Rising Threat (Liberators Book 3): A Military Sci-Fi Thriller Space Opera Read online

  RISING THREAT

  LIBERATORS: BOOK 3

  SJ SCHAUER

  RISING THREAT

  Text Copyright © 2017 by S.J. Schauer

  All rights reserved. This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. No part of this eBook may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles, reviews, or promotions.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  www.spiralwar.com

  Published by Dawnrunner Press

  Edited by COL Proofreading

  Rereleased December 7, 2021

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Key Terms

  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

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  GLOSSARY

  Dramatis Personae

  Spiral War Historic Timeline

  About the Author

  Key Terms

  Time and Measure Conversion Factors

  Time:

  1 pulse = 100 centipulse/cents = 0.48 minutes

  1 hectapulse/hect = 100 pulses = 0.8 hours

  1 cycle = 30 hects = 1 cycle

  1 decacycle/decle = 10 cycles

  1 tridecacycle/tridec = 30 cycles

  1 annura = 390 cycles = 1 year, 25 cycles

  Distances:

  1 metra = 100 centimetra = 1 foot = 0.3048 meters

  1 kilometra/kimet = 1000 metra = 0.19 miles = 0.30 kilometers

  CHAPTER 1

  UCSB DATE: 991.031

  Lady Gesu Hospital, Mid-Duwn, Anul

  Both of Marda’s hearts raced as she walked the hospital’s halls beside her grandmother, the great Nilosa Sciminder. She’d become aware of her abilities two tridecs ago after having a conversation with a dead boy’s spirit. Her parents had wasted no time ushering her and the rest of their family back to Anul so that Nilosa could train Marda. On this, the cycle after her birth anniversary, Nilosa had brought Marda here to continue her training and test the extent of her talents and abilities.

  Marda resisted the urge to stare as they proceeded. Where only a few tridecs before she would have seen orbs, she now saw them as they’d appeared in life. The spirits crowded around her. Doctors and nurses, many long dead, continued to patrol the facility, assisting the living staff to care for their patients. The spirits’ desires to help the living had kept them here. Marda felt her cheeks flush with pride at the sight.

  Not all were here of their own accord. Marda felt a chill when she encountered ‘remnants’ as Nilosa called them. Most weren’t full spirits, but pieces of a dead person’s quantum essence left behind after they’d died. It was like watching a video loop as they mindlessly repeated the same task over and over. Some simply wandered about, all but invisible to those around them. To Marda, they appeared as tangible as any living being would.

  The majority appeared old and frail. She steered clear of the most gruesome in appearance. These spirits were bloodied and broken, having succumbed to injuries they’d sustained in horrible accidents or battles.

  Nilosa pointed to a spirit. “See that man there?”

  Marda saw the specter of a frail old man pacing the halls. “What’s wrong with him? How did he die?”

  Nilosa shook her head. “He can’t tell you and he can’t hurt you. He’ll just keep walking these halls, never seeing or speaking to anyone until the last of his energy fades away.”

  It tore at Marda’s hearts to watch the elderly spirit, his hospital gown at least two decades out of date. “Can’t you do something to help?”

  Nilosa shrugged her shoulders. “I’ve released other remnants in the past, especially those that cause problems. Some, like him, are too ingrained in the place, and since they do no harm, we leave them.”

  Nilosa took Marda to what at first glance appeared to be an empty room. As Marda waited, a mass of partial limbs and faces emerged on the bed. Marda gasped at the sight, her stomach twisting in disgust, the body parts writhing about grotesquely. Nilosa went up to the bed without fear and placed her hand upon it. “There are two here who are about ready to go.”

  Marda looked on, horrified. “Does that happen to everybody?”

  Nilosa looked at her and smiled. “No. Most pass beyond whole. But sometimes a traumatic death may cause someone to leave a little bit behind.” She looked back to the bed and reached into the mass of spirit forms. She pulled back her hands and two-spirit waveforms rose into the air and dissipated.

  Marda looked back at the bed. Four spirit fragments remained. Smiling, she asked her grandmother, “What about the rest?”

  Nilosa approached and took her hand. “When they’re ready, I will come and help them. Now there’s someone you need to meet.”

  Nilosa led Marda away and as the two of them walked further into the hospital, the sight of so many aliens in this wing served to ease her nerves. Prior to her recent return to Anul, she’d spent her whole life amongst aliens. Her father’s position in the Diplomatic Corps took their family traveling across the Confederacy. Being surrounded by so many of her own kind had left her feeling uneasy.

  It appeared that most of the inhabitants of this wing were alien. She observed the subtle clues that told her which ones were tourists, and which were permanent residents of Anul. It was the little things, like skin tones, clothes, and in one case a theme park hat on a young Drashig’s head that tipped her off. Coughing from a room off to her side drew Marda and Nilosa’s attention. Inside, a four-armed Capra-faced Otlian spat the thick mucus he’d coughed up into a cup.

  Nilosa shook her head and pulled Marda along. “It’s curious, it seems that every home world is custom-tailored for its inhabitants.”

  What? Marda wondered and shot her grandmother a quizzical look. “It’s exactly the opposite Grandmother. We evolved here, so we adapted to the environment, not the other way around.”

  Nilosa rolled her eyes at Marda. “True, but isn’t it amazing how so many species can share stations and colony planets, but not the home worlds.”

  Marda looked up at her again. Didn’t daddy say something like that once? He must have learned it from her. “But there are colony worlds where dozens of species live together.”

  “True, and even there they must adapt. But my point stands, all races find it much more difficult to adapt to another’s home world. You will see visitors and some permanent residents, but never in large numbers. There’s always something in the air, or the food, or the water that they can’t adapt to. It happens on the colony worlds too, but we accept that as part of being out there. Or we custom-build it to the specif
ications of the species living there, setting up the infrastructure around them. But on the home worlds, everything is adapted to the race that belongs there.”

  Marda nodded. There’s no point arguing the point with her. Not now.

  Marda felt pain and fear radiating from the section of the wing Nilosa was leading her toward. She looked up at the sign: Intensive Care. Marda slowed and resisted the pull of her grandmother’s hand. “Do we have to go in there?”

  Nilosa gave her a kind look. “This is where some of the severest cases are. Unfortunately, dear child, as part of your training, you have come to witness a death.”

  Marda recoiled in horror and backed away. “I don’t want to see anyone die.”

  Nilosa’s grip held her fast as she knelt to meet Marda’s eyes. “Death, as you think of it, is merely the death of the body, the flesh. You are special. Like me, you’ll be able to see that their spirit carries on, that the most important part of them continues. It’s just leaving behind this shell,” she explained, tapping Marda’s shoulder. “This is just flesh, crude and weak. Our true essence is the spirit. That spirit persists long after the flesh falls away. That is the lesson you must learn this cycle.”

  Marda took a breath and let it out slowly. Her whole life, she’d attended Messiahist schools which had preached the same message. While she believed it, she’d never seen someone die before, not for real, not right in front of her. It shook her to her core to consider it, and she just didn’t feel ready. “Please, can we do this another cycle?”

  Nilosa shook her head. “No, this is the cycle. There’s a boy I want you to meet.” Nilosa almost had to drag Marda into the ICU. At the third door, Nilosa turned and greeted a man in his forties standing beside a bed. Marda hesitated to look and regretted it instantly.

  A boy around the same age as she was lay dying in the bed. It had been obvious the moment she’d laid eyes on him. A disease had ravaged his young body. He was little more than flesh draped on a skeleton, and even his hair and fingernails had fallen out.

  She couldn’t help but stare. As he wheezed, his bones creaked with the rise and fall of his chest. She was about to ask why he wasn’t on a respirator when she turned to the boy’s father and found his harsh countenance locked with that of her grandmother’s.

  Nilosa regarded the hulking man. “Aldin.”

  “Nilosa, how are you?” he replied, cool as ice.

  Marda felt so sorry for the man, so grief-stricken that he couldn’t muster any other emotion.

  “Good,” Nilosa replied with a nod and motioned to Marda. “I would like you to meet my granddaughter, Marda.”

  Marda stepped up and gave a respectful nod. “Pleased to meet you, Mister Aldin.” As Marda looked, she noted the gold flaming stake emblem on his collar. “Pardon me, Father Aldin.”

  Aldin fingered the pin on his lapel and seemed to slump under the weight of it. He turned toward his dying son. “Now isn’t the time for that, child.”

  Marda looked over at the boy and saw the pain etched not only in his face and body, but also in his spirit as it fought to break free of his failing mortal shell. “What’s wrong with him?”

  Aldin laid a hand on his son’s shoulder and it seemed to collapse under the weight. “He has Kemtil, the Self-Healer’s disease.”

  Marda had heard of the ailment before. She did her best not to show any fear of the killer disease. The vicious virus would assault the Self-Healer’s hyperactive immune system, turning the restorative stem cells flowing in their blood against them. The virus would reprogram the cells to produce more of themselves and eat away at other body tissues. The disease was fatal if left untreated for too long and, as far as anyone knew, only afflicted Self-Healers. She looked up at Aldin. “Was he not diagnosed soon enough? Was he too far along for the cure?”

  “The cure has been administered, but I fear that it was too late.”

  Nilosa laid a hand on the boy’s head. “He’s only an annura and a half older than you Marda.”

  Marda would never have guessed that from how little of the boy remained. “The disease will claim his body within the cycle. Unless his will holds out long enough to allow the medicine to take effect.”

  The holographic projections of the medical scanner featured imagery of the tailored bacteria coursing through the boy’s blood. It targeted the Kemtil, but it was clearly a losing battle at this point. “Is there no way to help him, to speed up the process?”

  Aldin shook his head. “Only the Nanos.”

  Marda’s pity for the man morphed into rage. “What do you mean? He hasn’t been given nano-infusions to fight the virus!?” She knew enough medicine to understand that the administration of specially programmed nano-machines could go a long way to killing or curing many viruses, even Kemtil.

  The truth stared at her. They were Drigists. Marda had to resist the urge to scream at the man. The Drigist refused to use any medical treatment that inserted artificial technology into a body. How could one misinterpreted passage in Drig’s journal lead to such tragedy? The man with the artificial leg and a hook for a hand was not an abomination because of them, but because of his actions. It was because of how he’d tortured and killed those who’d shunned his deformities.

  “If he’s strong enough, he will survive,” Aldin stated.

  Marda couldn’t believe her ears. “How can you say that? He’s your son!”

  He tugged at his collar as he watched his son’s breathing grow more labored. “What would you have me do? Defy my faith? Become a hypocrite to my flock? ‘Any man who so willingly gives away his flesh will have no place in the kingdom beyond,’” he replied, quoting scripture.

  “‘Who so willingly gives away his flesh to bring about only harm,’” Marda replied. “The limbs were not evil but what the man did with them was.”

  Aldin remained steadfast and just stared at his son.

  Marda shook her head. Despite their religions’ common base, she saw that she would never convince this priest that modern treatments of disease were not blasphemous. She turned instead to the holographic screens. The boy’s vitals grew even weaker and more erratic.

  Nilosa took her granddaughter’s hand, pointing at the boy as his chest heaved. “Now is the time, watch.”

  Marda didn’t want to see this. She couldn’t bear to watch as his soul separated from his body. She heard the tone of his heart monitor slow and turned toward his father. “Please, do something.”

  Tears welled up in the priest’s eyes as he stared at his dying son. “He’s already told me that if the disease claimed him, to let it take him.”

  “You can’t just let him die. The treatment is working. It’s killing the Kemtil. It just needs more time. A cycle or two, there has to be something you can do, a blood transfusion, something.”

  Aldin looked down at her. “I have already given my blood to him, and the Kemtil has turned it against him as well.”

  “But in another cycle it may help him.”

  Aldin turned toward her, his face as red as any she’d ever seen. “Do not speak to me of maybes and what ifs!”

  Marda jumped back, the rage in the priest’s voice palpable.

  The boy jerked on the bed and Marda turned to him as a tremor ran up his body, his brain dying.

  “You have to do something,” she pleaded, tugging on her grandmother’s shirt.

  “In another cycle, I could have given him blood again,” Aldin whimpered as his son died.

  Before Marda’s eyes the boy’s spirit slithered free of its mortal self like a snake shedding its skin. The being of light that greeted her was beautiful to behold, but pain still racked it as it threatened to tear pieces of itself away to escape its mortal torment.

  “No!” Marda called out and shoved her way past her grandmother. She laid her hands on the boy’s chest and the spirit flitted through them. She looked up at the spirit. It was new and insubstantial but it was clearly relieved to be free of its body. “No, you can’t give up now. Not when you’r
e so close.”

  Aldin looked at her and shook his head. “It is the way it must be,” he said bowing his head to pray.

  “No!” she snapped and looked at the boy’s face. A piece of the spirit hung there, holding on by the most tenuous of threads, a remnant of his pain, stronger than any she had seen yet. Such pieces threaded out from across his body, their links to the glowing spirit form growing more tenuous with each moment. She met the ethereal eyes of the spirit form above her. In that moment she witnessed the destiny he should have had. It lay far beyond this place, in the stars she loved so much. Death in this bed was not how he was supposed to meet his end. “There’s more to you. You have a mission in life that you cannot give up.”

  The boy’s spirit assessed her and she could tell that he was preparing to pass beyond the veil. he told her.

  Anger welled up within Marda and she reached to grab the spirit form’s hand. She didn’t question when she felt it in her own and pulled. The boy’s spirit tried to pull away but she would not let go.

  Nilosa raced around the bed, shoving Aldin out of the way so that she could meet her granddaughter’s eyes. “No girl, stop! You know not what you do.”

  “No! You can see it too, Grandmother! You can see that he has a destiny!”

  Aldin looked on, his son’s orb forming before him. “Girl, let him go! Let him pass! You will bind him to this world if you don’t release him.”

  “No, I will bind him back to his flesh so that he can live.”

  Nilosa stepped back, her face a mask of terror. “Marda no! What you are attempting, it’s beyond my ken. It cannot even be taught. Instinct must guide you, and if you make a mistake…”

  Ignoring her grandmother’s protests, Marda pulled the boy’s spirit back to his body. She had never felt her body and soul ache as much as it did in that moment. Each movement, each pull, tug, and push weakened her like a marathon run. She felt every bit of the boy’s pain, experienced his terror as he fought against her, but the vision of his future drove her on.