Prologue

Prologue

The ground had finally ceased rumbling, stilling itself in an all-too-final way. Dust settled out of the air to fall back to the ground for the last time that Shah’nal Anat would ever see. The last rays of sunlight highlighted the shining specks as they slowly drifted down. The air was too still; not the slightest hint of a breeze interfered with the resettlement of the tiny motes of dust. Shah’nal began to feel the increased heat of solar radiation, even though the sun was setting. Adra’gan must have succeeded in solidifying the planet’s core, stopping the molten metal mass from rotating and eliminating the magnetic field. It had been decided this was the only way. To prevent the pathogen from spreading to other worlds, they had to sacrifice this one. What better way to kill an unstoppable disease than to irradiate it with the most powerful fusion reactor in the solar system?

Shah’nal stood from her squatted position, wary of her balance in case the ground shifted again. She moved closer to the large oak tree, stripped of its leaves. She had so enjoyed sitting under its gracious canopy in her youth, finding respite from the noonday sun in its shade. Her ancestral home in the Andeshar Valley had once been a beautiful, sprawling estate. She visualized the endless rows of grapevines, the fields of barley, the hop vines climbing wires to the sky. Shah’nal’s family had been among the most successful beer and wine makers in the region, their varietals sought after in markets far and wide. Now it was little more than a ruin—the main house burned, the barns destroyed, the fields fallow. She felt a great sense of loss as she looked around the place she had called home.

The pathogen had been released little more than three months ago. A scientific expedition near the equator had discovered a massive underground reservoir of what they had believed to be water. It took no mercy. It killed every living thing it came in contact with. There was no cure, no antidote—only death. A horrible, bloody death, drowning in your own blood. The pathogen liquefied the organs, sparing the lungs for last to keep the host alive as long as possible so it could reproduce and spread. There was no stopping it, no slowing it down. As far as she knew, she was one of the last surviving members of her species.

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For the last three hundred years, as the planet's core continued to cool and the sun’s radiation slipped through the weakening magnetic field, water had become the most precious resource on the planet. Shah’nal had never seen rain—not even a cloud in the sky. Only in old movies and documentaries could one see what rain had looked like. The once vibrant green and blue planet, called Mauris by its inhabitants, the fourth rock from the sun, was too small. It couldn’t maintain its molten core—the lifeblood of the magnetic field protecting the planet from solar winds. Mauris now resembled more of a desert world, red in hue. No surface water could be seen. The polar ice caps had to be harvested, and great canals dug to channel water to the farms so food could continue to be produced. Wells had been bored deep into the planet in search of groundwater to sustain life. Shah’nal Anat’s family estate had been the last in operation, singled out by the Anat’rah, the ruling family, to produce wine and beer for the politically connected. She supposed being cousins to the Anat’rah had helped, in addition to the high quality of their product.

Now, nothing else mattered. Shah’nal sat at the base of the great oak tree, resting her back against its massive trunk. Comforted in a way to be in a place so near and dear to her heart, she was happy that she would die here. Somehow, she had always known this would be her resting place. As she attempted to draw a deep breath, she was racked with a coughing fit that produced an unsettling amount of blood and chunks of what she guessed were parts of her lungs. When the fit subsided, she managed a few short breaths—not enough to satisfy her need for oxygen, but enough for her last few moments. Shah’nal settled her head back against the rough bark, looking to the horizon as the sun finally set.

As her vision began to dim, she saw the blue planet rise above the valley—the third planet from the sun, still in its infancy, still developing. She wondered what life would grow on the blue planet her people called Eristh. She hoped that the sacrifice her people had made would ensure life there would flourish. As her vision faded to black, her final thought was for the future people of Eristh. She prayed they would never come here, never uncover what had become of her kind.

Shah’nal Anat’s last breath left her chest in a wet mass of liquefied lung tissue, her now unfocused eyes reflecting the light of the blue planet next door.