Across the galaxy, Nika and Dashiel discovered the stronghold of the alien Rasu. A metal-based shapeshifting species of immense power, they’d constructed hundreds of thousands of warships and space stations. Armed with this terrifying information, Nika and Dashiel returned to Mirai.
One of the Guides, Delacrai, defied the others to help Nika. She shared how an Asterion scout ship encountered the Rasu eight years ago; the crew was captured and killed. The Rasu grew interested in the Asterions’ unique bio-synthetic intelligence powered by kyoseil and quantum programming, and in return for not attacking Asterion Dominion worlds, they demanded a regular supply of Asterions to experiment on. The Guides agreed.
The other Advisors were told the terrible truth about the Rasu and the Guides’ deal with the aliens. They scrambled to undo the damage eight years of the Rasu Protocol had inflicted while racing to find a way to respond to an impending Rasu deadline, when the aliens expected more Asterions to be delivered.
Nika’s oldest friend from her former life, Maris Debray, revealed that both she and Nika were members of the “First Generation”: Asterions who had never erased their psyches in the 700,000 years since they fled the Anaden Empire and created themselves as a new species by merging Anaden DNA, AI programming and the kyoseil mineral. Only a few dozen of the First Generation remained, and their history was kept secret from everyone else.
With time running out, Nika sought the help of the Sogain, an enigmatic species who once threatened the Asterions with extinction if they ever trespassed on Sogain territory. This time, the aliens disclosed the location of a single, stranded Rasu.
An Asterion team captured the Rasu and brought it to Mirai for interrogation. The creature revealed that the Rasu exhibited a collective intelligence when physically connected to other Rasu, but regained independent thought when they were separated. They intended to use kyoseil to control other Rasu over great distances, as kyoseil was supradimensional, deeply interconnected and one of the universe’s oldest life forms.
Using this knowledge, the Asterions identified a way to link their consciousnesses together via kyoseil. They dubbed these connections ‘ceraffin’ and used them to develop a plan to face the Rasu.
They constructed volatile electricity bombs to be sneaked into the Rasu stronghold. The Rasu were expecting 8,000 Asterions in stasis chambers, so Nika used the ceraff structure to split her psyche into shards inhabiting 8,000 copies of herself.
The copies were delivered to the Rasu as expected, and they awoke inside the Rasu’s lab on their primary space station. Chaos ensued as they fought to reach the power control center, even as they were cut down by the thousands. A mere dozen made it to the control center, and a single instance survived to override the power safeguards.
Dashiel detonated the electricity bombs, and a cascading power overload ripped through the stronghold. It destroyed the Rasu’s Dyson lattice, which triggered an intense surge in solar flare activity, and all the Rasu stations and vessels were incinerated, save one vessel that escaped through a wormhole.
The Asterions recognized this was not the end of the conflict, but the beginning, and they needed to prepare for the Rasu’s return. Nika was contacted by the Sogain, who informed her the Anaden Empire of old had fallen and suggested she might find allies among the new one which had risen to take its place.
Nika journeyed to the Asterions’ ancestral home, the Milky Way. Before she arrived, however, a wormhole opened in the cabin of her ship, and Alex Solovy walked through it.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to my beta readers, editors and artists, who made everything about this book better, and to my family, who continue to put up with an egregious level of obsessive focus on my part for months at a time.
I also want to add a personal note of thanks to everyone who has read my books, left a review at a retailer, Goodreads or other sites, sent me a personal email expressing how the books have impacted you, or posted on social media to share how much you enjoyed them. You make this all worthwhile, every day.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
G. S. JENNSEN lives in Colorado with her husband and two dogs. She has become an internationally bestselling author since her first novel, Starshine, was published in 2014. She has chosen to continue writing under an independent publishing model to ensure the integrity of her stories and her ability to execute on the vision she has for their telling.
While she has been a lawyer, a software engineer and an editor, she’s found the life of a full-time author preferable by several orders of magnitude. When she isn’t writing, she’s gaming or working out or getting lost in the Colorado mountains that loom large outside the windows in her home. Or she’s dealing with a flooded basement, or standing in a line at Walmart reading the tabloid headlines and wondering who all of those people are. Or sitting on her back porch with a glass of wine, looking up at the stars, trying to figure out what could be up there.
Table of Contents
Start
Amaranthe Universe
Dramatis Personae
Maps
The Story So Far
CONTENTS
PART I: THE UPSIDE DOWN 1: Concord HQ
2: Concord HQ
4: Namino
5: Mirai
6: Concord HQ
7: Concord HQ
8: Concord HQ
9: Savrak
10: CINT Vessel 23A-X
11: Epithero
PART II: OLDER & FAR AWAY 12: Mirai
13: Namino
14: Namino
15: Namino
16: Namino Stellar System
17: Akeso
18: The Presidio
19: The Presidio
20: Concord HQ
21: Namino
22: Namino
23: Namino
24: Mirai
25: Mirai
26: Earth
27: Savrak
28: Concord HQ
29: Concord HQ
31: Savrak
32: CINT Vessel 23A-X
33: Epithero
34: Akeso
PART III: THE TIES THAT BIND 35: Namino
36: Namino
37: Mirai
38: Mirai
39: Mirai
40: Chosek
41: Concord HQ
42: Concord HQ
43: Chalmun Station Asteroid
44: Akeso
45: Concord HQ
46: Earth
47: Concord HQ
48: Imperium Alpha
49: Savrak
50: CINT Vessel 23A-X
51: Kiyora
52: Namino
53: Siyane
54: Siyane
55: Namino
56: Namino
58: Mirai
59: Concord Design & Testing Shipyard
60: Concord HQ
61: Epithero
62: Concord HQ
63: CINT Vessel 23A-X
64: CINT Vessel 23A-X
65: Savrak
66: Mirai
67: Namino
68: Namino
69: Namino
70: CAF Aurora
71: Namino Stellar System
72: Concord HQ
73: Savrak
74: Epithero
75: Akeso
Author’s Note
Appendix: The Story So Far
About the Author
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