AURORA RISING
The history of humanity is the history of conflict. This proved no less true in the 24th century than in ancient times.
By 2322, humanity inhabited over 100 worlds spread across a third of the galaxy. When a group of colonies rebelled two decades earlier, it set off the First Crux War. Once the dust cleared, three factions emerged: the Earth Alliance, consisting of the unified Earth government and most of the colonies; the Senecan Federation, which had won its independence in the war; and a handful of scattered non-aligned worlds, home to criminal cartels, corporate interests and people who made their living outside the system.
Alexis Solovy was a space explorer. Her father gave his life in the war against the Federation, leading her to reject the government and military. Estranged from her mother, an Alliance military leader, Alex instead sought the freedom of space and made a fortune chasing the hidden wonders of the stars.
A chance encounter between Alex and a Federation intelligence agent, Caleb Marano, led them to discover an armada of alien warships emerging from a mysterious portal in the Metis Nebula.
The Metigens had been watching humanity via the portal for millennia; in an effort to forestall their discovery, they used traitors among civilization’s elite to divert people’s focus. When their plans failed, they invaded in order to protect their secrets.
The wars that ensued were brutal—first an engineered war between the Alliance and the Federation, then once it was revealed to be built on false pretenses, devasting clashes against the Metigen invaders as they advanced across settled space, destroying every colony in their path and killing tens of millions.
Alex and Caleb breached the aliens’ portal in an effort to find a way to stop the invaders. There they encountered the Metigen watcher of the Aurora universe, Mnemosyne. Though enigmatic and evasive, the alien revealed the invading ships were driven by AIs and hinted the answer to defeating them lay in the merger of individuals with the powerful but dangerous quantum computers known as Artificials.
Before leaving, Alex and Caleb discovered a colossal master gateway that generated 51 unique signals, each one leading to a new portal and a new universe. But with humanity facing extinction, they returned home armed with a daring plan to win the war.
Four Prevos (human-synthetic meldings) were created in a desperate gambit to vanquish the enemy invaders before they reached the heart of civilization; then they were given command of the combined might of the Alliance and Federation militaries. Alex and her Artificial, Valkyrie, led the other Prevos and the military forces against the alien AI warships in climactic battles above Seneca and Romane. The invaders were defeated and ordered to withdraw through their portal, cease their observation of Aurora and not return.
During the battle, hints of the consciousness of her deceased father manifested in the shared connection between Alex and Valkyrie. Alex reconciled with her mother during the final hours of the war, and following their victory Alex and Caleb married and attempted to resume a normal life.
But new mysteries waited through the Metis portal. Six months later, Caleb, Alex and Valkyrie traversed it once more, determined to learn the secrets of the portal network and the multiverses it held, leaving humanity behind to struggle with a new world of powerful quantum synthetics, posthumans, and an uneasy peace.
And in the realm beyond the portal, Mnemosyne watched.
AURORA RENEGADES
Following the victory over the Metigens, Alex, Caleb and Valkyrie set off to unlock the secrets of the Metigens’ portal network. Discovering worlds of infinite wonder, they made both enemies and friends. A sentient planet, Akeso, that left a lasting mark on Alex and Caleb both. Silica-based beings attempting to grow organic life. A race of cat-like warriors locked in conflict with their brethren.
Behind them all, the whispered machinations of the Metigen puppet masters pervaded everything. In some universes, the Metigens tested weapons. In some, they set aliens against each other in new forms of combat. In yet more, they harvested food and materials to send through the massive portal at the heart of the maze.
But Alex and Caleb found yet another layer to the puzzle. In one universe, they discovered a gentle race of underground beings with a strange history. Their species was smuggled out of the universe beyond the master portal by the Metigens. They watched as their homeworld was destroyed by a powerful species known as Anadens; but for the Metigens, they would have perished as well.
Back home in Aurora, the peace proved difficult to maintain. The heroes of the war—the Prevos who melded their minds with AIs—found themselves targeted by politicians and a restless population desperate for a place to pin their fears. Under the direction of a new, power-hungry Earth Alliance PM, the government moved to cage and shackle them.
In desperation, the Prevos uploaded the AIs’ consciousnesses into their own minds, fled from their governments’ grasp and disappeared onto independent colonies. Devon published the details of the Prevo link to the exanet, unleashing its capabilities for anyone who wanted to follow in their footsteps.
Meanwhile, an anti-synthetic terrorist group emerged to oppose them, fueled by the rise of Olivia Montegreu as a Prevo. While the private face of Prevos was the heroes who defeated the Metigens, the public face became the image of Olivia killing a colonial governor and tossing him off of a building in front of the world.
Unaware of the struggles her fellow Prevos faced, Alex forged her own path forward. Rather than bringing the AI into herself, she pushed out and through Valkyrie, into the walls of the Siyane. Piloting her ship in a way she never dreamed, Alex was able to feel the photonic brilliance of space itself. Over time, however, that bond began to capture more of her spirit and mind.
On the surface of a destroyed planet, Mesme at last revealed all. The portal network, which the Metigens call the Mosaic, was above all else a refuge for those targeted for eradication by the Anadens. And the Anadens, rulers of the true universe through the master portal, were the genetic template upon which humanity was built. Aurora was nothing more than another experiment of the Metigens, created so they could study the development and nature of their enemy and the enemy of all life.
Alex and Caleb returned to Aurora to find a galaxy rocked by chaos. After the execution of Olivia Montegreu by Alliance and Prevo forces, Miriam had gone rogue. Under her careful planning, a resistance force, bolstered by help from inside the Senecan and Alliance militaries, moved to remove the despotic Alliance PM.
As Alex struggled with her growing addiction to an ethereal, elemental realm, she felt herself being pulled away from reality. Away from her husband, her mother, her friends. She watched as those she loved fought, but increasingly found herself losing her own battle.
When terrorists staged a massive riot on Romane, Dr. Canivon, the mother of the Prevos, was murdered in front of Devon and Alex. Overcome by her own and Valkyrie’s grief, Alex unleashed the explosive power of the ethereal realm to destroy the terrorists’ safehouse. Standing in the rubble of her destruction, Alex made a decision to sever the quantum connection between herself and the Siyane, choosing a tangible, human life. Choosing Caleb.
Miriam wrested control of the EA government away from the PM, bringing an end to the Prevo persecution. In the wake of victory, however, a shadowy Anaden hunter emerged from the darkness to attack Alex and Caleb. Caleb was gravely injured when the Anaden’s power, known as diati, leapt into him, healing his wounds and helping him kill the alien.
Mesme revealed the ominous consequences of the attack. Soon, the Anaden leadership would discover Aurora. When they did, they would destroy it unless humanity could stand against them. Mesme told Miriam and the others to prepare, but knowing the end game was upon them, asked Alex and Caleb to come to Amaranthe. The master universe. The home and dominion of the Anadens.
AURORA RESONANT
In Aurora, Miriam led the formation of a multi-agency, multi-governmental (GCDA) and military (AEGIS) organization dedicated to meeting the imminent threat of the Anadens.
In Amaranthe, Alex and Caleb discovered an underground ‘anarch’ resistance movement against the Anaden Directorate. They made contact with an anarch agent, Eren asi-Idoni, and he helped them infiltrate the Anadens’ Machim military command and steal secret information on the Machim fleets. Alex and Caleb were captured, but not before Valkyrie uploaded the information they sought. Eren ‘nulled out’ rather than being captured, for when Anadens died they underwent a regenesis procedure that returned their consciousness to a new body.
Valkyrie transmitted the data to AEGIS then returned to Amaranthe. When Eren reawakened, he joined Valkyrie and Mesme on the Siyane, and they rescued Alex and Caleb from the prison where they were being tortured for information.
The Directorate nonetheless learned the full truth about the Metigens/Katasketousya creation of Aurora and ordered a fleet to deliver a powerful weapon known as a Tartarus Trigger to Aurora and annihilate humanity. Forewarned, Miriam led a fleet of warships into Amaranthe to intercept them.
The battle commenced with the destruction of the one known gateway into the Mosaic, and Mesme sneaked onto the lead Machim warship and stole the Tartarus Trigger. Humanity used its Prevos, Rifts and other tricks to take the Anadens by surprise and prevail in the battle. Afterward, Alex, Caleb, Miriam and Mesme were summoned to a secret meeting with the leader of the anarchs, Danilo Nisi, and a tenuous alliance was formed.
AEGIS scored several early victories but also devastating losses. While the battles raged, Alex and the other Prevos developed a method for using sidespace to open physical wormholes, enabling AEGIS vessels to travel anywhere in known space without using the Anaden gateway system.
The AEGIS fleet attacked the Machim homeworld, destroying the Dyson rings encircling its sun and blowing up their orbital military command station. At the same time, Nisi broadcast an impassioned speech across the empire setting forth the Directorate’s sins and the anarch’s mission to free those oppressed.
In a flashback Caleb’s diati showed him, it was revealed that Nisi was actually Corradeo Praesidis, the former leader of the powerful Anaden Praesidis dynasty. Many millennia ago, his son tried to kill him; thinking him dead, the son stole his name, face and power, and now served on the Directorate as the Praesidis Primor.
Valkyrie and her twin, Vii, had spent months rebuilding the consciousness of David Solovy that manifested during the final battle of the Metigen War. Using the Anadens’ regenesis technology, they transferred his consciousness to a cloned body, and he and Miriam were reunited after twenty-five years.
The Directorate tracked an AEGIS vessel to the primary anarch base and launched a surprise attack, and a bloody battle followed in orbit and on the ground. To stop a Machim warship from bombing the base with antimatter missiles, Alex re-established her ethereal connection with the Siyane to bypass the warship’s shielding and destroy it; in doing so, she found the connection no longer exerted the damaging hold on her it once did.
Alex soon discovered a way to use the supradimensional properties of the mysterious Reor mineral to access the contents of the Reor slabs used by the Directorate to store sensitive information. She uncovered the location of the Directorate’s regenesis backups, and AEGIS and the anarchs devised a plan to take out the entire Directorate, permanently, in one massive strike.
For all but two of the Directorate members, the mission succeeded with minimal losses. However, the Machim Primor escaped his assassination attempt. Armed with the location of one of the Mosaic gateways, he acquired a new Tartarus Trigger and raced to wipe out the Aurora universe.
On Solum (Earth’s twin), Caleb engaged the Praesidis Primor in a battle of staggeringly powerful diati, and the diati freed when the Primor died rampaged wild. Caleb couldn’t wrestle it under control, and it killed millions before destroying the planet itself.
The anarchs learned that the Primors kept an additional regenesis backup stored on their secret space station, the Protos Agora, which orbited the Milky Way galactic core. The Stalwart II took the Tartarus Trigger Mesme stole at the start of the conflict and used it to destroy the station.
Just when they believed they had finally achieved victory, they discovered the Machim Primor’s plans. The Primor had a head start, and the only way to try to prevent him from destroying Aurora was for the Kats to disconnect it from the Mosaic, rendering it unreachable forever. Caleb, however, instead used his now total control over diati to command the cosmic force to pull all the pocket universes in the Mosaic—including Aurora—into Amaranthe, then destroy the Mosaic.
He succeeded, but the energy the act required killed him. While Miriam and the others worked out what it meant for all of humanity to now exist in Amaranthe, Alex took Caleb to the living planet of Akeso and, via the deep connection they shared, Akeso brought him back to life.
ASTERION NOIR
On the planet of Mirai in the Gennisi galaxy, a woman woke up in a rain-soaked alley with no memory of who she was or how she’d gotten there. Two strangers found her and offered to take her in. When asked, she told them her name was Nika, though she didn’t know why.
Fast forward to five years later. Nika, alongside her rescuers Perrin and Joaquim, led a group of rebels called NOIR against the despotic government of the Asterion Dominion. An insidious virutox was infecting people’s programming, altering their personalities and causing them to commit inexplicable crimes. NOIR’s investigation of the virutox brought them to Dashiel Ridani, who Nika learned was her lover in her prior life, before she lost her memory.
With her world thrown into disarray, Nika and Dashiel chased the threads of her lost identity while searching for the source of the virutox. Their search led them to the leaders of the Asterion Dominion, the Guides. Nika broke into the Guides’ data vault, where she found they had ordered her psyche-wipe five years earlier after she pressed them on a series of disappearances.
Meanwhile, Gemina Kail, an Administration Advisor, traveled to an alien stronghold across the galaxy, where she delivered thousands of Asterions in stasis chambers to an alien species called the Rasu.
As the virutox spread, wreaking increasing havoc across the Dominion, Justice Advisor Adlai Weiss traced the source to the Guides’ doorstep. They ordered him to drop the case and let the virutox propagate among the population. He disobeyed, developed a vaccine and contacted NOIR for help in distributing it.
Across the galaxy, Nika and Dashiel discovered the stronghold of the alien Rasu. A metal-based shapeshifting species of immense power, they’d constructed hundreds of thousands of warships and space stations. Armed with this terrifying information, Nika and Dashiel returned to Mirai.
One of the Guides, Delacrai, defied the others to help Nika. She shared how an Asterion scout ship encountered the Rasu eight years ago; the crew was captured and killed. The Rasu grew interested in the Asterions’ unique bio-synthetic intelligence powered by kyoseil and quantum programming, and in return for not attacking Asterion Dominion worlds, they demanded a regular supply of Asterions to experiment on. The Guides agreed.
The other Advisors were told the terrible truth about the Rasu and the Guides’ deal with the aliens. They scrambled to undo the damage eight years of the Rasu Protocol had inflicted while racing to find a way to respond to an impending Rasu deadline, when the aliens expected more Asterions to be delivered.
Nika’s oldest friend from her former life, Maris Debray, revealed that both she and Nika were members of the “First Generation”: Asterions who had never erased their psyches in the 700,000 years since they fled the Anaden Empire and created themselves as a new species by merging Anaden DNA, AI programming and the kyoseil mineral. Only a few dozen of the First Generation remained, and their history was kept secret from everyone else.
With time running out, Nika sought the help of the Sogain, an enigmatic species who once threatened the Asterions with extinction if they ever trespassed on Sogain territory. This time, the aliens disclosed the location of a single, stranded Rasu.
An Asterion team captured the Rasu and brought it to Mirai for interrogation. The creature revealed that the Rasu exhibited a collective intelligence when physically connected to other Rasu, but regained independent thought when they were separated. They intended to use kyoseil to control other Rasu over great distances, as kyoseil was supradimensional, deeply interconnected and one of the universe’s oldest life forms.
Using this knowledge, the Asterions identified a way to link their consciousnesses together via kyoseil. They dubbed these connections ‘ceraffin’ and used them to develop a plan to face the Rasu.
They constructed volatile electricity bombs to be sneaked into the Rasu stronghold. The Rasu were expecting 8,000 Asterions in stasis chambers, so Nika used the ceraff structure to split her psyche into shards inhabiting 8,000 copies of herself.
The copies were delivered to the Rasu as expected, and they awoke inside the Rasu’s lab on their primary space station. Chaos ensued as they fought to reach the power control center, even as they were cut down by the thousands. A mere dozen made it to the control center, and a single instance survived to override the power safeguards.
Dashiel detonated the electricity bombs, and a cascading power overload ripped through the stronghold. It destroyed the Rasu’s Dyson lattice, which triggered an intense surge in solar flare activity, and all the Rasu stations and vessels were incinerated, save one vessel that escaped through a wormhole.
The Asterions recognized this was not the end of the conflict, but the beginning, and they needed to prepare for the Rasu’s return. Nika was contacted by the Sogain, who informed her the Anaden Empire of old had fallen and suggested she might find allies among the new one which had risen to take its place.
Nika journeyed to the Asterions’ ancestral home, the Milky Way. Before she arrived, however, a wormhole opened in the cabin of her ship, and Alex Solovy walked through it.
Riven Worlds
Fourteen years have passed since the events of AURORA RESONANT. Caleb has fully bonded with Akeso, the living planet that saved his life, and he and Alex have made their home there.
Alex introduced Nika to Concord, the multi-species government formed after The Displacement to take the place of the deposed Anaden Directorate. Miriam served as its military leader and Mia its diplomatic one, while the major species of the former Anaden Empire were represented equally in a Senate. Nika warned Concord of the Rasu and received a cautious promise of support, as well as the opening of diplomatic relations. When Nika returned home to the Asterion Dominion, she discovered the other Advisors had created the Omoikane Initiative, a massive project designed to accelerate technology, warfare and logistical plans to combat the Rasu.
Concord was facing conflict on two additional fronts. Negotiations for the Savrakaths, a lizard-evolved Mosaic species, to become an ally of Concord broke down when CINT discovered they were developing antimatter weapons; Marlee, Caleb’s niece, also discovered they were enslaving another species, the Godjans.
The lack of a strong Anaden leader led several elassons to foment a rebellion against Concord. Torval elasson-Machim took it upon himself to bomb the Savrakath’s antimatter facility; unbeknownst to him, Eren was leading a team surveilling it, and Eren’s lover, Cosime, was killed in the attack. Meanwhile, Malcolm was captured by the enemy during a mission to rescue Godjans on Savrak. When Concord approved an alliance with the Asterion Dominion, Ferdinand elasson-Kyvern began a coup to overthrow Concord.
The Rasu launched an attack on the Asterion world of Namino, and Concord sent a fleet to defend their new ally. They were unprepared, however, for how difficult the Rasu were to kill, and the battle turned against them. A leviathan shapeshifted to swallow Miriam’s ship, the Stalwart II, and Rasu infiltrated the vessel. Miriam activated the ship’s self-destruct mechanism to prevent the Rasu from acquiring Concord secrets, killing everyone on board.
The Rasu reached the Namino surface and activated a quantum block, cutting the planet off from the Asterions’ d-gate network. Marlee was injured by a Rasu and trapped on the planet; some Asterions were able to rescue her and retreated to an underground bunker. Caleb stole a ship and went to Namino to find Marlee. He joined the Asterions trapped there in attempting to disrupt the Rasu invasion, at great personal cost to him due to Akeso’s aversion to violence.
AEGIS marines defeated Ferdinand’s coup attempt, and Ferdinand fled to a safe house with a group of sympathetic elassons. Corradeo Praesidis and his granddaughter, Nyx, returned to Concord after a fourteen-year absence. Disturbed by the state of Anaden affairs, Corradeo decided to resume the mantle of leadership and attempt to wrest control away from Ferdinand and the rebelling elassons.
Miriam became one of the first humans to be returned to life via regenesis. She struggled with the transition, as well as with maintaining control of Concord after the coup attempt. Alex and Kennedy reverse-engineered the Machin double-shielding technology and deployed it on AEGIS ships to prevent the Rasu from boarding vessels in the future. Further, the Kats began delivering Rift Bubble devices that created an impermeable barrier around a planet.
The Savrakaths lied and told Concord that Malcolm was dead. Mia, seeking revenge, tricked the Anadens into attacking the Savrakaths; when her deceptions were discovered, she became a fugitive.
Alex and Nika, along with Morgan, traveled to Namino and located Caleb and the others. Together they infiltrated the Rasu stronghold and destroyed the quantum block. A Rift Bubble device was activated on Namino, and the Concord fleet defeated the Rasu occupying the planet.
Malcolm escaped his Savrakath prison and returned home, surprising everyone. Mia, devasted by his apparent death, refused to reconcile with him so long as he declined regenesis. While in hiding on Pandora, Mia encountered Enzio Vilane, a wealthy businessman and secret mob boss with a notable family lineage. When he tried and failed to kidnap her, she agreed to a plea deal with the authorities and returned to Romane—but not to Malcolm.
Corradeo disbanded the rebel elasson group and established a new, Concord-friendly Anaden government. He convinced a brokenhearted Eren to come work for him as an intelligence agent.
Alex and Caleb investigated rumors of an advanced civilization, the Ourankeli, annihilated by the Rasu. They found a lone survivor, who told them of the powerful weapon they created to kill the Rasu (and how they used it too late to save themselves). The three of them traveled to the last settlement of Ourankeli, rescued them from a Rasu attack, and brought the refugees to Concord.
The Savrakaths sneaked an antimatter bomb onto Concord HQ. Richard and David were able to find and disarm it seconds before detonation. In response, the Kats exiled the Savrakaths, trapping their planet inside a modified Rift Bubble.
The Rasu reappeared to attack Toki’taku. The Taiyoks refused a Rift Bubble, but together with a Concord fleet, the Asterions were able to deploy their new Rima Grenades to beat back Rasu forces. However, the Rasu captured an unprotected Concord vessel and, now armed with the location of Concord, launched an assault on the Khokteh world of Ireltse.
The Concord fleet arrived at Ireltse to find it under massive Rasu assault. When the Rasu deployed a quantum block, Valkyrie temporarily sacrificed herself to protect Alex. After Alex and Caleb destroyed the quantum block, Concord forces defeated the attackers. Pinchu was gravely injured in the Rasu offensive, but Caleb healed him using Akeso’s life energy. After Valkyrie rebooted herself, we learned she was in a relationship with Thomas, the Aurora’s Artificial.
An anti-regenesis terrorist group called the Gardiens, led by Enzio Vilane, attempted to assassinate Miriam to discredit regenesis technology. Malcolm went undercover to infiltrate the group, while Richard uncovered evidence that Enzio was the son of Olivia Montegreu. Separately, it was revealed that Enzio had reconstituted Olivia from scattered records of her Artificial and neural imprints.
Morgan rejected Marlee's romantic advance, prompting Marlee to pursue dangerous cybernetic upgrades; Morgan decided to rejoin the military. Corradeo opened formal diplomatic relations between the Anaden Advocacy and the Asterion Dominion, and Nika gave her friend Maris the task of negotiating with Corradeo.
When the Rasu attacked the synthetic Ruda homeworld, the Ruda struck a deal with their fellow machines, agreeing to betray Concord in exchange for shapeshifting technology. They forced Miriam's fleet to withdraw by threatening to turn their planet into a massive EMP weapon.
Judging Nika’s kyoseil manipulation abilities had reached a threshold, Mesme brought Nika to the Reor colony in the Oneiroi Nebula. Nika plunged into a pure energy pillar, absorbing its power, and emerged transformed.
Following Nika's transformative encounter with kyoseil in the Oneiroi Nebula, Alex challenged Mesme for an explanation. Mesme said everything it did was to save the people—Alex, Caleb, Nika, Dashiel, Miriam, Corradeo—who would save the universe, if it could be saved. Their argument ended with Alex still angry and distrustful of Mesme.
Nika discovered her new abilities allowed her to open wormholes, control kyoseil actions, and perceive all kyoseil interactions across space. She enabled other Asterions to access wormholes and began experiencing glimpses of their thoughts.
During a dinner party on Akeso, Nika forced Mesme to reveal that the planet was created using kyoseil, explaining Caleb's persistent connection to Akeso across quantum barriers. This revelation led Alex to deduce that diati seeded the Kats' Ekos-1 intelligence, while Dzhvar seeded Ekos-3. Mesme revealed kyoseil's ancient origins as the third primordial species alongside diati and Dzhvar.
The Rasu launched devastating attacks on multiple worlds, but Miriam successfully used the new Ymyrath Field device based on the Ourankeli weapon. Escalating their offensive, the Rasu began using antimatter weapons capable of destroying adiamene.
During a Rasu attack on Mirai, Nika deployed the Asterions' new miniature Rift devices called Kireme Boundaries. While managing multiple devices remotely, she became lost in the kyoseil consciousness until Dashiel rescued her. Recovery proved difficult as other Asterions' thoughts bombarded her mind, until Mesme taught her to block the mental intrusions.
As Rasu attacks intensified, Alex and Nika devised a desperate gambit. They injected captured Rasu with a virutox containing kyoseil information, then infiltrated Rasu systems to release these “saboteurs,” spreading intelligence about kyoseil throughout Rasu networks. Nika reluctantly asked the kyoseil to activate its abilities for the Rasu, knowing the enemy desired kyoseil to control their distant sub-units.
While they worked, Alex noted how Mesme knew what was going to happen at the Oneiroi Nebula and wondered if Mesme might be a time traveler. Nika argued time travel was impossible, but Alex posited that with enough energy applied to a point on the spacetime manifold, it might be possible.
On Hirlas, Caleb, Eren, and Felzeor became trapped during a Rasu assault. Cornered at a waterfall with no escape, Caleb made a desperate sacrifice, bleeding into the planet's soil and water. Through his blood, Akeso channeled its life force into Hirlas itself. The planet awakened and systematically annihilated every Rasu present, reducing them to atoms before tearing the atoms apart. Caleb nearly died from blood loss, but Akeso kept him alive, and Akeso's consciousness now resided permanently in Hirlas.
Internal conflicts erupted among Rasu factions, triggering the civil war Alex and Nika hoped to incite. The Rasu abruptly withdrew from their invasion to engage in battles within their own territory. Miriam reacted with fury upon learning of Alex and Nika's actions, fearing the eventual victor would prove unstoppable. Alex argued they faced imminent defeat and she’d bought crucial time.
Alex and Nika confronted Mesme with their time travel theory. Mesme confirmed it traveled back 982,000 years from eight years in the future, and that events were progressing better than in the previous timeline. The confrontation ended with Alex and Mesme reconciling, though Mesme admitted to keeping one final personal secret that didn’t affect their war against the Rasu—its former identity.
Two months after Alex and Nika used kyoseil to kick off a Rasu civil war, Miriam and the Rasu War Council worked diligently to strengthen defenses on Concord worlds, while using the Ymyrath Field weapon to strategically disrupt the civil war when one faction started to gain the upper hand.
Malcolm stepped up his infiltration of the Gardiens in an attempt to uncover evidence needed to expose Enzio Vilane and his nefarious plans. In order to protect Mia, he continued to avoid any contact with her. Enzio engineered a series of regenesis mishaps and tainted neural imprints in order to sow misgivings about regenesis among the public.
Alex and Nika investigated the Rasu Stygian faction’s suspicious inactivity, discovering that Stygian territory was saturated with kyoseil and populated by massive Rasu forces. On the other side of Stygian territory, Alex detected a mysterious scar across the spacetime manifold.
Alex told Miriam how she believed Stygian was the biggest threat. They had a heart-to-heart in which Miriam acknowledged that neither she nor Alex was entirely wrong or entirely right about the wisdom of provoking the Rasu civil war, and they reconciled.
Corradeo confessed a huge secret to Nyx: Eren, Corradeo and Corradeo’s wife, Lauren, were close friends during the first anarch rebellion over two hundred millennia ago. When the Directorate crushed the rebellion and killed Lauren, they took Eren captive and erased his memory. Corradeo and Maris continued to warm up to each other, becoming friends with a side of flirtation.
The Earth Alliance government discovered that Kennedy secretly provided the adiamene formula to the Asterions. Kennedy had to go before the Assembly to testify, where she engaged in some slick legal maneuvering. She donated the adiamene patent to a special Concord program to provide for the common defense, thereby evading criminal liability and allowing the other Concord species to begin to use adiamene to protect their ships.
Malcolm uncovered evidence of the Gardiens’ sabotage of regenesis clinics, and Richard activated law enforcement to officially move against Enzio and the Gardiens.
With authorities closing in, Enzio blew up several regenesis facilities in terrorist attacks then fled with his mother, Olivia, to a safehouse on Scythia. While there, he saw a clip of Mia on the news and recognized her as the woman he’d clashed with on Pandora. He connected Mia to Malcolm and realized that Malcolm had betrayed him. Enraged, he vowed revenge.
The Rasu moved into the final stages of their civil war as Stygian surged forth to steamroll over everyone. Before long, Stygian used kyoseil to control the entirety of Rasu territory.
Alex discovered Mesme and Miaon together on a hidden planet with a log cabin similar to the one Mesme had on Portal Prime. She deduced that Miaon was Mesme one additional cycle back in the time loop. Mesme revealed that traversing a time rift was a brutally violent event no living, material being could survive. After traversing such a rift twice, a shadow was all that remained of Miaon’s consciousness. It nonetheless made the trip in order to be Mesme’s guide and mentor.
Mesme told Alex that the continued existence of all living things depended on her gazing out into the universe and understanding it—on her being right, one more time.
Malcolm visited his church to pray over matters and made a decision about regenesis. He received a message from Mia in which she said she’d made peace with his refusal to opt in to regenesis and wanted him back in her life. They agreed to meet for lunch. On her way to a meeting, Mia was attacked, drugged and kidnapped. Enzio informed Malcolm that he had Mia and planned to kill her, but not before he tortured her. Malcolm embarked on a crusade to find and save her.
While Enzio was busy with Mia, Olivia traveled to Itero, an independent colony she once controlled back in Aurora. There, she located a hidden facility where she’d kept a worst-case-scenario backup of her Artificial. She connected to the backup and merged her current memories with it, then awakened as her old self, stronger than ever.
Malcolm infiltrated Vilane's beach house on Scythia. He rescued Mia and killed Vilane, but during their struggle, Vilane fatally wounded Malcolm with an adiamene blade. Malcolm died in Mia's arms; overcome with fury and despair, Mia used sidespace to destroy all of Enzio’s quantum hardware, not just at Scythia but at every storage location, ensuring he’d never be resurrected.
Olivia narrowly escaped being destroyed by Mia’s conflagration, but was saved by the fact that she was connected to her siloed backup on Itero.
The Asterions captured two Rasu samples linked by kyoseil. Nika used her kyoseil as a conduit for Akeso’s poison, and together she and Caleb killed both Rasu without touching them. The moral implications greatly burdened both Caleb and Nika, but they put together a plan to stop the Rasu.
In order to protect the Siyane and themselves, Alex and Valkyrie transformed the hull of the Siyane into the Asterions’ adaptive version of adiamene, adiaK, so the ship could be seamless.
A heartbroken Mia was trying to carry on when Malcolm showed up, alive and well. It turned out he’d revoked his ‘no regenesis’ clause, and was awakened in a new body. They enjoyed a beautiful reunion.
The Galenai unexpectedly reached out to Concord, sending a message that they wanted to meet their observers. Marlee rushed to the planet, where she spoke with a Galenai representative, telling them about space and other planets and Concord.
The Rasu launched their invasion across Concord space, sending massive forces to dozens of locations simultaneously.
At Earth, the Rasu knocked the moon out of orbit, intending to crash it into the planet. Malcolm gathered a force to disintegrate the moon before it could reach the planet, thus saving Earth.
At Concord HQ, the Rasu deployed a new weapon able to punch a hole in the Rift Bubble protecting HQ. Rasu mechs wormholed inside and began rampaging through the station. They deployed a quantum block, trapping everyone inside.
Alex, Caleb, Nika and Valkyrie arrived at the homeworld of the Rasu and infiltrated their continent-sized home base. Nika accessed their nerve center, from where orders were being sent out to all Rasu. Together, Caleb and Nika sent out Akeso’s poison to all the Rasu via kyoseil. While they did so, Alex worked to protect them.
On HQ, Richard and Devon teamed up to make a likely suicidal run to destroy the Rasu’s quantum block so people could get off the station. Miriam and David were trapped together in the war room; due to the quantum block, Miriam had lost all contact with her fleets. They were sharing a tender moment when the Rasu exploited the seams in the door to infiltrate the room. On Earth, Seneca and other worlds, ever more Rasu arrived to overpower the defense forces. On Mirai, facing imminent death, Corradeo and Maris gave in to their feelings for one another.
On Rasu Prime, Rasu mechs invaded the nerve center, eventually overwhelming Alex. She was speared by a mech and died, but Valkyrie transferred Alex’s consciousness into the Siyane at the last minute. Unaware of what happened, Caleb and Nika forced a final surge of the poison, and abruptly all the Rasu vessels out in space died. On HQ and across Concord worlds, the enemy fell, and the day was won in the nick of time.
Caleb killed the Rasu remaining on Rasu Prime, and only then found Alex’s body—then discovered she was still alive in the ship. He took her body to the Siyane, and Akeso reinfused it with life.
During her surreal experience, Alex figured out several things. The scar she discovered near Rasu Prime was evidence of how the Dzhvar imbued the Rasu with their essence in the moment before the diati drove them off the manifold a million years ago. She and Nika confronted Mesme, and it confessed the truth. In its cycle, eight years from now, the Dzhvar returned and resumed consuming the fabric of spacetime. When the universe was about to collapse, Mesme used the Dzhvar’s own energy to open a time rift and return to the time of the first Dzhvar war.
Alex started quizzing Mesme on how they could defeat the Dzhvar, when she made an unexpected connection: Mesme’s winged avatar was identical to the tattoo on Nika’s back. Mesme was Nika in the last cycle.
Mesme confirmed her suspicion, but begged her not to tell Nika, saying when Nika learned the truth, it would break her, because it broke Mesme. Dashiel wouldn’t be able to accompany her; she would have to leave everyone she cared about behind for a million years. Mesme had taken the Asterion’s Vault with it into the past, but only the programs underlying the people; the consciousnesses and their memories were destroyed in the journey. Mesme used the Asterion programs to create the Katasketousya.
With great reluctance, Alex agreed to keep Mesme’s secret, but only because she vowed to find a way to defeat the Dzhvar once and for all, break the time loop, and save everyone.
Cosmic Shores
Medusa Falling
On Belarria, Marlee was kidnapped after witnessing the murder of her diplomatic counterpart. The murderer, Galean, belonged to a revolutionary group that sheltered escaped desbida, telepaths imprisoned because their capabilities threatened the corrupt shadow government. Despite initially being held captive, Marlee became invested in their cause, helping them broadcast the truth about the desbida, exposing the conspiracy and fighting for the freedom of the oppressed telepaths.
The Thief
Eren followed a thief named Tolje home to the Hesgyr’s massive space station, Nythir. There, he learned the Hesgyr were under attack from a mysterious enemy.
Nyx soon joined Eren on Nythir, and they tracked the attacks to the Phae’soon, a species the Hesgyr previously robbed of a crucial defensive weapon, leaving the Phae’soon unprotected when the Rasu invaded. Rather than allow either side to commit genocide against the other, Eren, Nyx and Tolje destroyed the Phae’soon’s weapon.
While on Nythir, Eren and Nyx succumbed to their attraction to one another and slept together. Still mourning the loss of Cosime, Eren felt tremendous guilt afterwards, and he and Nyx agreed to keep their relationship professional.
The Universe Within
While searching for signs of the Dzhvar’s return, Alex and Caleb located a tear in the cosmic manifold and discovered a hidden star system inhabited by the Elakri.
Laurent, an Elakrin physicist, had discovered the same tear; his discovery made him the target of the Khesa Prutet, the dominant religious organization. Alex and Caleb rescued him from an assassination attempt, then hired a truva named Deunan to protect him.
The group learned the Elakri once lived in normal space, until they built a dimensional machine called the Piega Strai to hide them from the Rasu. Civil war had broken out when rebels tried to force a return to normal space; the conflict destroyed their historical records, and in time the Elakri forgot their origins.
Deunan turned out to be the descendant of the KP’s founders. She reunited with her estranged brother Arien, a cop who was unknowingly hunting her while investigating Laurent's case.
The Piega Strai was breaking down, threatening to collapse the pocket universe. In order to save the planet, Alex entered the Piega Strai’s core and dissolved the barrier of the pocket universe, returning the Elakri to Amaranthe. But as she did so, Alex and Caleb both sensed the emergence of a mysterious energy they suspected was the Dzhvar.
Arien took over leadership of the KP to shepherd the Elakri’s re-introduction to the intergalactic community, and Laurent and Deunan set off together to explore the cosmos.
