“Product Description Fate: It is an idea as old as life itself. Do our choices shape the future, or is it the other way around? And if the path we walk is predestined -- if the way we are to meet our end is knowable -- what might that knowledge compel us to do?
Titan 's travels take it to a world at the edge of reason. Orisha is a planet whose people have lived for centuries beneath an unfathomable celestial body in their sky. From the moment it first appeared, the object was thought to be something unnatural, an ill omen that has made them feel watched, exposed, vulnerable -- provoking a primal fear that has steered the course of their civilization. The Orishans call it ''the Eye, '' and because it has consistently defied every scientific attempt to decode its true nature, many are convinced it represents an intelligence that is studying their world. . . and perhaps waiting to destroy it.
But the secret behind the Eye threatens Titan as well as Orisha. . . and it holds a special meaning for one member of Captain Riker's crew in particular, whose lifelong quest to balance faith and scientific truth is tested against the harsh, unblinking glare of inevitability.
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Chapter One
Occultus Ora, Stardate 58358. 1
The Starship Titan rolled slowly in the dark, dancing between the invisible jetsam, the ethereal flotsam, like some graceful leviathan swimming a terrestrial sea. All around it the other occupants of this region, the inspiration for the ship's lingering ballet, also pitched and spun in apparent counterpoint to the vessel's motion.
Titan 's astronomers had dubbed the region Occultus Ora for some reason known only to them. The physicists called the things residing here exotic matter plasmids but, lately, those who'd been tasked with ferreting out their secrets had taken to referring to the strange objects simply as darklings.
The image came from a myth Dr. Celenthe had heard on its homeworld of Syrath, something about the Catalysts of creation hiding in the dark.
The name fit the new objects well. They were invisible to every naked eye, irrespective of species, untouchable by all but the most specifically calibrated sensors, intangible by nearly every measure, yet here they were, in the lee of the Gum Nebula, performing their tandem pirouette, bending gravity into knots in complete defiance of their supposed nonexistence.
It was sheer luck that Titan had happened upon them at all even with the fantastic array of devices it sported to facilitate its explorations.
A weird but consistent spike in one of the lower EM bands during a routine sensor sweep had drawn the attention of the senior science officer and subsequently that of his captain. Another ship would have missed even that.
''Absolutely, Mr. Jaza, '' Captain Riker had said, a broad grin cutting a canyon in the dark hair of his beard as he perused the younger man's data. ''Let's have a closer look. ''
Jaza had never worked under a commander with as acute an appreciation for the beauty of the unknown as William Riker, never encountered anyone, scientist or artist, soldier or civilian, who had as pure a love for discovery. There was a free-form quality to the way Riker directed Titan 's missions that kept everyone on their toes without giving them all over to chaos. There was always reason guiding Riker's rhyme, even when it wasn't readily apparent.
Over weeks and with much rewriting of code and re-tasking of systems, the darklings came into sharper and sharper relief. To everyone's delight, they also brought along more mysteries to solve. Days became weeks. A couple of re-tasked systems became a score and soon a good portion of Titan 's crew was focused in one way or another on the strange cosmic formation onto which they had luckily stumbled.
They were a strain of so-called dark matter, that was obvious, but, unlike the garden variety of the stuff, the darklings' existence was apparently extremely organized. They were set in a massive ring, evenly distributed and collectively spinning in orbit around a neutron star.
How had this happened? What sustained the effect? What properties set this form of exotic matter outside the normal bestiary? These questions and hundreds more were asked by Jaza and his staff over the weeks Titan , now rigged essentially for silent running to avoid any stray homegrown rads cluttering their survey, spent sliding between the massive invisible pips.
It was a good time, the perfect expression of their collective raison d'être.
Which, of course, meant it couldn't last.
The day began badly for him: a fitful sleep full of powerful and unsettling dreams, followed by a return to consciousness that put him in mind of the time he'd escaped drowning.
Caught in a river whose current he had misjudged, he found himself both fa”
2014-02-01 (ol_source: 2022-01-27, isbndb_scrape: 2022-09-01, lgli_source: 2015-12-26, zlib_source: 2019-04-08, lgrsfic_source: 2014-02-01)
