Prologue

A prophecy is a lot like faith, drawing its strength from whether or not there is enough belief to sustain it. Without belief, it fades like breath on a cold winter’s night. Some prophecies are delicate and easily shattered. They are disputed and forgotten, never to return. Sometimes they are shadows—rumors of what might come to pass. Sometimes.

What was about to unfold on Haleen was a prophecy. Like all prophecies, it was based on rumors and speculation. Of all the people who called Haleen home—and whose ancestors had done so for centuries—only a handful even knew of the prophecy, and they chose not to think about it. It was easier that way. They held that its powers were purely psychological—that the prophecy could only shape the future of those foolish enough to believe. But they were wrong . . . and what they chose to ignore was about to reshape their entire world, whether or not they believed.

Far away, another race of people knew of the same prophecy, but unlike the people on Haleen, they spoke of it openly. For centuries, it had been their golden nugget of truth—their reason to look to the future. With reverent care, they passed its secrets on. From generation to generation, the tale was told.

It was the story of Rimous—a warrior the likes of which their people had never seen before, nor would again. Leagues of enemies fell before him; combatants with fiercer weapons and entire legions of warriors were no match for Rimous' fury. It was only in the end, when the ancient Eclesian warrior was ultimately struck down, that the truth was told. Then, with his dying breath, he revealed the secret of his power.

As a young soldier, he'd found himself facing certain death. It was dark; the enemy was everywhere—he could hear their footsteps surrounding him on all sides. With no weapon to be found and no means of escape, he'd pleaded with the god of war to spare him. To his horror, the enemy closed in. They captured Rimous and dragged him away. He was bound, hand and foot, and tossed into what his captors called the 'cave of death'. There, surrounded by the decaying bodies of those who'd preceded him, he struggled to catch his breath in the stench and waited for death to find him. It did not come.

Rimous could only guess at the passage of time. Days passed, without end, a seamless stretch of time marked by rodents coming to feast on his silent companions, then going on their way. Parched by thirst, his tongue thickened and he could not swallow. Rimous had given up struggling with the leather strips that bound him and held him fast. He no longer cared to be free—he only wanted it to be over.

It would seem his prayers had been heard. A shadowy figure appeared in the darkness, floating above the twisted corpses. Speaking without words—controlling the thoughts that raced in Rimous' mind—the figure offered the doomed warrior life. But, as in all deals, there was a price to be paid.

Rimous would live to fight again. . In choosing life, he forged a pact with a dark civilization. As a result of this pact, the warrior's strength and skill would surpass that of any enemy he encountered. He would annihilate whomever he chose to confront—entire races whose legions had been feared since the beginning of recorded time. He would be victorious in all battles—not as a means of obtaining glory for himself and his people, but to pave the way for a final battle on a distant day.

So it was that Rimous had bartered with the apparition in the cave. The details of his covenant had been retold by his people, again and again, but—like a secret caressed by every tongue in a crowded room—they had become embellished and tainted. The Eclesians no longer believed all the prophecy had to say, but there was one point no one could doubt. Romous' pact had secured more than a legacy of power for the Eclesians. There was something very real buried under the grasslands on the far side of Haleen. It was more than a prophecy—much more—and on the day of the awakening, the Destroyer would rise.

* * *

There was nothing about the topography of the far side of Haleen that spoke of ancient civilizations, much less a ‘day of awakening’. There were no toppled ruins of bygone cities—no abandoned roads overrun by brush and tangled vines. In truth, there was nothing to indicate that the area was anything but what it appeared to be—virgin and unspoiled. It was a simple landscape of small forests separated by rolling grasslands, which beckoned to be tilled and planted. In the midst of this serenity, a massive canyon cut through the land—wandering and out of place, like a raw, jagged scar from some ancient battle. The canyon’s edges were rocky and its sides were steep. Nestled in its belly, some two hundred meters below, a lazy river wound its way like a ribbon shining in the midday sun.

In the early morning hours, with the dew still heavy on the land, gentle breezes brushed through the canyon, stirring the plants that clung to the rocky ledges. In unison, the foliage danced—soft, delicate wisps of green that dipped and swayed against granite walls. From there, the light winds spread out to caress the grasslands, forming flowing waves of motion that disappeared in the distance.

As the sun followed its familiar arc, it bathed Haleen in alternating patterns of sun and shadow. On some days, rain clouds covered its face. Lightening would split the sky, followed by thunder that rumbled along the canyon walls. Rainstorms were simply part of life on Haleen, as were the changing seasons. They came and went, and were hardly noticed, but each day at sundown, Haleen was transformed. Evening did not slide in gently here. It arrived with a vengeance.

As the sun slipped down and darkness claimed the land, the caressing breezes that dawdled in the daylight hours found a new and sinister purpose. Gathering strength, they banded together to form an invisible wall of rushing air. To survive this anomaly, life on Haleen had been forced to adapt. Animals sought shelter in the forest by night, where trees anchored themselves with roots that were wide and deep. Birds roosted in the trees' innermost branches, and winged insects found refuge in the nooks and crannies of the canyon’s rocky sides. Only a variety of beetles and small rodents, which crawled too close to the ground to feel the wind’s fury, roamed freely in the darkness. They spent their time leisurely preying on one another in the moonlight, until the sun brought yet another day.

It was here, on the beckoning grasslands of Haleen, that the evacuees from Grahba landed their ships. It was early summer and not yet midday. They stepped out onto the soil of their new home, blinking and shielding their eyes from the bright sunlight. Some danced, while others fell to their knees in an attempt to embrace the ground beneath them. All were certain they’d found the perfect place to build their new settlement—right there in the middle of the clearing. Those plans changed at sundown.

During that long first night on Haleen, the wind lashed mercilessly at the grounded fleet of ships. The large evacuation cruisers trembled and lurched in the darkness, but managed to hold their ground. The smaller scout ships were not so fortunate. The whistling gale snatched them up and proceeded to flip them end over end. For what seemed an eternity, the people huddled inside the shuddering vessels. They listened to the wind ravage and tear at this strange, new world. When the howling finally subsided, a silence—thick and unnatural—settled over them. Dawn had arrived.

The people emerged from the cruisers, blurry-eyed and shaken, and were greeted by the clear calm of morning. They gazed at the upended scout ships that lay scattered about and quickly realized that the wide, open grasslands were probably not the best place to build. So they turned their attention to the canyon and its sheltering walls. They felt they could find protection there—a foundation upon which to build their city and a place to call home.

In the weeks to follow, the evacuees built their settlement on the largest of the rock ledges that protruded from the canyon walls. To escape the night winds, the settlement was situated eighty meters below the canyon’s edges. Using lasers from the evacuation cruisers, workers carved out niches in the granite walls, but progress was painfully slow. Even beneath the battery of laser fire, the canyon was solid and unyielding, and refused to be transformed.

To add to their frustration, the workers were forced to deal with the danger of building and maneuvering equipment around on the narrow ledges. The threat of falling over the edge and into the canyon below made for short tempers and quick tongues. Building materials had to be carried down crude ladders, or lowered with a block and tackle, until stairways could be carved into the unyielding stone. It was backbreaking work that commenced at sunup and lasted until the evening wind forced the exhausted crews back into the tethered ships. Progress, although undeniable, was painfully slow.

Twenty-one evacuation cruisers had made the trip to Haleen, each one carrying approximately four hundred and fifty men, women and children. With so many people to shelter, the settlement spread out to both sides of the canyon. Several catwalks were constructed to connect the two halves. They spanned the abyss like the first tentative strands of a man-made spider web. Viewed from these catwalks, the canyon walls appeared as multicolored layers of rock that spread outward and down, eventually fading into the mist of the river far below.

The crews worked on the settlement at a feverish pace. Once the niches were carved out and the rock was cleared away, they began the building process. Desperate for materials with which to build, the crews were forced to dismantle some of their own evacuation cruisers for components to use in the building process. Items from the living quarters—chairs, bunks, tables and shelving—were stripped out and taken down to the settlement. When the interiors of the ships had been gutted, lasers were used to cut away large sections of the vessels’ exteriors. Parts that were light enough to be transported by a scout ships were secured to the belly of the smaller ships and flown down to the building site. Larger pieces were lowered to the building site with the aid of multiple pulleys and a long cable securely fastened to a cruiser that was still intact.

At one point, the workers were split into three separate groups. The first concentrated on the housing aspect of the project, while the second busied itself with the construction of catwalks to spanned the mighty abyss. The third group was a bit more challenged. They worked while suspended from the canyon walls. It was their job to precariously piece together the large solar panels that had been brought from Grahba—disassembled, crated and carefully tucked away in the bellies of the cruisers.

With the settlement located on both sides of the canyon, there was a considerable difference in the hours the solar generators would be operational. It would be midmorning before the sun's rays reached over the edge of the canyon and warmed the solar panels located on the west wall. At that hour, the eastern panels would still be draped in shadows. As the sun climbed and arced, the roles were reversed, so that the eastern panels generated their power when the western side was already nestled in the evening's gloom. To compensate for this variance, electrical cables were stretched across the canyon, thus supplying both halves of the settlement with equal amounts of power. The insulated cables were strategically fastened to the underside of the catwalks, obscured from view and protected from the wind.

While progress seemed to be painfully slow, Haleen's evacuees did not have to build the settlement entirely on their own. Rikson, a colony on the other side of Haleen, came to their aid with various supplies—including shipments of electrical components and plumbing supplies to run water throughout the settlement. The evacuees were grateful and requested an itemized bill of all they'd received. They intended to repay the debt when they were settled in, but the request was politely refused. No repayment was necessary. The leader of Rikson, having extended the invitation for the evacuees to come to Haleen, felt obligated to these strangers. Offering assistance in the form of supplies, he felt, was simply the neighborly thing to do.

In spite of the many challenges—the unyielding nature of the canyon walls, the shortage of building materials, the ferocious night winds and the danger of working on ledges high above the canyon's floor—the construction of the settlement moved along at an impressive pace. Still, to the people who still spent their nights huddled in the tethered hulls of what was left of the evacuation ships, progress seemed far too slow. One month and four days after they first set foot on the grasslands of Haleen, the settlement nestled in the canyon walls was completed to a point where the people could move in. There, safely tucked away in carved rooms and tunneled corridors, they spent their first peaceful night oblivious to the wind that ravaged the world above.

No, this wasn't quite home. Not yet. It wasn't even like the world they had known. Grahba, and everything that was familiar, was gone—the asteroid had seen to that. The terrifying rush to evacuate, the quest for a place to go—a world that would take them in—all seemed like a lifetime ago. They had arrived safely on Haleen and that was all that mattered. Here, nestled behind the stone ledges of the canyon walls, was something the evacuees had struggled so hard to find. A place to begin again.

Still, there was something missing.

Then, on the seventy-fifth day after the evacuation of Grahba, with the night winds already subsiding and the sun but a sliver on the crest of the horizon, Commander Shance Delray landed the SX45 on the far side of Haleen. Believed dead, his people had long since given up on seeing their commander again—and for him to find them here, on this strange world, defied all explanation. The settlement awakened, then erupted in a dazzling celebration. Stunned by his return, his people were eager to question their long-lost leader, and equally curious to meet the young woman who had returned by his side. A double ceremony followed. The first reunited the commander with his people, who in turn bore witness to the second ceremony—his marriage to the woman with whom he’d chosen to spend the rest of his life. At the climax of the celebration, the small settlement was given the name of Brinda, meaning "the promised one."

When the lengthy celebration was over, the people slept long and hard—unaware of the war ship that hung in the sky above them. For Brinda was indeed the promised one, but it had been promised at another time, to another purpose.

Four kilometers beyond Brinda, the canyon's mighty river momentarily split in two. Cold and restless, its waters divided to surge around a large, metal plate nestled in its granite bed. Flush with the height of the river, the plate measured fifteen meters in both directions. Its surface was tarnished and weathered, and it blended into its surroundings so well that Shance and his crew had flown directly over it upon their arrival and saw nothing. But the war ship was well aware of the fork in the river and the metal plate. It paused while passing over it, following the same course the SX had flown only hours before.