A Clash of Empires: A Space Opera Adventure (Infinite Horizons Book 3) Read online

  A CLASH OF EMPIRES

  ©2022 J.D. SULIVAN

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the authors.

  Aethon Books supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Aethon Books

  www.aethonbooks.com

  Print and eBook formatting by Steve Beaulieu. Artwork provided by Phillip Daniels.

  Published by Aethon Books LLC.

  Aethon Books is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead is coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  CONTENTS

  ALSO IN SERIES

  1. Rescuers

  2. Breadth of Joy

  3. Bridges

  4. Bindings

  5. Vows

  6. Calm Before the Storm

  7. Drawing Lines

  8. The Iron Fist of Heaven

  9. Preparations

  10. Progress

  11. No Turning Back

  12. Promises Kept

  13. Across the Vastness

  14. Interception

  15. Intrigue

  16. Azilija’s Gift

  17. Unforeseen Boon

  18. Into the Perseus Arm

  19. The Silias Incident

  20. Nightmares Revisited

  21. Clash of Empires

  22. An Eye for An Eye

  23. Trial by Fire

  24. Spirit of the Lioness

  25. Accords

  26. Renewal

  Thank you for reading A Clash of Empires

  ALSO IN SERIES

  Escaping Gravity

  A Glimpse Beyond

  A Clash of Empires

  CHAPTER 1

  RESCUERS

  King Solomon famously said, in the book of Ecclesiastes, that there was nothing new under the sun. Dillon often wondered how the old king’s thoughts might have changed had he ever taken a trip through the galaxy.

  Lord knew Dillon’s perspectives had changed so much in a few months. What had started as an apprenticeship to learn mechanics and engineering had turned into so much more. Whether he considered the various races he was meeting and how he’d come to view them; the troubles between some of the governments; the impending invasion by an outside force from the reaches; or, of course, the fact that he’d fallen in love with and was getting married to a Kiandarian, his life had been turned upside down. Never in a thousand years would he have expected things to turn out this way when he filled out the application to become Sherisza Rousilarru’s apprentice.

  She meant everything to him, this lioness woman from Kiandar. She had chosen a young teenage boy from Earth and made a man out of him in more ways than one. Certainly, their love life together was a large part of it, but her educating him went beyond simply sex. She’d helped shatter his naivete about the known galaxy, introduced him to many people, and chosen to involve him in a time-traveling plan to save her people. And that was to say nothing of all she’d taught him already about her crafts of designing and engineering ships. In the end, it was saving her people that he cherished the most behind their relationship.

  It had been one of the biggest shocks of Dillon’s nineteen-plus-year life to find that his mate and employer didn’t just have the fastest ship in the known galaxy. No, the ship’s engine, still called the Daevol Drive by everyone else, was a time-traveling device. It attained undreamed of speeds by entering the time stream, bending time along with space to allow it to make trips in less than a tenth of the time it took standard warp drives to travel the same distance. And what was more, it could also travel through time–back or forward–and was instrumental in the survival of the Kiandarian species.

  Dillon still had trouble wrapping his mind around it at times. Granted, he had no idea how the Chrono Drive allowed them to travel through time, but that wasn’t the most astounding part. Sherisza had found hundreds of unexplained disappearances of her people through history, and these were the people she was traveling back through time to “rescue.” She and Dillon would bring them forward to their time, beyond the plague that had destroyed Kiandar’s population, and so, she was recolonizing her world with people from the past.

  It was an exceptional plan concocted by a woman who was far beyond exceptional.

  Sherisza poked his nose with a claw when she realized he was daydreaming, and the little bit of pain wiped the goofy smile from his face. “Cusha noowi ataana Dillon,” she said.

  “Cusha noowi ataana Dillon,” he repeated.

  “Mind your diction. If you say it as though you do not care, you will give my people the impression you think you are wasting your time speaking to them,” she corrected.

  He repeated it a few more times, paying close attention to the accent and lyrical pacing of the way Sherisza spoke her native tongue. Kiandese wasn’t a terribly difficult language to learn, and Dillon had the benefit of hearing it and understanding it thanks to his translation chip. He could listen to what she was saying and instinctively know what it meant, though Sherisza still had to explain which word was which and why they went in a specific order. There were conjugation and many other grammar topics to cover, but for now, she was teaching him useful phrases for when they picked up more groups of “refugees” from the past.

  “You nervous?” he asked when she paused the lesson for a minute.

  She looked up at him, her rounded ears perking up. “About the wedding? Not terribly, no. Though I worry that I will make a mistake, or someone will object to you marrying an alien.”

  “Neither would matter, I promise you,” Dillon said. “And nobody’s going to object.”

  “Your cousin might,” she said, her brow coming low, but she showed a bit of fang in a grin.

  Dillon laughed. His cousin, Jeremiah, was the motormouth of the family, and his brain and sense of humor didn’t always work at the same time. He’d made a few comments about Dillon and Sherisza’s relationship at their grandmother’s birthday party in poor attempts to be funny. He'd paid for it in bruises, though, when Sherisza had taken aim at him with most of her hard-hit spikes during the men versus women volleyball game.

  Now, though, looking at the expression that had settled after the grin, he wondered. “You know he’s just joking, right? He’s younger than I am, so you have to keep that in mind. He’s just a goofy kid, so don’t take what he says too personally.”

  Sherisza nodded. “I only worry that someone else might agree and not see it as an attempt at humor. I do not
want to be humiliated, Dillon, as I am sure you do not wish to be, either.”

  “We won’t be, I promise,” he said, reaching across to lay his hand on hers.

  She smiled but looked up at the sound of a two-chirp alarm from the AI.

 

  “Thank you, Daevol,” Sherisza replied, calling the AI by her late brother’s name. The AI had incorporated a lot of her brother’s memories and personality into itself, and many times, it had acted as a companion to her when she traveled alone. Now that she had Dillon, the AI was less of a presence in her life, but he was still immensely useful for maintaining the ship and keeping an eye on Sherisza.

  “So, how do you say you have to use the loo?” Dillon teased before she could get up to leave the galley.

  “Nakash niqua tinasa elg,” Sherisza said with all seriousness.

  “I must return what nature has given…?” he repeated back. It made him think of what the Kiandese phrase for oral pleasure actually translated to, and he chuckled. “Sheesh, your people seem to have a polite euphemism for everything.”

  She shrugged. “There are slang terms and less polite phrases for these things, but I do not want to teach you how to make a poor impression.”

  “Like saying maqua all the time?” he joked, referencing her frequent use of the Kiandese word for horseshit. There was the fact that she’d used it to describe his essay on black holes when he’d applied for the apprenticeship, but he’d long since decided it was fair.

  “It is not as socially unacceptable as the translation in your tongue makes it sound,” she said. “Unlike when you say the word fuck and I hear its equivalent in my tongue.”

  “That’s really bad, huh?”

  “It is a sexual reference but has a violent connotation,” she answered. “Particularly where females are involved.”

  “I’m trying not to say it anymore,” Dillon said.

  “And I appreciate that. And should anything I say in my tongue come across as comparably offensive, you need only say so,” Sherisza returned.

  “I don’t know, I’m kinda offended by horseshit…”

  “Maqua,” she teased back, giving his forehead a playful shove.

  “We won’t have time to do another pickup after this one before we’re due on Earth for the wedding,” Dillon said. “Did you want to take a honeymoon after or get right back to work?”

  “Honeymoon?” she repeated.

  “Yeah, a little romantic vacation couples take after they get married. We could go anywhere you want, whether on Earth or somewhere else. Just not Kwaaganarr, please.”

  Sherisza chuckled. Kwaaganarr, the hot, humid homeworld of the reptilian Kwaagi people, wasn’t an ideal destination for either humans or Kiandarians. The people were pleasant, but the weather conditions were awful to both species. As much as Dillon wouldn’t mind seeing the imperial family and their friend Azilija again, it wasn’t in the cards for now. And certainly not for their honeymoon.

  “You spoke of a place with beautiful beaches though it is rather warm,” Sherisza said.

  “Yeah, the Caribbean. Lots of beautiful islands there to vacation on. Since we can take the Malshekt there, we don’t even need to plan well in advance. Is that what you want to do?”

  “It sounds as though it is what you want to do,” she returned. “It is fine with me. I will find any place to spend time with you more than pleasant, even here on the ship.”

 

  “Listen to Daevol,” Dillon said. “It’ll be fun.”

  “Very well, then. Come, we should prepare to pick up the next groups of refugees. Do you feel sufficiently ready to go onto the surface with me?”

  “I’m looking forward to it.”

  They rose and Dillon took her hand, walking side by side to their cabin to get changed for their coming visit to Kiandar that was.

  The rain was relentless, pummeling them in spite of their protective gear. Despite all the work people like Dillon’s uncle put in mitigating the weather, sometimes it was unstoppable, and they still got hurricanes back home now and then. This storm was a little different, inland and thus more akin to the old storms they called a derecho back home on Earth, but not much less powerful. The wind was the worst part of it, but the rain was heavy and torrential, destroying visibility and sound in equal measure.

  Sherisza’s implant was their saving grace now. Though it had initially been solely a chip for translating languages, the ship’s AI had learned to interface with it years ago. Now he could see and hear everything Sherisza could, and in addition, he could imprint diagrams and directions in her mind. Though she and Dillon could hardly see or hear a thing through the storm, Daevol was able to guide them via Sherisza’s chip, and they made their way cautiously to the families they were here to rescue.

  The footing was treacherous, and Dillon marveled at the way Sherisza’s clawed feet so easily adapted to this wilder terrain. Between the claws, her muscular legs, and the tail that was more important to balance than Dillon had suspected, she was able to keep a steady pace even through the worst of the conditions. Dillon was glad to have proper work boots, the treads helping him keep his balance as they made their way over mud and rock, trying to get to the families stranded in this mountainous park.

  “We are almost to them!” Sherisza had to shout over her shoulder.

  Dillon stayed close to her, and they descended a short set of rocky shelves that could’ve almost qualified as stairs. There was a hollow depression beneath, and the families were huddled within, trying to use their tent canvas and anything else to protect themselves. It was possible they could’ve ridden out the storm with their makeshift shelter, but that wasn’t a chance Sherisza was willing to take. She had a plan and stuck to it.

  Once again it emphasized how strange time travel was. Per her brother Daevol Rousilarru’s theories, history couldn’t be changed, it had to already account for the existence and work of time travelers. And so, here Sherisza and Dillon were, working to rescue these families who history said had disappeared, to bring them back to the Malshekt and then forward through time. Whether or not they would have survived on their own, history said they’d vanished without a trace, and that was Sherisza’s clue that she needed to rescue them this way.

  Dillon crouched down and shrank into his hooded slicker while Sherisza pulled an edge of the tent canvas aside slowly. There was hardly any room beneath it, all eight of the Kiandarians they’d come to rescue clinging to the rock for dear life. They were soaked to the skin and the temperature was only going to get colder as night fell. With no means of building a fire and all their belongings already thoroughly wet, it didn’t look to Dillon like they had any chance of surviving on their own.

  Then again, they all have fur… maybe that would be enough to let them survive? There’s so much I still don’t know about her people, he thought.

  “Hello, friends,” Sherisza said to them in Kiandese as their golden eyes fixed on her. “I have a ship up above that can house you out of the storm. Please, come with us.”

  “Human!” more than one of them hissed when they noticed Dillon in the shade of his hood.

  Sherisza made an assuring gesture. “It is all right. This is my friend and apprentice, Dillon. He is here to help. Do not be afraid. We will take you to safety.”

  The parents all clutched at their children and then shared glances, the realization that they were unlikely to survive apparently understood. They wrapped the children in the canvas as much as they could, and then they began to follow Sherisza. Thankfully, they all had clawed feet and hands along with tails, too, and they were able to scale the rock face without too much trouble despite the rain and wind. Dillon took up the rear, making sure none of the children lost their purchase or fell behind. The driving wind and rain was bad enough for him; he couldn’t imagine being a fort
y- or fifty-pound child.

  “Daevol, bring the Malshekt as close as you can land her,” Sherisza said.

 

  “I hear you,” Dillon said, unused to the AI speaking to him directly through his chip. Daevol only did so when it was an emergency, though, so Dillon didn’t complain about the intrusion.

  He lost his footing momentarily despite the warning, but two clawed hands reached out to take his, and the Kiandarian men helped pull him up the slippery surface. Dillon nodded his thanks and continued along behind the Kiandarians as they tried to reach the hilltop. Soon, there was a brief break from the rain as the Malshekt came about, blocking the storm’s fury while the climbers made the last of the ascent. Once they were on the hilltop, Daevol dropped the shields and landed the ship delicately.

  Sherisza ushered the evacuees up the steps and into the ship. Dillon urged her to go first when he came up, and she preceded him aboard after a quick smile. Once everyone was inside, they shut the hatch, and Dillon and Sherisza shed their raincoats. Everyone took a couple of minutes to catch their breath, the Kiandarians marveling at the ship, but more so at the fact that it was manned by a human.

  “Shenae,” Dillon greeted them politely with a bow of the head. Then he told them that he wasn’t fluent in Kiandese, but that he could understand them just fine.

  “Who are you?” one of the men asked.

  “I am Captain Sherisza Rousilarru,” she introduced herself. “This is my apprentice, Dillon Mackey. We… are from the future.” She held a clawed hand up to stave off any scoffing or protests before they could get started, but none came anyway. Instead, she had the full, startled attention of their guests. “I will explain everything, but first, come to the lavatory and get dried off. Then we will prepare hot tea and soup for you to warm up while we try to explain everything we must.”