Fallen Empire Read online

  Fallen Empire

  Technomancer: Book Four

  Author: D. L. Harrison

  Copyright 2020. This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, Places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen - Interlude

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Epilogue – Interlude

  Afterword:

  About the Author

  Other books by D. L. Harrison:

  Book Description

  Chapter One

  The beating sun warmed my back, while the warm ocean breeze soothed it. The gentle roar of the waves steadily hitting shore was relaxing. It was a perfect sunny day for some time off, which was why the ambush was so entirely successful. I was relaxed, blissed out, and de-stressing when the nerves in my back exploded like being struck by icy daggers and falling stones.

  I gasped and jumped up, my heart slammed in my chest and took off like a gazelle, when my gaze promising retribution fell on my ambusher.

  My twelve-year-old daughter, Melody, had a huge evil grin on her face, a wet sandy pale in her hands, and she giggled uncontrollably as I lunged forward. I threw her over my shoulder sending the pale flying, and ran for the water.

  Diana’s lovely laugh chased us toward the water.

  “Dad!” she protested as she continued to giggle with excitement.

  It was my turn to laugh, evilly, as I dove into the wave and tossed her at the same time.

  It’d been almost thirteen years since humanity became safe from the Grays, and a dubious peace had settled on humanity.

  The small twelve-hundred-acre tropical island we were on had long strips of beach. It also had a fair-sized tropical forest with small game, and a small beach house. It’d been when our daughter turned four, and it really hit us that she’d never enjoyed the sun on her face and had lived exclusively on Astraeus that we’d found a way.

  I was still President Scott Akin, and visiting Earth was problematical at best. Every time we went down it was politics, state dinners, and all the crap I hated, not to mention the possible danger. It hadn’t been something either of us were keen to expose our daughter too. So, we’d bought an island, and then bought the country claim on the island, so technically our little retreat beach and forest was officially country Astraeus.

  All so we could get some fun and sun, on our days off, but mostly for our daughter.

  I rose back out of the ocean, hoping the grimy sand was sufficiently washed away, and got splashed in the face by my giggling daughter. She was a terror, and quite frankly the most amazing thing my brilliant wife and I had ever accomplished, in my opinion.

  The loud roar of a predator rose in the air, and we both looked around to see a tawny and black tiger lunge from the woods, and my daughter giggled as it startled her mother, Aunt Jayna, and Aunt Cassie to death.

  Of course, there was no need for true alarm. The fierce tiger was the head of my security. Jessica Mills looked quite different in her human form, but she often took the opportunity to shift and hunt on our day’s off. She was a five foot eight athletic redhead, with brown eyes.

  I was thirty-three, and my gorgeous wife had broken into the forties last year, but in that moment looking at her in the white bikini it was really hard to tell, impossible really. We’d taken the life extensions two years ago, and the both of us looked about mid-twenties and the same age, despite the eight year difference. It was a difference that had never bothered me, not after I’d fallen for her so hard, but for her she’d been a bit insecure about it at times, but not anymore.

  My Diana was very fit, five foot six, with raven hair that shone in the warm sun, and piercingly intelligent green eyes I often got lost in still. Her body was athletically toned, with lovely soft curves that effortlessly drew my eyes. She was beyond beautiful to me, and while the last thirteen years hadn’t been perfect, she was the perfect one for me.

  She was still head scientist of Astraeus. With peace, she’d focused on pure research and other non-weapon applications of science. Even after ten years, she’d hardly made a dent on the Grays’ theoretical and practical science’s databases, but she’d been steadily putting out life improving inventions the whole time. I didn’t blame her, or even suggest differently, we were technically superior to all our enemies and allies currently, by a long way, and while she understood the need to work on defense applications that had never been her passion.

  She still had people on it of course, but nothing new had been invented there, just slight improvements to the same technologies we had since thirteen years ago.

  My daughter, Melody had my wife’s raven hair, her lovely facial structure, and she got my ocean blue eyes. At twelve she was already becoming curious about boy’s, and all I’ll say about that is I’m tempted to lock her up inside a suit of armor until she’s thirty. Besides her eyes, she did get one more thing from me, my magic. My magic, and her mother’s sharp intelligence, I almost felt sorry for the world when she finished growing up.

  My daughter’s Aunt Cassie obviously wasn’t a blood aunt, but Cassiopeia Reed was a close family friend. She was my wife’s best friend, and my daughter loved her to death. Of course, her underlying purpose in being on Astraeus and running much of the government for me hadn’t changed, if I ever went crazy and decided to take over the Earth, or the universe, she’d be there to snap my neck.

  It was just… I was pretty sure it would make her cry to do it now, not that it would stop her. Fortunately, it was the last thing I wanted to do, I still hated running Astraeus, the government side at least. Why would I want to rule more people?

  She was family now to more than my daughter. As a vampire she was unchanging and unchangeable. She was still one of the most beautiful women I’d ever laid eyes on, naturally so without emotional bias, but there was no true attraction between us, she was like a sister. A pain in the ass sister that still made me give press conferences, and she took me away from my ship building and inventions on occasion. The fun business side of Astraeus which was still my passion. She had lovely long light brown hair, warm hazel eyes, and an innocently beautiful face of a model. She was short, her body petite and curvy.

  Of course, we’d had to tell the world she was one of the first test cases for the life extension trials, to explain why she hadn’t aged a day in the last thirteen years and still looked like a hot co-ed in her first year of college. In her past she’d taken a non-publicly visible position to watch government to make sure humans didn’t kill themselves off, where she’d only have to use compulsion on a few people to gloss over her non-aging. At some point, being so visible running Astraeus, we’d probably have to hire a witch to put an aging glamour on her.

  Vampires had to watch over their food supply, after all. They really hated when we went to war with each other.

  My sister Jayna had the same ocean blue eyes as me and my daughter, and light blonde hair similar to mine but of course much longer. She was still in charge of advertising and image for the
station, and still married to one of my security guards in the public police section of the service. As far as I could tell, she was extremely happy with her life on station.

  Carmine had taken the whole supernatural thing rather well, given my sister and his and Jayna’s son, my nephew Brock, were elemental mages. Carmine and Brock were still laughing it up about Jessica scaring all the ladies present.

  That was pretty much my whole family, and still the core of Astraeus thirteen years later, but there were a few more guards around the island, as well as weapon systems. No one had tried to kill me in over a decade, and our old enmity with the control freaks in the U.S. government seemed to be over, but I took the stance that it was just a matter of time. In the moment, I held the lion’s share in the balance of power, and it was hard to imagine them being as gracious and nonconfrontational if the reverse was true.

  I scowled, and my body twisted a bit uncomfortably, “You got sand in my bathing suit.” So much for washing it all off.

  My daughter giggled, which of course started a splash fight, and had us both laughing.

  What? She totally started it.

  Chapter Two

  The command center looked completely different now, save the flat display and holographic command table that sat in the middle of the room. We’d replaced all the chairs with Arnis imports. I’d also finally given in to the inevitable and built a coffee nook on the back wall. No more taking trips for coffee refills, and it had a built-in fridge with a coffee, sugar, cream, and milk dispensers that never ran out, thanks to the energy to matter device and rotating canisters to keep it all clean long-term.

  There were also two smaller command tables, which I should’ve added right away but hadn’t. One for Jessica or whoever was on shift for security, one for myself, and the third for Cassie. Of course, Diana was in her labs, and my sister had her own office too, though both were welcome in the command center they were hardly ever there.

  In truth, I thought that was one of the secrets of our lasting marriage, outside of honest communication and spending our nights together. After a long day at work, I missed her.

  Jessica said, “They’re sending out another one?”

  I grunted, “That’s over two hundred now?”

  Colonies. The original forty colonies had grown over the last decade and few years to two hundred. Each one had fifty million people in it, which lowered the Earth’s population by two billion or so. So far there’d been no sign of it slowing down either, I’d guess in another few years there’d be four hundred colonies and only three billion people on Earth. At that point it might slow down, but I did know there was a huge population explosion on Earth. The better technology, the room to spread out, spoke to human instinct, people were having bigger families again.

  Jessica replied, “Two hundred and three, although the U.S. only has two.”

  I nodded, “That’s still what, a third of their population?”

  Places like China and India had far more, because of their larger populations.

  I still sold colony ships, but not for all colonies. I had competition now. The United States had managed to build an energy to matter device seven years ago, that started pumping out nanites. Of course, it was the original one from the Grays, and incapable of molecular bonding. The nanites were also the originals, they’d made some strides in weapons and defense, but they didn’t have the disintegrator technology Astraeus did. Their ships also still ran on the fusion reactor technology instead of nanite vacuum energy reactors.

  Still, even the old Gray technology made them the second most powerful ships in fifty galaxies, and it was only their lack of disintegration beam tech that would truly give them pause. The other technologies they lacked slowed down their building but weren’t all that important when it came to military parity.

  It was only six months after that, when China, Russia, the UK, and Japan also started making ships, and all five governments had competing space stations selling ships although none of them were city sized like mine with a permanent population just under two million. Obviously, there’d been some espionage involved there, for all those other countries to get it so quickly. The U.S. obviously couldn’t keep secrets as well as I could.

  It was a small concern, since for the moment they were no match for my ships, and so far they’d been playing very nicely with me. On the other hand, it was only a matter of time until their scientists caught up. My wife was a genius and quite possibly the most inventive and intelligent scientist ever, but their scientists weren’t stupid. I also realized I was quite biased with her being my wife, but she was one of the best on the planet. The flaw of course, was their vessels weren’t locked down not to attack all other human vessels, be they from earth or the colonies.

  Astraeus kept the peace. Although, it was a time of plenty for Earth, there were very little reasons to contend over land or resources in this age. Sickness had been eliminated, people had longer lives and were constantly connected. Those augmented reality implants I’d picked up by selling wormhole drives to Threx’s very extended family had sold like hotcakes once they were approved for use.

  In short, the only reasons to war now was political and societal divisions. Unfortunately, that was probably enough, given that it was only a matter of time until a corrupt and ambitious human gained some governmental authority.

  Back to the point, before I got off on that tangent. I really didn’t mind the competition. I was so ridiculously rich, and we had almost zero expenses. Ships also weren’t the only export of Astraeus, we sold thousands of products on Amazon, and often exported shiploads of merchandise to colony worlds.

  Jessica nodded, “About. They’re using our ships as a roving guard, to save money, from what I’d been able to find out.”

  I looked over, we had no one watching the colonies, I hadn’t changed my mind about that, and my ships out there weren’t controlled by me. Outside of the hard coding that they were uncopiable, couldn’t attack human ships or worlds, and the system still couldn’t be hacked. They could make nanites, but they couldn’t hack mine to figure out disintegration beams, quantum jump drives, nanite power cores, or any of the rest.

  “Roving guard?”

  Jessica nodded, “They have their ships guarding the disparate solar systems, but the ships we sold them can quantum jump to any of their other colonies to assist if they ever face invasion.”

  “Your point?”

  She smirked, “You’re still keeping the peace, not only here in SOL, but at the colonies as well. Every countries’ colonies has at least one set of your ships and platforms, The Chinese have five sets, so despite not being locked down their ships will never be used as an invasion force. At least, not on another human colony.”

  Yeah, that was my one serious worry. Some jackass dictator would take their ships out there and try to conquer one of our neighbors. It was stupid, we still had seventy-eight hundred worlds to fill before running out of space in our claimed territory, and there was enough unclaimed space around us to make it ten times that. So far, my pessimism has gone unrewarded however, which was good.

  That was the status of our local human space, the fifty galaxies of the old Gray Empire were a whole other ball of wax.

  There had been dire side effects to gaining our freedom and removing the Grays for our simple right to exist, but without eyes out there I’d never actually seen it. I watched all our claimed systems without a human presence within our five hundred light year radius from Earth territory, but nothing past that besides the six fleets that guarded the other six empires from invading into the fifty galaxies of the former Gray empire.

  Point being, we got reports, from the Vax and others we traded with. The last thirteen years had seen a lot of races suffer if not be victimized by complete genocide. Unintended consequences, not that we’d had a choice in our actions, but it was still a thing.

  Less than one percent of the FTL civilizations had fallen, but that was still hundreds of worlds in the fifty galaxie
s. Most of the trading worlds had just continued to trade and form minimal treaties of free trade and non-aggression with their trading partners. Most of the seventy percent of non-traders had continued to just be defensively xenophobic. They stayed in their space and attacked anyone that trespassed. But, a small percentage of both of those groups had turned to war and conquering, until they were put down by one of those they attacked.

  I was tempted to help, but without a treaty my hands were tied. There were no good answers there. I couldn’t help, not without gaining power over other races and systems, if only indirectly. I admit, it would’ve been even harder to resist helping, if it hadn’t been for the fact that I didn’t have to see it happen in real time.

  Point being, it could’ve been a lot worse, most species had continued with the status quo, despite no longer being under threat of genocide by the Grays’ sadistic empire. Still, it was disturbing there were aggressively conquering civilizations out there and I wasn’t doing anything about it.

  On the good side, all the species were free to start expanding their assigned fifty light year space.

  I had a small worry that things would get worse. At some point, all the races starting an expansion in the fifty galaxies would fill up all the space, and even the most peaceful ones would start to butt heads at the borders. But space was huge, and it’d take many of millennia of expansion for that happen. In short, I’d be long dead before it became a real worry, even with life extension therapy I wouldn’t live much longer than two thousand years, and that was at the extreme outside.

  The Atans were still in two-thousand of our systems for their side of our bargain in terraforming those worlds, and things were going well there. Tam’Diaz stopped by every month or so to chat and drop off the latest reports, even though I had probes in each of those star systems. It still disturbed me a bit, A.I. I mean, but they seemed honorable and even nice enough. I had somewhat of a wary friendship with them, and I’d considered retiring most of the fleet that I had between their empire and our fifty galaxies, but I worried that was naïve and hadn’t done it.