Heirs of the New Earth
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Lachesis Publishing
www.lachesispublishing.com
Copyright ©2007 by David Lee Summers
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NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.
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CONTENTS
Heirs of the New Earth
BOOKS IN THE OLD STAR SAGA
DEDICATION
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
HEIRS OF THE NEW EARTH
PROLOGUE:
Part I: Silence of the Old Earth
CRAFTSMAN
DOOMSDAY
POLITICIANS
REVELATION
SAILORS
Part II: Tribulation
ASCENSION
MISSION TO EARTH
MASTER AND COMMANDER
BEYOND SYMBIOSIS
LEGACY
Part III: Battle for the New Earth
PASSION
RESURRECTION
FUGITIVES
ARMAGEDDON
Part IV: The New Clusters
SUPPLICATION
THE NEW GALAXY
About the Author:
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Heirs of the New Earth
David Lee Summers
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Hadrosaur Productions
Las Cruces, NM
And
LBF Books
Imprint of Lachesis Publishing
Heirs of the New Earth
All rights reserved
Copyright by David Lee Summers
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher. Published in the United States by Hadrosaur Productions and LBF Books.
FIRST EDITION
ARTWORK BY LAURA GIVENS
EDITED BY WILLIAM GROTHER
ISBN 1-885093-49-7
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BOOKS IN THE OLD STAR SAGA
The Pirates of Sufiro
Children of the Old Stars
Heirs of the new Earth
Also by David Lee Summers
Vampires of the Scarlet Order
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DEDICATION
To Kenneth and Shirley Summers
—Dad and Mom—
for teaching me to care about the world and its people,
for teaching me to dream,
for being there,
for everything.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The “Old Star Saga” was launched almost twenty years ago as an exercise for a writer's group in Socorro, New Mexico. It started as a humble short story—less than 2000 words—entitled, “The Privateer's License.” The story ultimately grew into “A Quiet Burning in the Darkness"—the first chapter of The Pirates of Sufiro, which saw publication as an audio book in 1994 and a mass market paperback in 1997. It seems appropriate that the final book of the series should appear on the tenth anniversary of Pirates' first paperback publication.
Twenty years is a long time and there are a lot of people that deserve thanks for help here and there. However, there are two people who have been there for the whole ride and they deserve thanks above all for their help and support over all these years: Kumie Wise and William Grother. I couldn't have done it without you guys.
I started Heirs of the New Earth soon after the first publication of Pirates' sequel, Children of the Old Stars. In the second novel, Commander John Mark Ellis was booted out of the military when he failed to save a spaceship from an alien intelligence called the Cluster. The story told how Ellis came to terms with what happened to him. However, in the process of telling that story, the Cluster took control of the Earth. This novel tells the story of what happens next.
Over the course of the writing, there were a lot of false starts. More than with any other novel, I wrote myself into corners that seemed insoluble. However, each time that happened, someone would come along and ask about the sequel to Children of the Old Stars. The list of people who have asked would be a long one—and it amazes me to think about it. I want to say thanks to each and every one of them. That said, there are two people who stand out in my mind and have given the most encouragement and been asking for this book almost since Children first appeared: Bret Badgett and Gary Every. You guys are the greatest.
Many thanks go to Jacqueline Druga-Johnston, editor-in-chief of LBF Books. Not only has she believed in this series since she first discovered it in 2004 but she has provided insight and structure to the series and made it better than it would have been otherwise.
Finally, a very special thanks goes to Laura Givens, who has illustrated all three novels of the trilogy. Not only has she given these books a uniform and dynamic appearance, but she's breathed new life into the locations and characters that have been populating my consciousness for the last twenty years. Scenes in this book are directly influenced by Laura's vision of this universe and I'm proud that she's been part of the team that's made this book possible.
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HEIRS OF THE NEW EARTH
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DAVID LEE SUMMERS
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PROLOGUE:
THE CLUSTER
It has been something like thirty million years since I last felt anything. I have no arms to lift, nor legs to run. I have no mouth to take in nourishment; no tongue to savor it. I have no skin or hair to feel the sweet breath of a cool breeze. While I have the urge to replicate, I have no vagina to accept the loving gift of genetic material from another of my kind; no uterus to grow another of my kind even if I did. I am intelligence without appendage, but not without body.
What body I have floats through the void. It evolved somewhere near the beginning of time and took the primordial form of a cluster of spheres—mirroring the cluster of stars whose plasma and gravity conspired to give me life. I was like an island universe, all to myself, drifting from star to star. The electro-magnetic energies that course their way through my body of encased plasma began to take on order and began to sense the wider universe. I began to understand that no woman is an island and I explored, consciously. I found purpose in trying to understand the orbits of stars around the center of the cluster, understanding the cluster of stars’ place in the universe, and trying to determine whether or not I was the only sentient thing.
I discovered that with sufficient energy, I could replicate myself. Because of the way our memory works, we each see ourselves as the original of our kind. We all remember our beginning as though we had experienced it. None of us knows who is the original. Likewise none is really certain whether the original actually exists. Because the memory lives within us all, we do not feel that it is important who was the original.
I discovered planets—rocky and gaseous bodies that orbited stars. On some of these planets, I found entities that moved about and replicated much as my sisters and I had. However, some of these entities did not replicate by duplication, rather they came together in various combinations and shared components of themselves to make new, different versions. With time, there was an evolution from one type of creature to another.
We observed a difference between evolving creatures and ourselves. Instead of simply recording the universe, they
reacted to it in ways we had not considered. While their lives were much shorter than ours, there was a quality to them that augmented their purpose. On one particular carbon dioxide and nitrogen shrouded planet, we observed living beings for hundreds of thousands of years. They walked upright and hair covered their bodies. Their teeth were large compared to many evolving creatures we observed, but the creatures were not carnivores, rather it was because they consumed the water and methane ice that covered their world. They retained these characteristics even after they began to make tools that made their fur coats and their teeth unnecessary. When they became aware of us, we communed with them.
We found that as part of the communion, the beings learned more about the universe than they had ever known before. It was as though they could travel to all of the star systems we had been to. Likewise, while communing, we could feel their emotions. We shared the delight of the creatures’ expanded knowledge. We had the ability to see ways in which the creatures could order their existence and improve it.
When we broke communion with the creatures, we found that they were diminished—they had better tools, better lives, but not the experience to improve upon what we had given them. In the same way, we had memory of emotion, but were not able to experience new emotion without the creatures.
Thus, a symbiosis was formed with these sensual creatures that lasted for thousands of years. The creatures learned to build vessels with which to explore the universe on their own. We gained imagination that enabled us to interpret all we had observed in new and unique ways. While communing with these beings we felt as though we had appendages. We knew what it was like to feel cool wind, share intimate relations, give birth and hold a beautiful child—like us, but different—in our arms. For the first time in our existence, we could express ourselves. We knew what it was to leave a legacy.
Thirty million years ago, the cluster of stars in which I make my home passed through a larger conglomeration of stars shaped like a whirlpool. Our appendages broke their communion with us in the alien galaxy. Without them, we Clusters wandered lost and alone, with only our memories of emotion and sensuality.
Though there are others of my kind, we are so alike that communion with one another is pointless. Without the appendages, some of my kind lost their sense of purpose and simply threw themselves into the hearts of stars. I do not know whether we can be killed that way or not, as we were formed from the hearts of stars. However, our outer shell would likely vaporize and the plasma that makes up our cores would merge with the star. I do not know whether that is the same as what the appendages call death or not.
Our cluster of stars recently returned to the galaxy where our appendages left us. However, a galaxy is a daunting and huge place—much larger than our star cluster. We pondered the odds of finding our appendages again. While the odds were low, the benefits of having our appendages back spurred us on to look for them.
As my sisters and I searched, we encountered many star vessels like the ones our appendages had built. Examining the vessels, we found no evidence of the appendages but we continued our exploration anyway. As I passed through one sector of the galaxy, I felt an emotional disturbance in the void. Terrible violence overwhelmed me. Only beings as sensual as the appendages could have caused emotions so great. I went to investigate, but the appendages were not there. Instead, there were strange beings that combined intelligence like mine with an ability to order their own lives using appendages. Their intelligence was governed by their sensuality. I wondered whether the appendages evolved, though I was skeptical. Communing briefly with two of the appendages, I found that these beings called the planet they were on Sufiro and they had just concluded a conflict among themselves. It was a strange concept as my appendages never fought among themselves. These new beings proved quite interesting. They bore watching. They called themselves humans.
In short order, I discovered that these humans were well traveled. One I had met at the world called Sufiro was aboard a spaceship at a strange new place where two stars orbited one another. One star spewed its gaseous plasma toward the other. There was almost a loving violence as these two stars went around each other, magnetically and gravitationally locked. It reminded me of the humans themselves.
I brought the human, who called himself John Mark Ellis, to my bosom. His sensuality breathed new life into me. These humans were proving more interesting than the appendages of old. The human's emotion caused me to think imaginatively. Perhaps it was just my own fading memory. Even so, I decided to give up my quest for the old appendages. Upon communing with this John Mark Ellis, I discovered that I wanted new appendages.
The gravity tide was strong and carried me away from the whirlpool galaxy. However, tides ebb and flow. I knew I would be back to learn more about these humans.
Upon my return home, I meditated. Ellis and others of his kind demonstrated much variation—like my three sisters and I experienced after our contact with the original appendages. As I knew they would, the gravitational tides allowed me to return to the whirlpool galaxy and somehow I found that John Mark Ellis and another human named Clyde McClintlock, who I had also communed with, had sought me out. They followed me back to my home in the globular cluster. The one called McClintlock had the audacity to attempt to initiate communion. We found that this McClintlock thought we were the creators of the universe. Upon correcting him, his fragile mind was destroyed. We sensed that a non-human named G'Liat, who was aboard the spaceship, put an end to McClintlock's suffering.
We liked the audacity of the human McClintock and were further surprised and delighted when the human Ellis initiated communion and entered our minds. Most of my appendages were female and it felt good to have this man inside me. He was primitive and brutal, but smart. He was better than the appendages of old. When Ellis and his ship returned to the whirlpool galaxy, we were once again diminished.
We have decided to adopt these humans. They will become one with us. We will benefit from them and they will benefit from us. Together we will build a legacy.
The humans would call it a “win-win” proposition.
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Part I: Silence of the Old Earth
Thus with violence shall that great city of Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all. And the voice of harpers, and musicians, and of pipers, and trumpeters, shall be heard no more at all in thee; and no craftsman, of whatsoever craft he be, shall be found any more in thee; and the sound of a millstone shall be heard no more at all in thee.
Revelation 18: 21-22
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CRAFTSMAN
Two flies buzzed and spiraled in the semi-darkness and thick, torrid atmosphere of a one-room apartment in Southern Arizona. A mountain of dirty plates clogged the sink while uneaten remnants of food littered a small table. Unwashed socks and underwear were draped carelessly over the room's two chairs and an alcove, containing a rust-stained toilet, reeked of those odors generated in the deep, dark recesses of the human body. The flies were in paradise.
Attracted to the salty sweat of the room's lone human inhabitant, the two flies lit and cavorted about on his nose only to be sent flying away as his hand swept by. The man was lying on a small cot that creaked each time he swung his arm. A clock nearby counted its way inexorably toward the time its alarm would sound. Undaunted, the flies returned time and time again. If flies had emotions, they might have thought the challenge of taking moisture from the man's nose was fun.
"Goddamn flies,” grumbled the man as he swatted at the insects again. This time he sat up on his small cot and blinked at the zebra-stripe pattern on the floor made by sunlight streaming through partially closed blinds on the window. The man, Timothy Gibbs, reached out and grabbed the alarm clock and stared at the numbers for several seconds while his brain worked to interpret the numbers his eyes saw: five minutes before seven o'clock. Five minutes before the alarm was to go off. “Goddamn it,” grumbled Gibbs, as he returned the clock to the
nightstand. He rubbed his rough hand across a stubble-covered chin, annoyed because he wanted to go back to sleep but there wasn't enough time before the alarm would sound.
Gibbs padded over to the kitchen counter. The computer unit recognized its owner and activated a finger-greased touch pad. Bleary-eyed, he examined the choices from the small inventory of frozen meals-in-one. With a sigh, he chose the omelet and coffee and stood, listening as out-dated motors carried the meal from the freezer to the internal cooking unit. For a moment, he thought he smelled acrid, electrical smoke. With a frown, he thought perhaps he should open the unit and take a look, but decided against it as he realized the smell was actually some left-over plastic still clinging to the pre-fabricated meal.
With a stretch and a yawn, Gibbs padded to the toilet alcove and swatted at the swirling flies that buzzed about his hair while he relieved himself. Stepping out of the alcove, he looked over at a hologram of his mother, sitting on the nightstand. He hadn't seen his mother since she lost her job at the paper cup factory nearly 20 years before. Unable to pay her weekly taxes and with Gibbs barely able to pay his own taxes, much less help her, she was taken away to a government housing complex. The government didn't bother to tell Gibbs where she was. Without a source of income, his mother couldn't afford a teleholo call to her son. Timothy Gibbs had no way of knowing whether his mother was alive or dead.
A chime sounded alerting Gibbs that his breakfast was done. He padded over, opened the unit's door and retrieved the plate of steaming food. He sipped rancid coffee while mindlessly picking a piece of blackened plastic out of the eggs. He wondered about his father—a man he never knew. Poking at the over-cooked omelet, Gibbs wondered if he, himself, was anyone's father. Like most men in the thirtieth century, including his own father, he periodically left sperm at the local Depository. Women who liked his genetic make-up and wanted children could go to the Depository for impregnation. The upside for Gibbs was that he didn't have to risk the diseases and emotional upheaval that came from a sexual relationship. The downside was that he didn't know whether he was the father of a hundred children or none at all.