Kione nodded. “It seems likely.”
“And we’re trapped aboard it.” He paced in his cell and pondered. “The sphere is old. Very old. These flashes you’re seeing, can we assume these are memories the sphere has witnessed?”
Kione shrugged. “Potentially.”
“Frontier’s Reach.”
The alien appeared confused.
“Frontier’s Reach,” Jason continued, “has always been an aberration. Ever since our telescopes probed the region, it has appeared a void of dead stars, or stars so old they couldn’t support habitable worlds. It’s the main reason the commonwealth has had little interest in colonizing the area. What if Frontier’s Reach was once a battleground? And the sphere was once a weapon used in its annihilation?”
Kione considered the question, finally keeping himself upright without support. “If you’re right, it exemplifies its destructive power.”
“And who built it and wielded it?” Jason stared at him. “Your connection would seem to indicate that—”
“My people had something to do with it?”
Jason didn’t want it to sound like he was accusing him. “You’ve never known your people, so you can’t know what they’d have been capable of.”
“I suppose that’s right. And if this sphere is six million years old, my race may be long extinct.”
“Which questions your existence. One has to also wonder what the sphere was doing buried on Orion V.”
“All wars end,” Kione mused. “On your planet at their conclusion, the old-world nations would put their weapons into mothballs, just in case a new enemy arose.”
“Well, the Seekers now have this mothballed weapon. Who do they plan to use it on?”
“Everyone has enemies.”
Yes, they do.
Thirty-Three
Psi-Aion
A sizzling sensation burned around Susan Tai’s wrists as she attempted to break free of her ropes. The more she tried, the more the fibers seared her skin.
The walk from the Maybelle had been an arduous one. At the dead of night, the mysterious Seekers had marched her, Nicolas, Tyler, and the Marines through the dark forest at arrow point. And high above in the trees, the planet’s nocturnal wildlife peered down on them.
Susan stumbled, tripping on a loose tree root. The Seeker guarding her grabbed her before she fell and nudged her onward with the butt of his wooden spear. The man glared at her, his deep-brown eyes were filled with a deep hatred. A common expression shared by the other Seekers around him.
She glanced over at Nicolas and Tyler beside her. Nicolas had regained consciousness a little earlier, after being knocked out for his ‘we come in peace’ routine. He was still groggy but had recouped most of his senses.
Tyler Cassidy did his best to put on a brave face, but Susan knew better. She felt sorry for the young man. He was completely out of his element.
“How are you, Nicolas?” she asked.
He adjusted his jaw. “Like I’ve been hit by a sledgehammer.”
“It hasn’t bruised too much,” Susan lied.
“If we could just loosen these ropes,” Higgs said behind them.
“And go where, Corporal?” Nicolas said, being a realist. “Did you see our weapons?”
Susan glanced over at the remains of the rifles and their commbands in a woven sack, in hundreds of tiny pieces.
“Tasu masla caram!” The Seeker guarding Higgs pushed him to the ground and grabbed at his hands, noticing Higgs had tried to loosen his ropes.
“Okay! Okay!” The corporal surrendered.
With a single heave, the Seeker pulled him up and stared him down. After a forceful push, they were back on their way.
“Let’s keep calm.” Nicolas said to them. “We’re not going to get anywhere by provoking them.”
Everyone nodded, and Susan turned to Tyler. “What about you, Mister Cassidy?”
“I’m okay.”
“It can’t be too long before your crew wonder where we are.”
He nodded, though it didn’t assure him as much as she’d hoped.
After what seemed an eternity, being led through the darkness of the alien world, they reached an outcropping in the forest. Beyond it lay a towering cliff, at least a hundred meters high. Before it was a village with primitive wooden huts spread throughout. Smoke billowed from the center of the township, and the stench of cooked animal meat wafted in the air.
As they marched through the village, hundreds of the inhabitants stopped what they were doing and gawked at them as if they were new exhibits in a zoo. At the heart of the village, a large wooden stump from a fallen tree was the focal point. Surrounding it were unusual rocks and various animal bones.
Susan thought back to what Tyler had said earlier. How could these people build spaceships and travel through interstellar space? It was apparent they hadn’t even invented the wheel yet. And the Seekers themselves, they reminded her of long-extinct Neanderthals. Larger than the standard human and muscularly more superior but at a developmental level well below that of the modern man.
Her captor pushed Susan to her knees. The others joined her in front of the tree stump, while every Seeker in the village milled around them.
“What are they going to do with us?” Private Utkin asked.
The butt of a spear smashed into the back of his head and his face plowed into the mud. He dragged himself back to his knees, wincing while a mighty bruise revealed itself.
There was a quiet hush, and the Seekers parted. The Seeker responsible for knocking Nicolas out walked between them, along with another figure. He was much older, and wrapped in an animal skin, with a skull similar to that of a tiger with long, sharp fangs atop his head.
“Must be their leader?” Nicolas assumed. “Some kind of elder.”
The old man was helped up onto the stump. He stood high above his six captives and held his hands in the air. “Verash, tolar bolor temar daran Vokar!”
“Verash! Verash! Verash!” the other Seekers chanted, punching the air with their fists.
The elder’s stare silenced his people. “Verash, tolar daris fakir, moros!” He pulled out part of a smashed rifle and held it in front of Nicolas. “Terch?”
Susan turned to Nicolas. “What do you think he means?”
“Terch?” the elder said again, pacing along the stand and pointing at each of them.
“Perhaps he wants to know
