Vault of the Forgotten Stars Season 1 (Paperbook)

GIFT OF THE ANCIENTS — the first tale from the Vault

Gordon stood on the balcony of his villa, watching the evening sky. Another vessel burned through the atmosphere—the Omatrin Consortium's Deep Space Initiative, ferrying thousands offworld. They'd beaten him to FTL travel at scale, but their ships needed nav-beacons and established routes. The Void Sphere didn't.

He rubbed the back of his head where the surgical site had healed. The Chrominthium Core hummed beneath his skull—a sensation he'd learned to live with, though he'd never quite gotten used to it. When he turned his molecular awareness on, the world sharpened. The iron railing beneath his hands resolved into lattices of molecules, each one vibrating with kinetic energy he could redirect if he chose. The concrete beneath his feet became a crystalline matrix of calcium compounds and aggregate, individual atoms visible if he pushed his perception deep enough.

The headache came immediately. A dull pressure behind his eyes that would compress to a point if he maintained awareness too long. He'd learned his limits the hard way—the first activation had cost him two hours, his consciousness fragmenting across dimensions while Therasda found him seizing on the laboratory floor. The Core hadn't malfunctioned. Gordon's mind had simply tried to process too much, too fast. Molecular awareness was power, but the human psyche wasn't designed for it.

He'd trained since then. Trained Therasda and Nalen too. All three of them could maintain awareness for controlled periods without losing themselves. The key was discipline—knowing when to pull back before the drift set in, before your sense of self started to fragment.

The vision during the last Core adjustment had been different.

Nalen had been tweaking the frequency, routine calibration, when Gordon's awareness had expanded further than ever before. For a moment, his consciousness had stretched across impossible distances—touching hyperspace itself, perception bleeding into dimensions beyond the normal four. That's when something found him.

Not a transmission. An opportunistic intrusion. Whatever had been waiting out there—across the galaxy, tethered to a fortress in the Threxal system—felt Gordon's extended awareness brush against hyperspace and seized the connection.

Three hours gone. When Nalen finally pulled him out, Gordon had been reciting coordinates in a language he didn't know, blood streaming from his nose, his hands locked rigid on the armrests.

The Core didn't receive transmissions. It wasn't designed to. But during deep adjustments, when consciousness extended into hyperspace, it became vulnerable. A doorway that opened both ways. Whatever had pushed those coordinates into his head had waited for that exact moment—when Gordon's mind was spread thin across dimensions, defenses down, awareness reaching out into the dark. The probe data confirmed the coordinates were real—an anomaly in the Threxal system, exactly where the vision had shown him.

Someone wanted him to find that fortress. The question was why.

Therasda had trusted him enough to get the Core implanted even after watching Gordon's first catastrophic activation. Tonight, Gordon was asking him to trust again—to jump farther than they'd ever attempted, to coordinates that had been forced into his mind by something he didn't understand.

He crossed to a control panel and punched in a request for his jetcopter. The chrominthium strands woven through his prototype suit shimmered in his awareness—interdimensional resonance threading through the black material with its dark blue marbling. He grabbed a grav-disk from beside the panel, feeling the chrominthium veins pulse through the obsidian surface like phosphorescent roots.

Haeolt Corporation had filed three more chrominthium patents this week. Surface applications, nothing groundbreaking, but it meant Gordon's window was closing. If this anomaly was what he thought it was—a structure that bent physics itself—it could unlock applications Haeolt hadn't even dreamed of yet.

His jetcopter settled into a hover above the balcony—rotors tilted vertical for VTOL, the sleek cockpit barely large enough for two. Standard corporate transport, nothing special. Above, rotors beat against the evening air. Gordon snapped the disk upward and at its apex suspended it with his awareness, breaking off pieces while enlarging them into steps. He jumped, caught the first platform, and moved up the makeshift staircase to the cockpit.

Once seated, he reached out and pulled the grav-disk pieces back together, snapping the reassembled disk onto his right leg. The jetcopter banked toward the landing pad where Therasda and Nalen waited with the Void Sphere.

His hand tightened on the control stick. Whatever had forced those coordinates into his mind knew he'd come. Knew he'd be curious enough, ambitious enough, to follow the breadcrumb trail. That should worry him more than it did.

Hopefully, it would be another discovery to better humanity. Not another Thomas Haeolt exploitation scheme—profit over progress.

The main door to the Void Sphere was open and Gordon landed the jetcopter to the east on a nearby landing pad. He couldn't see Therasda or Nalen but he was sure that they were collecting gear and suiting up for their next mission.

The Void Sphere was similar in size to a space shuttle except shaped like its name implied. It didn't shine like chrome—instead there was a shimmer, almost like a force field. The chrominthium hull absorbed light and bent gravity around it, creating the distortion. Touch the surface without the right gloves and it would repel your hand.

After landing, he exited the cockpit and crossed toward the Void Sphere. Therasda's hover approached from the east—white, stock standard. Therasda didn't believe in owning anything he wasn't willing to lose and lived accordingly.

Nalen was quite different. He enjoyed the finer things in life as much as one could with the current affairs on Earth. His collection of literature was not as extensive as Gordon's but impressive. When not at work, he was clean cut and wore fine suits. His love of whiskey and cigars was far greater than even Therasda's.

As he disembarked from the hover, he wore the same prototype suit as Gordon and Therasda. For a man his size, standing tall at 6 feet 4 inches, Gordon was always impressed by how fluently he moved and by how he still found ways to work in cramped spaces, no matter what engineering task he was given. He was also an accomplished pilot and was a natural at using molecular awareness.

Gordon approached the ramp. "Andromeda," he said. "Threxal system."

Therasda straightened from the hull panel he'd been checking. "You're serious."

"The probe data…"

"The probe data's irrelevant if we can't get back." Therasda's voice was flat. "No beacons out there. No support. If the Sphere fails in Andromeda, Earth might as well be in another universe."

"The coordinates are solid," Nalen said. He was checking his datapad, not looking up. "If Gordon says they're accurate, they're accurate."

"You trust coordinates from a vision?" Therasda asked.

"I trust the math," Nalen said. "The hyperspace vectors align. It's feasible."

Therasda looked at Gordon for a long moment. "I watched you seize on that lab floor for two hours. Watched your eyes roll back, blood coming out your nose, while we couldn't do anything but wait. You're asking me to trust that whatever forced those coordinates into your head isn't doing the same thing right now, steering us into a trap."

Gordon met his eyes. "I am."

"Then we're idiots." Therasda shook his head, but there was something almost fond in the gesture. "You owe me an old-fashioned when we get back. The expensive stuff."

"Deal," Gordon said.

He entered the Void Sphere, and both Therasda and Nalen followed him. There were two rows of three seats, and Gordon sat in the far-left seat in the front row. When he did, the navigator podium rose from the ground. Attached to the top of it was the navigator helm.

Taking a deep breath and letting out a sigh, Gordon placed the navigator helm on his head as he lay back in the seat. Therasda sat in the front row with Gordon, while Nalen sat in the middle behind them. The ramp to the Void Sphere retracted and the door slid into place with a metallic click. The sound echoed through the Void Sphere. Silence followed as the pressure equalized.

As the navigator helm powered up, a blast shield lowered over Gordon's eyes and his molecular awareness turned on. In his mind's eye he could see the outside of the Void Sphere and how it was connected to the other dimensions outside of the original four. It was as if he was part of the Void Sphere and the dimensions were at his command.

He reached out with his awareness trying to visualize the location of the anomaly, the rocky small satellite suspended unnaturally in time and space. As the location's view came into focus, he created a tunnel through hyperspace.

The data forced itself in.

Computations flooded across his mind's eye—hyperspace jump vectors, gravitational eddies, dimensional resonance frequencies. Not from the helm. From outside.

Gordon understood immediately. His awareness was extended, interfacing with hyperspace through the navigator helm. He'd opened himself to the dimensional layers again. And just like during the Core adjustment, something was using that connection.

The same invasive touch that had planted coordinates in his skull during the adjustment, now guiding his navigation. Whatever wanted him at that fortress wasn't content to wait, it was steering him there, using Gordon's own extended awareness as the bridge.

The Void Sphere rose up from the launch pad, and he created a quantum tunnel from the surface of the planet that would provide enough speed to reach escape velocity. The Void Sphere would be in hyperspace, but planets' and stars' gravitational pull did seep into this realm, especially when on the surface of a planet.

This was the crucial part of the journey; if he didn't reach that point and acceleration, there were multiple catastrophic possibilities. The best worst-case scenario would be that the Void Sphere would enter Earth's orbit and need to be recovered by a spaceship.

As the Sphere hurtled through the quantum tunnel, Gordon focused through the building migraine. The beginning of these trips were always the worst—reality unraveling at the edges, his sense of self fragmenting across dimensions that shouldn't exist. One moment there was deep aching pain within his cells; the next, euphoric dissolution as his awareness expanded into hyperspace. He held on, teeth gritted, fighting the drift. The Core could show him infinity, but his mind would shatter long before he saw all of it.

When he had moments of clarity when not dealing with those sensations, he could see the path they were moving along through hyperspace towards their destination. He had successfully made it past Earth's influence on hyperspace and he was starting to become adept at using the Void Sphere.

The trip would only take a few hours but to Gordon and his companions, it would seem like days. He wasn't sure what they were experiencing and Nalen hadn't shared much about their earlier travels. He was oblivious to what was happening inside the Void Sphere because he had to stay focused so he could protect the Sphere from any outside forces.

The Void Sphere was close to reaching the system of Threxal. He could already feel how gravity from the main star in the system was reaching towards the quantum tunnel he had created. It was like great tendrils from a monstrosity that had been waiting for them in the cosmos since the beginning of time whose sole purpose was to consume passing entities.

They'd crossed into the system. Whatever had waited for them—tethered to that fortress, merged with hyperspace itself—no longer needed Gordon's awareness as a conduit. They were in range now. Direct manipulation.

Gordon pushed back with his mind and reinforced parts of the tunnel. No matter how he tried to reinforce it, a force kept pushing back, finding new ways to bypass his work, trying to insert its influence on the path the Void Sphere was taking. This wasn't gravity. This was intention. The same presence that had planted coordinates in his skull, now fully active within its domain.

Don't fight it…Gordon…

The voice drove into his mind like a spike. Gordon's awareness wavered, his grip on the tunnel loosening. Blood trickled from his nose inside the helmet.

I only want to converse with you about the intricacies of the path you have selected for your species…

Gordon tried to resist, to hold their course, but the presence was overwhelming—not stronger than him, but more skilled, more ancient. It knew hyperspace in ways Gordon had only begun to grasp. His headache flared white-hot. He was losing control.

A new path through hyperspace formed around them, coordinates shifting. Gordon could see the Void Sphere approaching the anomaly—still the same fortress from his vision, but its location had changed.

Through the navigator helm's connection, Gordon caught a flicker of something else: the presence straining, spreading itself thin. Reaching across that much space, holding the reroute stable while manipulating Gordon's tunnel—it was costing it something. Gordon could sense the effort, like feeling someone's grip weaken even as they maintained their hold. Whatever sapient being had spoken to him had rearranged space itself to intercept them. And it had hurt him to do it.

Instead of using his molecular awareness to maneuver the Void Sphere, he used it to recreate the images of outside the Sphere in his mind. In the far distance he could see the fortress from his vision. No light shone past it like other stars did when looking through a space telescope. The fortress had two main towers at the front corners of the walls. The architecture was Gothic, with tall arched entrances and intricate detailing on the top of the walls.

— End of the sample. Gift of the Ancients — and five more tales — continue in Season 1. —