Raena’s eyes widened; that was new information.
He nodded at her reaction. “I’d never heard about the conflict before, either; it seems the history must have been lost to modern Tarans during one of the Revolutions, like so much else.”
An ancient war no one remembers? She swallowed.
“A few months ago, when the aliens discovered that Tarans were trying to use their Gate tech, they sought retribution by causing all sorts of problems in the Outer Colonies, which everyone has heard about by now.”
He paused for a moment before continuing, his face pinched with worry. “I don’t know how many classified details filtered down from the High Council briefing, but essentially the aliens opened more Gates and then initiated climate and topographical transformations using some kind of accelerated process for bio-optimization—like an advanced version of how we would prepare a planet for colonization. Except, having people already living on those worlds turned the tech into a devastating weapon.
“The TSS stepped in to diffuse the situation, at which point we had a brief encounter with representatives of the alien race, calling themselves the ‘Gatekeepers’. We apologized to the Gatekeepers, then they gathered up their remaining artifacts and left. We’d thought that was the end of it.”
She’d heard the overview from Ryan and her grandfather, but there hadn’t been that many specifics. “Wait, you spoke to them? Actual aliens, Dad! What were they like?”
He smiled, but the tension remained around his eyes and in his shoulders. “I wish I could give you a definitive answer, but I can’t. The Gatekeepers that we interacted with were some sort of hybrid, genetically engineered to look Taran. I don’t know what their true form is, only that they’re xenophobic and had created the hybrids as a means to covertly study us. Now, they claim to be gone for good, and I have no reason to doubt them. The attack on the Andvari wasn’t their doing.”
“So who, or what, was behind it?”
“That’s why I reached out.” He hesitated. “The Gatekeepers told us something else, which we omitted in the official debrief. They gave us a warning—that we’d violated a treaty, and that the ‘others’ wouldn’t be so forgiving.”
“In what way?”
“As in, would come to destroy us.”
Raena almost laughed at the sheer audacity of the statement. “That has to just be posturing, right? They can’t. I mean, Tarans inhabit planets spanning two-thirds of this galaxy!”
“The distance is immense, yes, but we’re only talking about fifteen-hundred worlds or so. With the right weapon, in actuality, that’s not a lot of ground to cover.”
Raena’s stomach turned over. “Okay, but why would they do that?”
“For us violating the treaty—whatever it is. A treaty that we didn’t even know about until the Gatekeepers told us.” He shook his head. “I’ve been looking for months, Raena. I can’t find the original copy in any of the digital archives, not even with the Aesir. From what I’ve been able to piece together, there was a truce struck between Tarans, the Gatekeepers, and the other race involved in the ancient war. References to the agreement have given us the gist, but the actual verbiage is lost, as far as I can tell. So, I can’t tell you how we violated the treaty, because I don’t even have a copy of the rules.”
Raena bit down on her lower lip while she listened. “Dad, I don’t know what to say,” she murmured, truly at a loss for words. Ancient, powerful aliens may be coming to destroy us?
“So,” he continued, “we were told months ago that another race was coming for us. But, without anything to substantiate the claim, we’ve been waiting and watching. Unfortunately, the attack on the Andvari is now the first evidence that the threat might be real.”
“What about the attack makes you think that? And how do you know it has anything to do with the Rift?” she asked.
“Proximity and timing, which means it’s still speculation.”
She could tell he was holding something back. “Why are you telling me rather than the High Council?”
He took a slow breath. “Because of what Jason saw in the nexus. Though your own vision wasn’t related to his, you’ve looked into the nexus like he did. Like I did. You understand how the visions don’t make any sense until suddenly they do. No one on the High Council has been through that experience.”
She nodded, her stomach knotting further as she recalled the mind-bending rite she’d performed during her first meeting with the insular branch of Tarans known as the Aesir.
“That’s how I know you’ll believe it, without me needing to explain, when I tell you that we were wrong about our interpretation of what Jason saw in the nexus. It actually had nothing to do with the Priesthood. In fact, it was about what’s now on the horizon.”
Her remaining calm evaporated.
Though vague and brief, insights received while gazing into the spatial anomaly known as ‘the nexus’ were profound; her personal truth in the cosmic energy web had been precognition about her life with Ryan on Morningstar Isle.
Over the years, she had spoken with her brother at length about his vision of a dark power spreading from the Rift. Her family had been convinced this prescience was about the Priesthood—a representation of how the Priests intended to harness the Rift’s power to ascend beyond their physical forms and seize control of everything in the galaxy. So, when her family had helped dismantle the Priesthood, they had taken comfort in the knowledge that their actions had stopped the symbolic darkness.
Now, the realization that this whole time there’d been another threat brewing called into question so much she’d held as certainty. A group of people within the Empire—she could deal with that. But the Rift, the tear in reality filled with
