Beyond The Veil

Prologue

PROLOGUE

Golden sunlight came through a window that looked out on a clear, blue sky, falling upon a round conference table made of glittering SmartGlass. Jack Hunter sat at that table, idly drumming his fingers on its surface. The man named Arin was next to him, hunched over and pinching his chin with thumb and forefinger. Jena kept swiveling her chair back and forth. Claire blew a big, pink bubble that made a slimy sound when it popped, then sucked her gum back into her mouth.

A young woman that Harry had never met sat with her elbows on the table, cradling her head in both hands. If he didn’t know better, he would have sworn she was hung over. Maybe she was just dumbfounded by the utter nonsense he had just spoken.

By far, the best reaction came from Melissa.

She sat with one arm draped over the back of her chair, her mouth hanging open as she stared at him. She must have been wondering if her father had gone insane. Well, she would find out soon enough.

Raising a hand up beside her head, Anna scrunched up her face. “One more time,” she said, striding toward him. “We’re going to do what?”

Standing just inside the door with his shoulders square, Harry showed them all a toothy grin. “We’re going to expose the Overseers to the whole damn galaxy,” he said. “And put an end to this war.”

“Haven’t we tried that like a dozen times?” Jack asked.

Harry strode past Anna, nodding to the young man. “Yes, but we never had proof,” he said. “This time we will.”

Plunking his elbow down on the table, Jack rested his chin on the knuckles of his fist. “Okay,” he said, eyebrows rising. “You’ve got my attention. So, how exactly is this plan going to work?”

Harry thrust his hand toward them, letting the N’Jal writhe against his palm. Everyone at the table recoiled in disgust, shying away from him as if he had the plague. None of them liked the Overseer device. To them, it was an unpredictable piece of dangerous technology. For a time, they had thought that it might be influencing his mind, and Harry had secretly feared they might be right.

But no.

The Overseers had told him the truth: their technology couldn’t change the core of who he was. The mistakes he had made while using the N’Jal were his and his alone. A disheartening revelation, perhaps, but one that came with a glimmer of hope. If he was in full control of his faculties, then it wasn’t too late to correct those mistakes.

“I’ve seen things,” Harry explained. “Jack, your plan to visit the message beacons the Overseers left behind was a good one. But you weren’t the one to carry it out.”

Staring into his palm, Harry watched as the N’Jal came to life. Tiny fibres, almost invisible to the eye, extended from his skin, eager to find a living host and take control of it. The alien device didn’t distinguish between living beings and organic technology. If it had a nervous system, the N’Jal could subdue it.

“You might say I hacked into their firmware,” Harry muttered. “Saw the things they don’t want us to see.”

(Three Weeks Earlier)

The wind howled through the standing stones as the sun sank toward the western horizon. With springtime blossoming into summer, it should have been warm. But up here in the mountains, it was still chilly.

The towering slabs of rock formed a ring around Harry, each one shaped into an archway that was wide enough for two people to walk abreast. He stood in the exact centre, waiting.

He knew that the Overseers watched him. They showed up unannounced from time to time, demanding to know why he had ceased his preaching in violation of the deal he had made when they saved Claire’s life. Were they watching him now? Would they take action if he tried to uncover their deepest secrets?

Those questions had haunted him from the moment he had decided to take this trip. He had spent many long hours trying to devise a way to ensure secrecy before admitting that it was pointless. There was no way to know if the Overseers were watching. Except that he was fairly certain they couldn’t be watching him all the time. In the end, it was a roll of the dice.

Any reservations he had about betraying the aliens vanished after the disastrous trip to Antaur. He couldn’t prove it, but he was sure the numerous attempts on Claire’s life were done at the Overseers’ behest. It was just like she said; they were going to come after her one way or another. And if that was the case, then Harry may as well fight back.

Extending his hand toward the ring of standing stones, he sent a signal with the N’Jal. Blue glyphs appeared on every stone, extending from the ground to the crest of every archway. He couldn’t read them.

A fissure appeared on the ground, widening until it revealed a set of stairs that led down into some sort of cave. Blue light emanated from those depths. He knew what he would find if he descended.

The cavern would have walls of some fleshy substance just like what he had seen on Earth’s moon. No doubt he would be greeted by a hologram in the form of some wizened old man. Or perhaps a matronly woman. It would extoll the virtues of caring for your fellow man. That was the message the Overseers had given to the ancient Alosians.

Grimacing at the thought of yet another deception, Harry shook his head. “No,” he growled, “Not this time! Show me the truth!”

The cave, the stones, the glowing glyphs: they were all part of some grand machine the Overseers had constructed. He attacked that machine with the N’Jal, modulating the signals that came from the alien device.

A small tremor rumbled through his shoes, up his legs and his aching back, all the way to his head.

The blue glyphs changed to red, and the soothing light that radiated from the cavern became a hellish, crimson glow. Yes, that was it. This was the truth of the Overseers. He had pierced their veil of secrets.

Tendrils of flesh shot out of the cave, slamming themselves down on the rocky ground. A bulbous mass followed, looming over him. The whole thing looked like an enormous spider without a face.

Harry reached up, pressing his palm against its grotesque form, the N’Jals fibres digging in. For a moment, he felt resistance. With a little effort, he was able to push through.

Data flooded into his mind: a flurry of disjointed images that he couldn’t track. Planets hanging against the blackness of space, ships phasing in and out of existence, creatures he had never seen. It was a full sensory overload – not just sights but sounds, textures and smells, most of them unlike anything he had ever experienced before.

Harry focused his thoughts, bringing order to the chaos.

He found himself in a forest so alien he almost didn’t recognize it for what it was. The trees were twisted things with sharp, blue leaves on every rubbery branch. The mud was not brown but purple, and the sky was a soft pink. Motes of light flitted about all over the place. It took a moment for Harry to realize that they were insects.

A humanoid creature leaped from a high tree branch, landing about fifty feet away. Its mottled skin had a purple tint that would blend in well with its surroundings. It had a small stump for a nose and a misshapen mouth, but its eyes shone with fierce, blue light.

The way it looked at him…Harry recognized the stare of a predator.

Without warning, another creature dropped out of the treetops, landing between him and the first. The pair observed one another for a drawn-out moment, and then the first one attacked.

Its four-fingered hand seemed to writhe, retracting into its arm so that a bony blade could take its place. These things were shapeshifters. Just like… “The Overseers,” Harry whispered. He was seeing them as they were before they took to the stars. This was their homeworld.

The second creature lunged, but the first one ducked under his pitiful attack, slashing the blade across his belly. Purple blood sprayed into the air and took its sweet time falling to the ground.

“This is a low-gravity environment.”

His suspicions were confirmed when the two creatures started running up tree trunks and leaping high into the air, slashing at each other every time they crossed paths. Their duel lasted for several minutes while they hopped from branch to branch, always attacking. Harry saw no trace of the patient, calculating creatures that had manipulated him for years. This was pure aggression.

Except…No, it wasn’t.

The more he watched, the more he began to realize that there was a logic to this battle. Each creature was trying to lure the other toward a specific spot. To make his enemy fight on his terms. Even here, in their distant past, the Overseers were clever.

When Harry turned around, the forest was gone, replaced by a concrete jungle. He now stood on the curb of a busy street where screaming men and women fled from some unknown terror. At first glance, they appeared to be human, but this wasn’t Earth. Or Leyria for that matter.

The buildings that surrounded him had a strange, angular quality: tall, imposing structures that tried to intimidate you with their majesty. Leyrian architecture was all smooth curves. He had never seen a city like this before.

A frantic woman ran through him, causing Harry to jump. He wasn’t actually here; this was just an elaborate simulation that the Overseer device had forced into his mind. It felt real though.

He looked up and discovered the source of all this commotion. An Overseer ship hovered above the city: a writhing mass of veiny, red flesh in the shape of an enormous bat. It projected a yellow particle beam from its mouth, destroying buildings as easily as Harry might smash a sandcastle.

He was starting to wonder if he might be able to help when the vision changed again. Now, he was in a cool, damp cave. Water dripped from the many sharp stalactites that threatened to scrape his scalp if he stood on his toes.

He saw a line of humans in ratty clothing marching into a tunnel. No one spoke or protested or lifted their eyes from the floor. They moved with an almost mechanical precision, every trace of free will obliterated.

It was only then that he noticed the menacing, red glow emanating from the walls of that tunnel. This was an Overseer facility.

That fact was confirmed for him when he saw the aliens supervising their captives. They were very much like the creatures he had encountered in the twisted forest: tall and lithe without a trace of body hair. Strange mouths, stubby noses, four fingers on each hand. “Slaves,” Harry whispered. “You used them as slaves.”

One turned its head to stare at him, its glowing eyes changing from blue to red. It had seen him. Did that mean the Overseers were aware of his intrusion?

His mind was forced out of the Overseer network, slammed back into his body. He caught a glimpse of the fleshy spider retracting its limbs and sinking back into the cave. Then he fell to his knees.

His shirt was drenched in sweat, his forehead as well. Squeezing his eyes shut, he shivered as he tried to regain his composure. Somehow, he knew that the city he had seen was not on any world he had heard of. It had been destroyed eons ago, long before the first humans on Earth discovered spears and fire.

Sifting through the clutter in his mind, he became aware of another image, an idea that had slipped through while he was busy watching the elaborate narrative. He saw a desolate world in the darkness of space, an endless wasteland from the north pole to the south. Though he had never been there, he knew it as well as he did his own home. He could feel the rough stone beneath his feet, taste the dry, desert air.

Tossing his head back, Harry groaned. His eyes snapped open. “Abraxis.”

(Now)

“Abraxis?” Keli spat, leaning over the table to glare at him with those smoldering, dark eyes. “The place is crawling with Overseers. If we go there, they will exterminate us before we can even breathe.”

Harry stood on the opposite side of the table with his hands folded behind his back, shutting his eyes and trying to stay calm. “I realize that it’s a risk,” he said. “But it’s our only chance of ending this war.”

“It’s not just a risk!” Keli snapped. “It’s suicide! Jon Andalon and I went there two years ago, remember? I was called to it after I touched an Overseer’s mind.

Anna came forward with her hands up in a placating gesture, trying desperately to stop an argument before it broke out. “Let’s just take this nice and slow,” she said. “How will going to Abraxis help us, Harry?”

He clenched his teeth, gazing into his palm once again, watching as the N’Jal writhed against his skin. “They’re using the planet as a base of operations,” he growled. “Their network has a central hub. If I can interface with it, I can order every Overseer ship to decloak simultaneously.”

He looked up at the others with all the sincerity he could muster. “We’ll time it so that it happens just before the Leyrian fleet begins the invasion of Ragnos,” he went on. “Both sides will see that they’re being observed. They’ll know that the Overseers have orchestrated this war from the start. Maybe that will be enough.”

“Harry,” Jack said.

“Yeah?”

“One does not simply walk into Mordor.”

Wincing, Harry took control of his frustration. He nodded slowly. The kid had a point. “The hardest part will be getting onto the planet’s surface,” he said. “We need to create some kind of distraction. If we send some of our big ships to attack them, we might be able to slip a shuttle through.”

“And then?” Larani asked, stepping up behind Jack. “Surely, they have security systems.”

“Their bases and ships are living organisms. Which means they have immune systems. If I can get close enough, I can use the N’Jal to interface with the base’s central nervous systems. I may be able to convince it that we’re not a threat.”

“I’m hearing a lot of mays and mights,” Larani said. “Forgive my skepticism, Mr. Carlson, but this plan sounds very tenuous.”

He shrugged. “Does anyone have a better idea?”

The resounding silence that followed was all the answer he needed. They had tried a hundred different things to make the various factions in this war stop fighting. Sometimes, Harry thought humans were just hardwired to fight each other. But no. He had to try something.

It was a long-shot plan with a low probability of success. Even if they could get past the Overseers’ security and order the ships to decloak at exactly the right moment, there was still a chance that both the Leyrians and Ragnosians would not care.

Harry sauntered toward the table, frowning and nodding once. “Well then,” he said. “It seems we have no other options.”

“I have some contacts in the Alosian fleet,” Anna said. “And with the Antaurans as well. I might be able to scrounge up enough ships for a fake attack.”

“I suppose it’s worth a try,” Larani said.

“One last thing,” Harry began. “There’s a good chance that some of us won’t be coming back from this mission.”

Saying that out loud cut him to the core. But no one understood the risks better than he did. He had seen Overseer technology up close. “Jack, Anna, if you guys are keen on getting married, you might want to do it now.”