Kaldean Chronicles: Kaldean Sunset (Book I) Read online

  Kaldean Chronicles

  Kaldean Sunset (Book I)

  By Maxwell Bond

  Copyright 2016 by Make Profits Easy LLC

  [email protected]

  Table of Contents

  Prologue: Blood and Diamonds

  Chapter 1: Synergy

  Chapter 2: Psyche

  Chapter 3: Pacifism

  Chapter 4: Paradigm

  Chapter 5: Coven

  Chapter 6: Spark

  Chapter 7: Modelesque

  Chapter 8: Chamomile

  Chapter 9: Saccharin

  Chapter 10: Artificial Genesis

  Chapter 11: Treaty

  Chapter 12: Martyrdom

  Chapter 13: Fever Dream

  Chapter 14: Sweet Peace

  Chapter 15: Rendezvous

  Chapter 16: Insignia

  Chapter 17: The Movement

  Chapter 18: Tantra

  Chapter 19: Lullaby

  Chapter 20: Darwin

  Chapter 21: Bloodletting

  Chapter 22: Razor Race

  Chapter 23: Encounter

  Chapter 24: Heart and Mind

  Prologue: Blood and Diamonds

  For more than a thousand years, humanity was confined to the twin solar systems, Alpha Centauri and Sol, the ancestral home of humanity. They'd long since given up on the dream of traveling throughout the galaxy.

  Instead, they outgrew their planets and shielded themselves from pollution. Humanity was sick, starving, and choking on its own filth.

  The ruling class became desperate to better their quality of living, so they devised a means of depopulating the planet through the use of sophisticated robots. They called it the Rapture, a ruthless campaign meant to slaughter the populace so that the aristocracy could survive.

  The conflict lasted for more than a century. It destroyed the old world and, through bloodshed and carnage, depopulated the two planets. Resentful of technology and the damage that it had done to their lives, the survivors built an anti-technologist society led by the guerrilla leaders that ended the rapture. They called themselves the Crusaders.

  The Crusaders demonized all forms of technology, and only allowed the people to use rudimentary power sources. Historians often cite their use of beasts of burden, including horses for agriculture and transportation. Space travel was forbidden. The twin systems were isolated and society digressed into a prehistoric state.

  The people were stricken with illness and hunger, unable to maintain their crops, or cure diseases. They died off by the millions, destroying most of what was left of humanity after the Rapture. The Crusaders didn't believe in progress or science and told the people that the way to live was to get in the dirt and work with your hands. They taught them how to put their minds on the back burner and let their bodies take over.

  The people never forgot the way things used to be. They used to be able to cure simple diseases and print their food in their homes. Now they were digging in the dirt, barely able to feed themselves much less their families, and so they began searching for alternatives.

  The Crusaders believed that women were inferior creatures, far too cerebral and incapable of manual labor like the men could do. It was thought that they couldn't handle the rigors of daily life. They were oppressed, forced to stay at home and to take care of the children. With their abilities ignored and their status taken away from them, it's no wonder that they banded together.

  Nobody knows for certain how the Lorian Sisterhood began, but most historians believe that women's groups started forming in response to sexism. They wanted progress. They believed that the Crusaders had taken away man's ability to reason, and even more importantly his ability to study the universe around him. They saw the universe as a puzzle to be solved, and decided to salvage the knowledge that the Crusaders tried to destroy. Books were allowed, but nobody had used paper for thousands of years, so all they contained was Crusader propaganda. Instead, the women had to hack into the old internet and upload it into a system of computers deep in an underground network of caves.

  Once they had done this, they worked on a plan to overthrow the Crusaders. They undermined the government through the use of propaganda. Their message spread, slowly and secretly until it could no longer be hidden and the people had to take a stand. When the revolution began, the sisters formed a group of assassins, called Jihadis, who swore their allegiance to them, and pledged their lives to the cause.

  They were waging a holy war, secular in nature, but sacred nonetheless. Society didn't have to remain stagnant. Through empirical research new technology could end the tyranny of the Crusaders.

  The Jihadis knew how to fight, because they had been fighting to survive their entire lives, and they were tired of doing it. They rose through the ranks of the Crusaders, over a period of decades, and when they finally got the chance, they staged a bloody coup and handed power over to the sisters of the Lorian Sisterhood.

  Through diligent research and an almost religious passion for science, humanity was able to live in a golden age, one in which progress was finally possible and the sisters promised to send them to the stars. They brought together a group of the greatest minds in both planets and began a multigenerational project to solve the problem. It took more than 20 years to travel from one solar system to another, and ships were only capable of traveling at a fifth of the speed of light. The body cannot travel any faster than that, but if it could, it still wouldn't be enough to travel to the nearest system.

  They would have to find another way. They built wormholes, black holes and studied a myriad of other anomalies until they found the Regus Particle, a piece of matter that folded the space around it. When it was concentrated around an object, it could theoretically allow that object to travel from one place to another instantaneously, regardless of the distance.

  The day the first flight was supposed to take place, people gathered from all over Centaur A so that they could see the flight in person. When the ship finally took off it disappeared and was never heard from again.

  The calculations were off by a tiny fraction, too minute to matter in any other case, but they were wrong and that was enough to jettison the ship into the middle of a binary star almost a hundred light years from its target.

  The space folding engine was far too sensitive and had to be programmed with an algorithm that took into account every obstacle before it was encountered. It would take an intuitive mind, one far beyond the capacity of a human's, to pilot a space folding ship.

  The sisters began a project to create the greatest mind in the galaxy, a quantum network that could process data, countless times faster than the human brain and was ultimately capable of clairvoyant cognition. Once it was built, the system allowed men to travel from one system to another seamlessly without having to worry about whether or not they would be safe when they reached the other side.

  Humanity traveled the stars and encountered other races. They developed colonies, and eventually went to war. They found that many races were predatory, and lived by Payton's Law: What you don't kill will come back to kill you later.

  The sisters once again called upon the Jihadis and began a campaign known as the Blood Jihad. They decreed that the human mind was given to men by nature, because they are the rightful stewards of the galaxy. No other race has the right to rule.

  The Jihadis tore through the galaxy, destroying planet after planet, slaughtering entire Empires. They carved out a pocket in the galaxy to call their own. Every race they encountered was either enslaved or killed.

  The Jihadis came back from the war, and realized what they had done. It didn't matter how many systems they conquered;
They were still forced to subject themselves to the rule of the Lorian Sisterhood. They began to expand their power and eventually wrestled power away from the sisterhood. The sisters fled to the outer edges of the galaxy, but they didn't die off. The people still considered them to be the keepers of scientific knowledge, and they never forgot how they gave them the ability to harness the power of the Regus particle. They were revered as priestesses, a modern clergy who exercised power through their formidable propaganda machine and revolutionary innovations.

  The rise of the Jihadis marked the beginning of the Kaldean dynasty, a group of deified kings possessing all of the power of the prehistoric gods. They could engineer life, reign down fire from the heavens—anything they wanted could be brought to them instantaneously.

  Chapter 1: Synergy

  The Kaldean Dynasty allowed people lived better lives because when they united under one flag and one creed, they all worked for the same purpose. Human lifespans doubled. Man had all but conquered disease. Life was simple. People forgot the bloodshed that had built their Empire and just lived their lives as they were supposed to.

  This gave Antoni peace of mind. Even though he would one day become Emperor, his life would be easy. If there was trouble, he could dispatch the Jihadis, and live without knowing what it meant to see a man die or a planet destroyed.

  He didn't have to worry. He could sleep easy.

  “Wake up,” a sharp finger stabbed into his shoulder. He opened his eyes drowsily to see his tutor Cornel standing above him with an angry face.

  “I'm too tired today.”

  “You don't have a choice. Hurry up.” His black robe swished against the marble floor as he turned around and walked out, leaving Antoni to get ready for the day. He walked into his closet and slipped off his night shift so he could allow the sanitizer to clean his body and the robotic brushes to scrub him down. Then he turned slowly while his body was covered in a thin layer of moisturizers and healing sprays that worked to preserve his youth and repair the damage that had been done.

  He was young, barely twenty, a child in all respects, and he would maintain his youthful appearance for another fifty years before he began to mature physically. This wasn't just a product of his superior health, but also because of the various treatments he was given on a daily basis that lengthened his lifespan.

  In Sisterhood, in order to maintain stability the heir was expected to live as long as possible. When a ruler dies, there is doubt and a power vacuum that could threaten the integrity of the Empire. There were always individuals who wanted to take the heir's place, so his lifespan was lengthened to its limit. The Emperor's reign must feel like a staple in the daily life of the people. It should span generations in Sisterhood to give the people the illusion of permanence. It worked, and it was a wonderful privilege. While most citizens lived a little over 200 years, he lived to be five hundred.

  The process was a clandestine affair, given only to members of the royal family. Rejuvenation chemicals were given to him on a regular basis so that his cells could replenish after they became damaged. His organs were cleansed, and would be replaced later on in life, and he was given a number of genetic treatments in vitro so that his body could withstand the tests of time.

  He was a god. The people saw him as such, and they revered him. They called him the Holy Demiurge, a deity in a long line of deities that had conquered both nature and life in Sisterhood to build their society.

  Gods had to maintain their appearance, so he was very careful with what he wore, and kept himself in good shape. A long wire extended from the white marble wall through a small opening and attached itself to his arms. It stimulated his muscles, giving him the workout he needed in Sisterhood to maintain his superior physique. It moved through all of his major muscle groups, his pectorals, his abdomen and finally down his legs, sending tiny shocks through his skin.

  It tickled.

  When he was done, he turned around and began searching through his console. The computer would allow him to choose the perfect outfit for his body type, the mood reading the console got when he tapped the screen, and his schedule. It chose a pair of white, tight fitting leggings and a lavender shirt with a black hooded cloak that had a fur lining. He let the bots dress him and ran out of his room to meet Cornel.

  Chapter 2: Psyche

  There is nothing more beautiful than the mind, which nature deemed fit to give us so that we might have the ability to reason and the knowledge necessary to conquer the galaxy.

  --Manifesto, Santos Lorian Sisterhood

  The hallway that led to Antoni's sleeping chambers were lined on both sides by windows that offered a magnificent view of a pink gas giant. The titan structure was built in the sixth millennium of the Celestial era by Emperor Titus Florentine. He was obsessed with art in all its forms and worked to give the Empire's structures an aesthetic appeal that he believed would give the people a positive impression of the Empire. The result was a silver structure comprised of towers and tunnels that looked like a crystal jutting up towards the heavens.

  The palace's location was a closely guarded secret that changed every 24 hours. Only the fiercely loyal captain of the Jihadis was allowed to know of its location. Whenever somebody visited the palace, they were taken by escort and the location was encrypted in the ship's system so that neither the Jihadis nor the visitors could access it. Nobody traveled to the palace by any other means, even supply freighters traveled by escort.

  The Kaldean Emperors were secretive, every one of them. They were always so concerned with security. Many people believed that the people should have greater access to the Emperor, and that their precautions were unnecessary. There hadn't been an assassination attempt since the final years of the Blood Jihad, and that was thousands of years ago, but the Emperors preferred to keep the security measures in place. If they died, the Empire would crumble.

  Cornel was waiting at the end of the hall next to the lift, tapping his foot. It was a terrible habit, and the old man did it every single time he was about to lose his patience, which was often. You'd think that at his age he might've learned how to wait, but this wasn't the case with Cornel.

  “Are you waiting on the Jihadi?” Antoni walked up to where Cornel was standing.

  “They're always late, and they are always getting in the way.”

  Antoni couldn't argue with that. Everywhere he went, his father made sure that he had a guard by his side. “They'll be here soon.” A light above the lift door turned on and the guard walked out, wearing the customary crimson robe, with his puffed ginger face creeping out from underneath. It was red from drink. He was always drunk or about to be drunk, and that's why Antoni liked him.

  “Hurry it up,” Magnus barked and stepped inside so they can enter the lift.

  “Was it approved?” Cornel turned to the man.

  “Was what approved?” Antoni turned towards the men who ignored him.

  “I don't see why you want to take him out on a transport anyways.”

  “A transport!?” His poor attitude melted away. It was rare that Antoni was allowed to leave the palace.

  “I don't expect you to understand.” Cornel turned to the guard, “You have the mind of a child.”

  The guard grunted, looking like he wanted to strike the man, but he held his temper and led them to the transport bay. Antoni was anxious. It all felt wrong. He'd never been in a transport before. The pods were usually reserved for hull maintenance and thruster repair, things that were normally handled by slaves.

  Nonetheless, he was taken out onto the metal grate floors, where slaves wearing black collars around their myriad forms, were moving around maintaining the ships. All of their freewill had been taken from them, but he imagined that if they didn't have to wear their collars they would be staring. Nobody like him ever went down there.

  The guard walked beside him, looking from left to right, displaying the usual paranoia you always find in the Jihadis. To them, everything was a threat. Magnus wasn't as ba
d as the rest, but he took himself far too seriously.

  Cornel led them to a small pod at the back end of the bay, which had been outfitted with what looked like plasma cannons. That must've been a recent addition. The slaves wouldn't have been allowed to drive a ship with a plasma cannon, even if they were wearing their collars.

  Antoni stared at it for a second while Magnus opened the door and rushed in. Cornel was tapping his feet. “After you.” He motioned for Antoni to go inside. He walked in slowly, taking in everything. It was simple circular room with a control console at the front where there was a window and an array of sensors, none of which he recognized. There was also a bench where he was allowed to sit and wait while Cornel manned the controls. He looked back at Magnus and said, “I'll have to ask you to keep quiet while I try to give the boy his lesson.”

  “I'll fucking do as I please. Now hurry up.”

  The docking port opened and the ship began its departure. Antoni felt nothing at all except for the anticipation that was moving over his skin. Even thought the ship was moving, it felt like they were sitting still. “Why is it that you can't feel the ship moving,” he whispered to the Jihadi.

  “There's no resistance in space. The movement that you feel when you are in a transport is from the air rushing by.”

  “Strange.”

  They waited silently while the ship slowly left the bay and moved out into space. When they stopped they were only a few hundred meters away from the palace, but it felt like lightyears. All Antoni could see was the stars laid out before him.

  He wanted to get into a space folder and visit every one of them. He hated being stuck in the palace. He was young. He should be allowed to move around. Normal citizens his age were allowed to own their own ship, and many were even allowed to marry. They were adults, and he was being treated like a child.

  Cornel turned back to Antoni. “Tell me about the events that led to the Blood Jihad,” he said.