Cosega Source: A Booker Thriller (The Cosega Sequence Book 5) Read online

  Cosega Source

  Brandt Legg

  Contents

  Copyright

  Preface

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Epilogue

  Glossary

  Acknowledgments

  A Note From the Author

  About the Author

  Books by Brandt Legg

  Cosega Source (Book Five of the Cosega Sequence)

  Published in the United States of America by Laughing Rain

  Copyright © 2021 by Brandt Legg

  All rights reserved.

  Cataloging-in-Publication data for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-935070-59-7

  ISBN-10: 1-935070-59-2

  Cover design by Eleni Karoumpali

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, scanning, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher. Published in the United States of America.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  BrandtLegg.com

  Preface

  The Cosega Sequence can be entered at Book One, Cosega Search, or this book, Cosega Source. Therefore, if you haven’t read the first four books, it is okay to start here. You might enjoy it more to start at Book One, but it isn’t necessary to understand the story.

  The Cosegans do not actually call themselves Cosegans. This is what Rip has dubbed them. “Cosega” is an ancient word belonging to one of the lost or forgotten languages. It translates to “before the beginning.” However, in this book I have decided it is easier for the readers of the first four Cosega volumes to have Cosegans use the term when referring to themselves and their culture.

  The Cosegans are speaking in their language — a combination of thoughts and sounds. However, I have decided to write it in English, since most of my readers do not understand Cosegan.

  What the Cosegans call an “Oshah”, Ripley Gaines has named the “Eysen”, an ancient word meaning “to hold all the stars in your hand.” Again, for continuity between the first four Cosega books and future ones, including this volume, the Cosegans will use the term Eysen.

  Also, there is a glossary at the end of the book.

  Finally, it is mentioned several times throughout that the Cosegans measure time quite differently than we do, but for the ease of understanding, they will occasionally refer to our units of measurement, using seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, and so on. After all, they may seem different, but they are really us.

  One

  “They call me Crying Man,” Trynn said, as they walked among the unusually thick Nogoff trees of the endless forest.

  Shanoah gasped. “Then you’ve made contact?”

  He nodded, smiling sheepishly, yet his eyes gleamed with triumph.

  “How many times?” she asked, not so much as a curious lover, but as a competitor. Shanoah was an Imaze, while Trynn was the last Eysen maker. Both were trying to save their people, the Cosegan civilization, and all that would come after it.

  “Twice,” he answered. “I have not spoken to them yet with words.”

  “I should hope not.” She stopped and lightly pulled at his arm so he would turn to look at her. “The risks, Trynn . . . they are too great.”

  “I must try,” he said solemnly. “It does not matter what happens to me.”

  “It’s not just you, it’s all of us . . . everything.”

  “You and the other Imazes still have the support of The Circle,” he said, referring to the group of Cosegan elders that held the authority on such things. “I do not have that luxury.”

  “Yet you persist.”

  “The Terminus comes.”

  The Terminus Doom, he meant, a prophesied vision seen in the Eysens that showed the end of the Cosegan world and total human extinction for all time. They were down to days now.

  “If the others had not surrendered, we could already be there,” Trynn continued bitterly, thinking of his fellow Eysen makers, recalling how the Cosegans had once revered the remarkable little spheres, their greatest technological achievement. “The Eysens made us Cosegans god-like.”

  “They had no choice,” Shanoah said, glancing away as four purple and turquoise butterflies, each with a three-foot wingspan, flew by.

  “Who? The Circle, or the other Eysen makers?”

  “Both!” she said, as if it should have been obvious. “Even if The Circle hadn’t issued the decree to stop using and manufacturing Eysens in any matters related to the Doom or far-future, the other makers had to abandon their projects after the Nostradamus debacle.”

  Trynn remained firm. “The Eysen is the only way to save us.”

  Shanoah looked at him, the hurt familiar in her eyes. They often came back to this point in their disagreements. She didn’t have to say it, he’d already realized his error, but she spoke anyway. “It is not the only way. There are three avenues, and the Imazes’ is the one with the best chance.”

  Towering trees, generous with widespread branches holding shimmering, round, verdant leaves swayed and rustled in the light breeze as Tr
ynn reached for her hand.

  “Only because of you,” he said, knowing it sounded like an attempt to repair the damage of his words, but they both understood. He meant it.

  He snuck a peak at the terminus clock concealed in a chip worn on his wrist. Twenty-five days left until the end of humanity. Can we still reverse it?

  They paused at a spot on the trail where the city’s skyline came into view. Solas, with its beautiful, impossibly tall buildings, gleaming infinite translucent shades of the visible spectrum, was the largest Cosegan city, and their capitol. The Cosegans had mastered light, and from it they’d constructed vehicles, aircraft, space ships, every kind of structure, and even entire cities.

  “Why do they call you Crying Man?” Shanoah asked softly.

  “I cried when I first saw them.”

  She nodded. “Because you believe they are the ones . . . Can they do it?”

  “Eleven million years separates us. That’s hundreds of thousands of generations, countless lifetimes, a near infinite number of events . . . and we bridged it all.”

  “You’ve done that before.”

  He squeezed her hand. “Yes, and each time it is a miracle.”

  “It is science.”

  “They are the same.”

  She smiled. “The future ones . . . they believe we are gods.”

  “What else would you have them think?” he replied. “We are all-knowing. It appears to them that we effortlessly enter their world through the Eysen, through space and thoughts . . . ”

  “But can we answer their prayers?”

  He looked at Shanoah, into her emerald eyes. Her dark, close cropped hair framed a delicate, high cheekboned face that elicited not fragility, but a serene strength. He grappled with the double meaning of her question. “Their everyday prayers are up to them to fulfill . . . from within. Their grand desires to know where they came from, who they are, the meaning of life . . . to understand the mysteries of the universe, that we can help with.”

  “And the Terminus?”

  “They don’t know about their Doom yet,” he said. “That, of course, is their greatest wish—to save themselves, the species . . . But our future selves don’t realize what is at stake.”

  “The unasked prayer, that is the one we must answer for them.”

  “For them, and for us,” Trynn said, more as a question than a statement.

  “And they will help?”

  Her voice gave him confidence in his inner knowing, as it often wasn’t necessarily her words, but her query and inflection. “They must help. It cannot be done without them.”

  “You know I am behind you. I believe in the power of the Eysen, but it’s like communicating with them over what they call ‘video conferencing’. The Imazes will go in person. We can have so much more impact, and respond in real time.” She rubbed her foot into the soft, dark earth.

  “Don’t count on time to be your friend,” he said softly. “Traveling there in person is risky enough. Even if you make it there, you’ll have to go back again and again.”

  She reached down and grabbed a handful of moist soil. “I know.”

  “Every time you are there, it will be like the first time, and each time you will be blind to the consequences and ramifications of your visit.”

  “I know.” She let the soil filter through her slender fingers, saving a single leaf.

  “Don’t you realize, the impact you speak of . . . you’ll have no way to know how it went until you return there.”

  “I know!”

  “How long do you think it will take?” he pressed. “Just how many times can you go back?”

  “As many as it takes!”

  “I don’t want to watch you die!”

  She held the leaf up to their eyes and let it fall. “Then, when that time comes, you must close your eyes.”

  Two

  Julae stole a glance behind her—a group of six guardians were still back there. They had been chasing her for more than three hours. The rocky terrain of the canyons provided her better position and places to hide, but it was strenuous running even for a Cosegan. Still, the hot sun and dry conditions favored Julae. Not only was she younger and swifter than her pursuers, she had another advantage—the leaned, muscled woman was an Etheren.

  “I can’t get caught with the mineral,” she whispered to herself as she climbed higher.

  All Cosegans had achieved cellular control of their health. They were exceptionally healthy and fit. They were capable of going days without water, could run fast for ten or twelve hours without resting, and could jog even longer. However, Julae’s upbringing in nature, and training in the “natural ways,” meant she could do things most guardians could not.

  Among Cosegans and their enhanced abilities, Etherens had perhaps the most extreme talents. The majority of Cosegans could see and hear exceptionally well (at least three times what modern humans were capable of), could jump higher and farther, and, of course, owned great healing knowledge. But Etherens had an almost extra sense, a way of becoming in-tune with nature that ordinary Cosegans could not match.

  “She’s up there!” one of them yelled. Three of the guardians went around a longer route, while the other three climbed the rock face toward Julae.

  The guardians, as close to police or military as the peaceful Cosegans needed, worked at the direction of The Circle, a council of elders who were as much of a government as the advanced culture required. The leadership had recruited well over the years, searching for those with the best physical attributes.

  Cosegans knew better than to manipulate genes in the laboratory to produce enhanced humans. They did it with their minds. They could also identify those whose bloodlines gave them specific abilities.

  Julae had already figured out that two of the group after her must have some Etheren blood in them. Those two closest, she thought. They’re too good at climbing.

  Originally there had been ten. However, she hadn’t seen some of them for at least an hour.

  They couldn’t keep up. This environment decides who is strong, who is skilled, and who is smart enough.

  Now on a plateau, she steadied her breathing while moving at full speed. Julae recalled her childhood, running in the hills and through the deep forests with other Etheren children, climbing Nogoff and twistle trees, eventually going up StarToucher trees, higher than the cliff she’d just scaled. From a young age, Etheren children were taught to fend for themselves in nature, to survive alone for days at a time. Then, with others, they were to work as a team on adventures that might last for weeks.

  Those had been beautiful times, she thought, whisking her voluptuous black ponytail off her shoulder and wiping her brow, before the Doom was discovered and the weight of existence came down on us Etherens.

  The first two guardians crested the cliff and were now on foot not far behind her. “Surrender!” one of them shouted, brandishing a weapon.

  The Terminus Doom (or simply Doom, as it was sometimes called) showed the end of humanity, and although the timeline had somewhat shifted, it was coming soon. It had changed everything about the Cosegan’s world, but had been especially hard on the Etherens because of the powers of their meditative minds. And, because they were the miners, they were the only ones who could find and produce the mineral globotite.

  Three violet lasers shot past her. “A warning!” the shooter yelled.

  They’re too close, she thought. I must go faster. She didn’t know much about weapons, few Cosegans did, so she wasn’t sure if they had the ability to just stun her, or if they would kill her.

  Globotite had always been important to the Cosegans’ technological society, but once the Doom came, it suddenly became the most valuable and dangerous thing on the planet. And Julae, like so many of her friends, had been enlisted into its now illegal trade. Julae was not just one of the fastest, not just an Etheren, not just a Cosegan.

  She was a globe runner.

  Three

  Present Day

&nbs
p; Sitting in a large, rustic gazebo on the sandy beach of one of his tropical islands, Booker Lipton, a handsome African American, and the world’s wealthiest man, looked across the table at Ripley “Rip” Gaines, pondering the consequences of all he had done, and worried about the things they had, so far, left undone.

  Rip’s intense expression showed he was oblivious to Booker’s gaze, lost in his own thoughts. A brilliant archaeologist, Rip had quite a reputation. In fact, he had several of them. He’d spent the early part of the 2000s searching for an elusive artifact that would prove humanity had been around a lot longer than the scientific community’s consensus claimed. He also hypothesized that early civilizations were far more advanced than believed.