Empire Reborn (Taran Empire Saga Book 1): A Cadicle Space Opera by A.K. DuBoff (jenna bush book club TXT) 📕

be a variation of Old Taran—a language hardly spoken outside the Priesthood—and could be even an older dialect of the language than that. While he’d always been partial to mathematics over linguistics, he knew enough about the roots of Taran language to fill in the gaps.

Cris’ face lit up while he read the text while Saera looked confused.

“Looks like the treaty text to me,” Cris said.

“I can only make out the occasional word. What does it say?” Saera asked.

“Today we strike an accord,” Cris began the rough translation in slightly stuttered cadence as he worked out the words. “Peace will… endure so long as the terms are upheld. The… destructive Gates will remain sealed. Each race will stay in its… designated realm. If ever the Gates are reopened by Tarans, they will be destroyed.”

“I think that last bit is more ‘wiped out for all time’,” Wil said.

“Uh, I’m not a fan of either of those translations.” Saera scowled at the inscription.

“Me either, but this is helpful. We know for certain that our violation is tied to that tech, specifically.”

“But why?” Saera asked.

Wil reread the text. There was no further explanation. “It doesn’t say. Bomax, I thought there’d be more here.”

“There might be.” Cris looked closer. “Does that look like micro inscriptions to you?” He pointed to the vertical height of the circular disk.

Sure enough, it looked like it could be rows of tiny text.

“We need to magnify that.” Wil captured an image of the band on his handheld and projected it as a holographic image, zooming in until the characters were easily read.

Wil pored over the text. There were pages and pages of information—all of the details they’d been missing. “Stars! I can’t believe it.”

“What?” Saera asked, peeking over his shoulder.

“Those Gatekeeper-Taran hybrids? Apparently, they’re not new. That’s how the Gatekeepers first made contact with our Taran ancestors, by going to live among them. But they were found out, and the Priesthood started studying them. They were fascinated by them being impervious to telepathy, but that they still possessed a link with one another.”

“That sounds familiar.”

“The nulls. That side effect from the Priesthood’s neurotoxin.” The pieces began to fall into place in Wil’s mind as he reflected on the tech the Priesthood had deployed during their last stand and bid for ascension. They had deployed the neurotoxin as a means of telepathically networking the masses across multiple Taran worlds. “If I had to wager, I bet you they used this research as a foundation for the neurotoxin—tried to isolate the ‘networking’ component, but it also made a small percentage of people nulls in the process.”

She shook her head. “We’ve had evidence of aliens right in front of us for decades and didn’t know it.”

“That explains why we couldn’t identify many of the sequences in the neurotoxin.”

Saera crossed her arms. “This is so messed up.”

Cris scoffed. “The Priesthood would do anything to further their own ends. I can’t say I’m shocked by this.”

“You realize what this means, though,” Saera said.

He tilted his head, not sure what she was getting at.

“They knew about higher-dimensional life. They understood that such beings were networked as one to move beyond their physical forms.”

The realization hit Wil like a punch in the gut. “This text is where the Priesthood got the very idea of ascension.”

“Taking inspiration from a war that almost wiped out Tarans once.”

He shook his head. “And willing to do it all again with no regard for what would happen to everyone else.”

Saera stared with disgust at the documentation. “Not that I needed a reminder about why they had to go, but wow. Kind of makes me want to take them down all over again.”

“I second that.” Cris took a deep breath. “It all makes perfect sense. We should have known there was more.”

“We wanted to close that chapter and never look back. I won’t blame us for not wanting to dig too deeply at the time.” As TSS High Commander, Wil knew that was too dismissive an approach. Duty should come before personal feelings. But, stars, the Priesthood made it difficult to remain objective.

“All right, so we have confirmation that the treaty violation is for the Gate tech itself,” Saera summarized. “Arvonen and his Gate research cronies obviously won’t be an issue anymore, since the Gatekeepers dealt with them. But we can’t be certain they were working alone. If this tech is the crux of the whole issue, we need to root out anyone potentially pursuing that kind of research and put a stop to it.”

“Yes, agreed.” The TSS’ resources were about to be stretched very thin. Wil had been in that situation before, but he hadn’t expected to find himself faced with that challenge again. Our people are well-trained and capable. We’re ready for this, he tried to assure himself.

“There’s something else strange in here,” Cris said, continuing to scroll through the text while Wil and Saera talked.

“Good or bad strange?” Wil asked as he tried to catch up to what his father was reading.

“More a curiosity. It’s about Earth. It’s mentioned in these documents.”

Wil snapped to attention. “Wait, what?”

Saera looked between the two of them. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I’m as surprised as you are.” Cris paused in thought.

“It raises an interesting point, though,” Wil jumped in as he began thinking through the branching possibilities. “Why has the Taran government and the Priesthood gone to such lengths to protect the planet?”

“Humans are of Taran descent, regardless of whether they know about us or not,” Cris surmised.

“Yes, but there are other rogue colony worlds that aren’t provided the same protections. What makes Earth special?”

“I always figured it was the proximity of TSS Headquarters,” Saera said. “The moon would be in bad shape if the planet blew up.”

Wil cocked his