I am. I'm a Bragdon. There can be no doubt about it anymore. Command seemed certain of it. Rorjak is certain of it. The data we hijacked from West Swamp seems certain of it. I need to stop questioning it, stop regretting it, and start embracing it.

  A low rumble of thunder echoes in the sky, and my eyes dart upward.

  Rorjak chuckles. "Don't fear the thunder, young one. It won't hurt you. This is Braxis, our planet is fed by the rain and the wind."

  I grab his hand and allow him to pick me up to my feet. Lask emerges from the trees to my left and smirks at me.

  "Good lesson?"

  "Great," I reply, trying to keep my eyes from rolling. From what I can tell, Lask used to be teacher's pet. I'm starting to think he resents my being here.

  Rorjak walks back towards the cabin, a makeshift, ramshackle building disguising a thick, concrete bunker underneath. From the air or the surface it looks like any old run down swamp shack, but the concealed truth is a state of the art facility built deep down into the ground and flanked by reinforced concrete and metal.

  "It wasn't that long ago you were pulling me out of the fire outside the Bragdon refueling station," I say as we walk. "You seemed to get yourself set up pretty quickly down here."

  "Most of our fleet was decimated during that battle," Rorjak replies.

  I try not to feel guilty, but mostly fail.

  "We were all ex-military, though. Lask was special forces. He had a whole list of abandoned facilities that had been written off of Braxis ledgers."

  "This was an old surveillance port," Lask continues. "It was designed to hold a platoon of Bragdons for a few months while they did deep water scans."

  "Looking for what?" I ask.

  "Wildlife mostly. Before this whole war blew into Braxis, we were a very non-violent society. Most of our government spending was on ways to get better in tune with the natural world."

  I shake my head at Lask's reply. Is that really possible? After everything Command said, it doesn't seem possible.

  "Difficult to believe, isn't it?"

  I turn my head as Nervlox steps out from around the wall of the cabin, his dark robes swarming around his feet like eager children.

  "Yes, it is," I reply.

  "I was present
during some of those days," Nervlox says, his voice quiet and calm with the soothing tones of a grandfather. "It was a glorious time to be on Braxis, a time of relative peace, even if many of our brothers and sisters were being recruited by the other planets for horrible things."

  I take a step towards him. He looks at me with kind eyes, the normal yellow hue a more dull light brown.

  "Are you an Elder?" I ask.

  His face seems to fall somewhat, as if his skin pulled loose from the bone underneath.

  "No. No I am not."

  "He almost was," Rorjak interjects, stepping beside Nervlox. "He was a cleric, a Bragdon of pure descent, on his way to becoming an Elder."

  "What happened?" I ask, turning back towards Nervlox.

  He smiles back at me with a warm, if somewhat pained expression on his face.

  "My monastery was deep in the southern swamps. We were an ancient and devoted clan, very insulated. Just as I was present for the blessed connection with nature, I was present when that connection broke down."

  He stops speaking for a moment, looking up into the graying skies. Rain water spatters down on his face as he closes his eyes and soaks in the water, as if it refuels him.

  "We were approached by another race, a race who mistakenly thought we were a clan of fighters, or assassins really. Braxis has those clans; every race does, but we were not one of them."

  Suddenly I think I know how this story is going to turn out.

  "This other race, they did not believe our claims that we were not warriors. They disputed what we told them, and in the end, they razed our monastery. They burned it to the ground, and executed many of my brothers."

  "By the Mother," I whisper, putting a hand to my mouth.

  "Indeed."

  "Who were they?" I ask. As if I even want to know.

  His face hardens somewhat, gray flesh forming to stone. "Does it matter?"

  "I suppose not."

  For a few moments, the four of us stand in silence, feeling the rain and listening to the dull, constant rumble of thunder beyond the thickening clouds.

  "You still struggle with your shifting, I hear?" Nervlox finally says, by way of breaking the silence.

  I shrug. "I can't always do it on command," I say. "but it usually happens when I need it."

  Rorjak immediately shakes his head. "We cannot make a plan based on that, Brie. That's not good enough."

  "Athelonian," Nervlox says, nodding towards her.

  "What?"

  "Shift into an Athelonian. You spent much of your life in that form, it should come naturally."

  I close my eyes and draw in a breath, trying to reach back into my memories to pluck out that tiny morsel of Athelonian consciousness. I feel my muscles twisting and knotting as my slender Bragdon form swells slightly and my shoulders broaden. My hands twist and split as a fifth finger knits itself from loose flesh crawling down my arms.

  It takes a moment, but I stand there, looking like the Brie Northstar I saw in the mirror for eighteen years.

  "Like this?"

  Nervlox shakes his head. "No. You do not look Athelonian. Try again."

  I cock my head. "How do you mean?"

  "You know what I mean," he replies.

  Suddenly I understand; he means my 'defect'. My supposed deformity was no deformity at all. It is just the way I was genetically engineered.

  "I can't," I reply. "I've never—"

  "Then start now."

  My eyes sting with tears as I grasp for some semblance of what it might have been like to have been an actual Athelonian. I realize that no matter who raised me or what planet I grew up on, I never really belonged there and never really knew what their lives were like. I was an impostor there, and I'm an impostor here. No matter where I go I'm pretending to be someone I'm not.

  The legend of the Child of the Stars was always about a celestial being who somehow had parts of all three races within her. I'm the opposite of that. I'm a shell of a person who has no parts of any of them in me, just some genetic code and a computer chip.

  A single tear breaks loose from my eye and rolls down my cheek as I focus and picture my parents in my mind. I narrow my focus to their arms, trying to dissect how that anatomy might have worked so my body can somehow mimic it. But I can't. I feel the muscles straining in my shoulders, reaching for the familiar clench of muscle right before it tears and knits into something new.

  But it's just a brief touch, and then it's gone.

  "It's all right, child," Nervlox says, taking another step towards me. He reaches out with his hand and touches my shoulder, and an immediate flare of warmth wraps around my arm there. It's a distinct energy.

  My mind touches back, thinking back to a different time when this same thing happened. I remember it so clearly, the soft touch, a sense of calm, and a radiating heat soaking into my core. I can feel my shoulders as they twist again, then begin to pull apart, tearing strands of muscle. It's not painful. These days it never is. It's just something that happens. I feel my skin breaking open, tearing apart, and flaying itself to make room for these new appendages.

  They crawl out of me in a slow, methodical, fiber-by-fiber uncoiling. These secondary limbs seem to build themselves from nothing. My heart flutters in my chest as the heat increases. My skin is on fire, I'm not breathing, and I'm standing absolutely stock still.

  With a spasm that causes some pain, the two new limbs snap into forward position and align with my existing arms.

  I open my eyes and look down at my four hands with palms facing me.

  For the first time in my life, I am Athelonian.

  "Well done, young lady!" Nervlox says, clapping my shoulder. "Well done!"

  "How did you do that?" I ask him, reaching up a hand to touch my shoulder, which is still throbbing with the heat of his touch.

  "I did nothing. You did it."

  "When you touched me, I felt something, an energy."

  Nervlox smiles. "Braxis is made of this energy, Brie. Those of us who devote our lives to studying this underlying connective cosmic strand, to training in it; we can control it."

  I look up in the sky, then lower my eyes again, and glare all around me. "I don't see anything."

  "It's everywhere. Trust me. Clerics and Elders, we can tap into it, bend it to our will. But trust me, what you just did, that was all inside of you. That was not me."

  "Perhaps they used some of that energy in the experiments performed on you," Rorjak says, taking a step towards me to put his own hand on my shoulder. "Maybe when you meet someone who can control that energy, they are able to ignite a spark that gives you enough power to do some of these things."

  It makes sense. I start to think back to when I was struggling with the ability to control my powers. I'd been away from Braxis for a long time. Could it be that the planet itself gives me this fuel? Ever since I've returned I've been able to touch that place far more often and more reliably.

  So what happens when we take this war off planet? Will I automatically lose all of these abilities again?

  "I sense your concern," Nervlox says. "You are right to worry. It's possible the Bragdons built in a fail safe so you will be most powerful when you are under their control. It seems like something they might have done."

  "I'm not under their control now."

  "Of course not. The truth is that you never were. But they thought you were. When they attacked your shuttle it was their goal to convert you and to finally trigger your mission. But they underestimated your will."

  "How could you know that?" I ask.

  Lask clears his throat. "It's on the device," he says quietly.

  My eyes grow wide. "What? The storage device? From West Swamp?"

  Lask nods. "We have finally broken the encryption. It just happened late last night. We were going to speak to you after morning training; we didn't want you distracted."

  "What did it say?"

  "Not everything. At least, we don't think it is everything. But you should come in an
d talk. There are some things to discuss."

  My eyes flash to Rorjak and he nods softly.

  "You knew these things and said nothing?" I ask as anger begins to boil in my guts, and all four fists clench.

  "It is as Lask said, Brie. No deceit was intended. We just wanted you to complete your morning routine. And look at you. You're doing things you've never done before."

  "So I am," I reply, once again moving all of my arms. The feel of it is amazing. I'm both excited and sad. I'm excited at the potential of feeling like my parents felt their whole lives, and sad at the fact that I no longer have anyone on Athelon to share this with.

  "Come with us, Brie," Rorjak says. "Let us go in and talk about your life."

  CHAPTER TWO

  Although I've been here a few weeks, I still have to allow my eyes to adjust when I enter the compound. During the walk up to the cabin entrance, it feels like we're going into a normal wilderness retreat, a rustic ramshackle building, left alone in nature just a little too long. Once across the threshold, the wooden plank walls give way to layered metal tiles reinforced by thick concrete and mortar. The adjustment to being immediately transported from swamp lands to command center isn't always easy.

  As I walk in today, the transition seems even more jarring today. The main lobby area, which usually just serves as a room to direct inhabitants to other, more important places, is filled with three separate computer consoles on elaborate terminals. These were brought up from the basement level once we had delivered the storage appliance. Up until now the screens were more or less dormant as Tyreg, the Scaleback technology expert, worked to get access to the data on the storage device.

  Apparently, he finally had some luck.

  When I'd left for training earlier this morning I hadn't noticed any faint green glow from any of the terminal screens, but they are all vibrant now, fully lit with scores of faded characters crawling across them. On two of the screens, characters march left to right, moving at an even pace as if walking in formation.

  On the third screen, a number of different white windows are visible. All of them contain paragraphs of text. As I squint at the screen, I see a picture on the top window that looks like some kind of sonic medical imaging diagram like the kind of thing Athelonian doctors use to check the health of a child. I don't see a full grown child in the image, though. It's more like a large bulbous formation with a few swirling tails dragging off behind it.