Calamite the chronicles.., p.1
Calamite: The Chronicles of Daan: Book 4, page 1
CALAMITE
(CHRONICLES OF DAAN: BOOK 4)
By
D. Ward Cornell
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2022 by D. Ward Cornell
All rights reserved. In accordance with the United States Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the author constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from this book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the author at dw.cornell@kahakaicg.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
FOREWORD
PROLOG
CHAPTER 1: PROPOSAL
CHAPTER 2: INFLUENCE
CHAPTER 3: INTERVIEW
CHAPTER 4: CAMPAIGN
CHAPTER 5: BREAKTHROUGHS
CHAPTER 6: COMPLICATIONS
CHAPTER 7: LAUNCH
CHAPTER 8: TRANSPORTER
CHAPTER 9: CRISIS
CHAPTER 10: OPERATION RESCUE
CHAPTER 11: LEPODRED
CHAPTER 12: CONFRONTATION
CHAPTER 13: ELECTION
CHAPTER 14: RETALIATION
CHAPTER 15: COLLABORATION
CHAPTER 16: THE HUNT
CHAPTER 17: BUILD UP
CHAPTER 18: COUNTERATTACK
CHAPTER 19: RETALIATION
CHAPTER 20: ASSAULT
CHAPTER 21: FALL BACK
CHAPTER 22: STRIKE
EPILOGUE
AFTERWORD
NOW AVAILABLE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
OTHER BOOKS by D. WARD CORNELL
FOREWORD
This is the fourth book in the Chronicles of Daan series. The first three, entitled The Rise of Daan, Prophet, and Liberation, were a joy to write, and the reader feedback has been gratifying. If you haven’t read them, I recommend that you do. They will provide context for many of the things that happen in this book. But whether you’ve read them or not, I hope the following short synopsis helps whet your appetite before plowing in. Feel free to skip ahead if you recently finished Liberation. Enjoy!
...
The Rise of Daan: My name is Jared Daan. I live on a so-called Protected World. Protected Worlds are sentry worlds, located along the edge of human space, there to sound the alarm if there’s an alien invasion, worlds that are marginally habitable, so unlikely to be a target, yet well connected to the rest of humanity.
Our founder, whose name I bear, first settled this world about two hundred years ago and named it Jaredaan in honor of himself. He was an adventurer who struggled under the boot of government oppression and couldn’t resist the opportunity to claim a world rich with precious metals. At least, that’s what he told everyone.
We now know that he had another reason, the mystery.
Our founder’s mother came from a world called New Brazil. The ancient art of divination, seeing the future, was practiced there. They referred to it as probing the mystery. Every couple of generations, a seer with a clear enough vision of the future would rise to power. But the practice was functionally banned millennia ago. Any seer skilled enough to gain notoriety was swept up by the Confederation, never to be seen again. Nonetheless, prophecies continued to circulate, claiming a new master seer would soon emerge.
Our founder’s mother had a trace of the gift. When she came of age, she fled New Brazil to avoid persecution and eventually settled on a planet called Caladon, where she married. Before she died, she told our founder of the mystery. When she passed, he went to visit New Brazil, spent a month there and got a glimpse of things to come. Enough of a glimpse to fuel his belief that maybe he could be the master seer that had been foretold. In the years that followed, he plotted, then executed a plan to create a place where the art could be practiced safely. And where the next master seer might have a chance to rise.
When he founded our colony, the vast majority of the development done on our world was about mining precious metals. A settlement was established that he named Jaredstown, an underground city in the arctic north positioned above massive metal deposits.
But a second settlement was established in secret. He called it Jaramor. And its purpose was to maintain the art until the great one emerged.
Shortly before he died, it was revealed to him that his goal would someday be attained. The sixth son of the sixth generation would be the great seer that had been foretold. But that would only come to be if Jaramor maintained its secret.
Thankfully, the secret was maintained. You see, I am the sixth son of the sixth generation, the great seer foretold centuries ago, the one that would save our world and eventually change the course of humanity’s future.
...
Last year, we learned more about the circumstances that led our founder to establish our world. Among the seers of his time, there was a growing belief that a nexus was forming. In the vernacular of those that probe the mystery, a nexus is a point in time when the course of events changes radically. The greatest nexus in humanity’s past was when the Earth was destroyed in a cosmic collision at the end of the first age. On that day, everything changed. Humanity continued on because enough people had successfully escaped Earth.
The second great nexus was the Great Alien War at the end of the second age. Half of humanity was lost in the war. Half of the remainder scattered to new worlds, and the Confederation as we know it was born.
The seers our founder met during his consequential journey to New Brazil could see another nexus approaching. It was still too far away for them to see clearly. But they convinced our founder that the Confederation had grown so corrupt that it was unlikely to survive unless significant changes were made. He ran for office hoping to make a difference from inside the government. But his effort failed, swept aside by the corrupt powers of the day.
He took the loss hard but eventually rebounded, determined to protect the Confederation and humanity from the outside. As I now know, his outside plan was me, the master seer that would protect mankind from the next alien invasion.
...
Eleven years ago, my brothers betrayed me, framed me for crimes they committed. I was sentenced to five years at our world’s only prison, a sugar plantation in the green zone along the equator. I was only sixteen at the time, torn from my home in Jaredstown, which I had never ventured out of, and sent seven thousand kilometers south to the prison camp.
Those were terrible days. The arrest, arraignment, sentencing, and trip south were soul crushing. On arrival in Heroldstown, the main city in the green zone, I was placed in the local jail pending transport to the camp the next day. The beating I received that night almost killed me. My first couple of months at the prison camp were spent in the camp hospital, where they nursed me back to life. When I was released from the hospital, I was given a light duty assignment in the Zone Three dining room. There, everything changed for me.
Over the next six months, I found friends, purpose, and a new home at the camp. Among the friends I made were two of the camp’s old-timers, Ethel Barry and Norah Castle. Norah’s family came from Caladon, the original home of our founder. Ethel’s family came from New Brazil, more specifically from the region where our founder discovered his visionary power. As I got to know them better, they shared one of the elixirs they brewed, the one that enabled visions. In the weeks that followed, I learned of the disease that was sweeping through the Confederation, of the quarantine that had been placed on our planet, and of the food shortage that was about to cripple our economy. It also led me to believe that another settlement had been established on our world, one I needed to find.
...
When the real culprits behind the crimes in Jaredstown were found, my convictions were vacated. On the day I learned of my pending release, I also met Summer, the woman who would eventually become my wife. When I was released, I decided to stay on as a camp employee. The visions had already convinced me that disaster was imminent. They’d also given me confidence that I could protect the camp from the worst of it. And in truth, I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Ethel, Norah, or Summer.
Eventually, Summer and I ventured out into the wilderness and found Jaramor. The elders there knew I was coming. They’d seen it in their visions and knew that I was the one foretold. They shared the secrets of their art with me and together we learned of another pending alien invasion.
Over the months that followed, disaster after disaster struck. The disease known as Doffenplod Acquired Genetic-disorder Syndrome (DAGS) spread to Jaredaan, which was put under quarantine, which in turn created a food shortage. Then, when it appeared nothing could get worse, the alien detectors started sounding.
Nonetheless, guided by the mystery, we found a way to put the disease into remission, manufacture the ‘cure’ in volume, expand the food supply, and turn back the alien invasion.
...
Prophet: But the aliens weren’t done with us yet. Five years after they turned back, we discovered that they were returning again. But this time, it would be different. Having been thwarted twice, they were coming en masse, with enough power to drive us to extinction if we did not agree to the terms of their subjugation.
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Those ten years only took ten days in real time. Nonetheless, I learned their language, learned all about their people (who call themselves Lepodred), and learned everything there was to know about that ship.
Of the many things I learned about the Lepodred, possibly the biggest difference between our peoples is the social structure. Depending on how you count, the Lepodred have four or five genders and the basic family unit is organized much like an ant’s nest or a bee’s hive. Each Lepodred pod consists of a king and queen and hundreds or thousands of smaller drone-like children, known as kesba. The kings are male; the queens are female; and the kesba are genderless. Each pod is part of a larger collective, known as a family, which is associated with a grandfather-like progenitor. Three-way mating between a king, queen, and progenitor will create another king or queen.
The families are part of an even larger collective, known as a clan. The clan is led by a grandmother-like figure called a sacred. Four-way mating between king, queen, progenitor, and sacred will result in a progenitor or sacred. Trust me, it took a long time to figure that out and even longer to sort out the gender language. In their written language, the symbol, ⅄, loosely translates as ‘he’ and is used for progenitors, kings, and kesba. The symbol, Y, loosely translates to ‘she’ and is used for the sacred and queens. And of course, both ⅄ and Y are pronounced differently in the spoken language, based on the gender of the individual being referenced.
...
Over the months that followed my return, we used the replicators in the ancient alien ship to build a fleet of spacefaring drones that had weapons optimized to destroy Lepodred ships. In the process of adapting the alien technology, my chief scientist, Calvin Swanson (who goes by Cal) pushed many of the alien technologies to much higher levels of performance.
Probing the mystery relentlessly, I found out that the Lepodred armada coming to enslave us was composed of three ship classes: star-killers, escorts, and conquest ships.
Star-killers are giant ships, five kilometers long, able to do exactly what the name suggests, extinguish a star. The star-killers are so large that they are built without a faster than light (FTL) drive of their own. Apparently, maintaining an FTL drive that large is too difficult. Instead, the Lepodred built escort ships to tow the star-killers through FTL. Four escorts create a space-time bubble large enough to encompass themselves and the star-killer. On most missions, six escorts would be assigned, four to tow, two as spares.
The conquest ships are also what the name implies. They are the main Lepodred attack ship with powerful space-time disruption weapons. The ship that crashed on Jaredaan was of this class.
Our first encounter with the Lepodred occurred outside human space. The mystery had revealed to me the course the Lepodred would be taking, so we set up a series of ambushes to whittle down their forces. The plan was to use the influence the mystery gives me over people to create dissent within the ranks, then disguise the ambushes to look like friendly fire, in the hope of starting a civil war among the various Lepodred factions.
We had some success with that plan, possibly too much. But the plan was fundamentally flawed. The Lepodred telepathy makes it impossible for any type of insurrection to remain secret. So as their losses mounted, the Lepodred assumed the attacks were coming from a people known as Rufarven, through whose space they were taking a shortcut. At that point, the Lepodred split their forces, sending fourteen hundred conquest ships on to human space, and turning the remaining conquest ships and all the surviving star-killers and escorts against the Rufarven.
Over the months that followed, my team of scientists (Cal and Taylor Beach who goes by Tay), developed a powerful, remote-piloted weapon system, composed of a large carrier drone and smaller assassin drones, optimized to exploit a weakness we found in the Lepodred conquest ships.
Aided by my team of engineers (Miles Lee who goes by Moose, Charlie Tanner, Brock Newton, and Candice Cook who goes by CC), we designed and built a fleet of them.
Then, my core team of pilots (Jazz, Dylan, Mel, Nat, and Kat), plus twenty others recruited in the last days, developed an ambush strategy that would take down all fourteen hundred alien ships, ten in each of one hundred forty human systems. The catch... The strikes had to be synchronized, all fourteen hundred ships hit within minutes of each other. Amazingly it came off without a hitch. Well, almost.
My two nemeses within the Confederation, Secretary of Defense Luiz Pires Álves and the head of the High Command Admiral Arthur Tang, refused to cooperate. When the Lepodred decloaked at New Beijing and made their surrender demand, Admiral Tang launched an attack minutes before the coordinated strike. The Lepodred retaliation wiped out the Confederation’s capital and its largest orbital shipyard, the entire central government—executive branch, legislative branch, and high court—gone in seconds. Tens of millions wiped out in the blink of an eye. The one survivor? Luiz Pires Álves, who knew what was going to happen and fled.
Fifteen seconds after the damage was done, all fourteen hundred conquest ships went down. Funny thing. Two days later, Luiz Pires Álves’ mansion on Caladon, the place where he was hiding, was hit by deorbiting space debris. Curiously a gas leak in the basement, turned his mansion into a giant bomb. I wonder how that could have happened...
...
Liberation: Our victory over the Lepodred caused problems on every front. The Confederation’s temporary central government, dubbed the Reconstruction Committee, wanted to know who interfered in their defense against the aliens. The Rufarven figured out that we were the reason the Lepodred started a war with them. The Lepodred, still licking their wounds from stinging defeats on two fronts, started ramping up the harvests on their subject worlds. Then worst of all, a new nexus started to form, robbing me of much of my access to the mystery.
The first of these problems to really haunt me was the Lepodred harvests. Each subject world was required to present one percent of their population for the harvest every year. The mystery allowed me to visit these worlds, watch the harvests and fully take in their horror.
You see, the Lepodred are a predator species, evolved from a long line of apex predators. Even at their current state of evolution, they still crave blood and raw meat. Nonetheless, on their densely populated worlds, all food is replicated from plant sources.
Millennia ago, as unrest and cannibalization started bubbling to the surface throughout Lepodred space, their government started conquering densely populated non-Lepodred worlds, then sponsoring harvest celebrations where families could come and engorge themselves on fresh meat.
Through the mystery, I watched many Lepodred harvest celebrations. By the time I visited the fifth subject world, the home of the beautiful Atarapt, I could take no more.
Resolved to put an end to the harvests, I set out to build a newer, better fleet of carriers and assassins, ones capable of putting a ring of protection around each of these worlds. The first step in that plan was to use the replicators on the Lepodred conquest ship that crashed on Jaredaan in the first alien war to build more replicators. Eventually we built a large enough replicator farm to produce a gigantic fleet of drones. By the time we ‘cracked the code’ and built our first successful human-designed replicator, Cal had come up with a design for a second-generation, extended-range carrier drone that we dubbed the ER2 Carrier, or ER2 for short. Among the many breakthrough technologies integrated into this drone, Cal’s new integrated Stadler stealth drive is the most impressive. It is by far the fastest FTL drive ever created, enabling effective speeds of over one hundred thousand times light. But it is also a stealth field generator, which allows the ER2 to enter FTL from stealth and drop back from FTL into stealth, making the ER2 fast and invisible. But we didn’t stop there. Each ER2 could carry twelve third-generation assassins, equipped with a Stadler stealth drive and two new classes of weapons: space-time disruption bombs and centimeter-long mechanical bugs. Although both of the new weapons proved themselves to be potent additions to our arsenal, the bugs were devastating. Once placed on a spaceship hull, they drilled holes to create thousands of slow leaks that were impossible to find and fix.
