Empire Reborn (Taran Empire Saga Book 1): A Cadicle Space Opera by A.K. DuBoff (brene brown rising strong .txt) 📗

Since he, thankfully, didn’t have any classes scheduled for the day, he spent the morning and most of the afternoon in his office catching up on the administrative work that had been deferred for his trip to Prisaris. It was the most mundane part of being an Agent. He knew his father hated it, too, which didn’t help. Though things were about as streamlined as they could be, entering notes about each student’s progress and scores, designing lesson plans, and staying abreast of threat assessment reports was nonetheless time-consuming.

Just as he was feeling like it might be possible to knock out the rest of his backlog before dinner, a message from his father flashed across his touch-screen desktop.

>>Come to my office when you have a moment.<<

That meant ‘right now’, but Jason appreciated that his father wasn’t the kind of commander to make everything an urgent order.

Shit, what now? Jason caught himself. Shite, he corrected mentally. Tiff was right; he was Taran and needed to adjust his speech. This is going to be foking weird.

He sent an affirmative acknowledgement to his father and then quickly locked down his office systems before heading to the High Commander’s office down the hall. The doors were closed, so he alerted Wil telepathically that he’d arrived.

“Come in,” his father replied.

Jason entered and closed the door behind him before taking a seat in a guest chair. Across the wooden High Commander’s desk, his father was tapping out a message on his handheld. He glanced up with a welcoming nod and smile to Jason while he finished whatever he was working on. With a sigh, he set down the device.

“Why does everything always seem to converge? It can never just be one thing.”

Jason shrugged. “The Universe is testing us, I guess.”

Wil studied him. “I saw Tiff’s transfer come across my desk. How are you doing with that?”

Leave it to his father to read between the lines. Though Jason had never directly discussed his relationship with her, his parents were frustratingly perceptive, even without telepathy. To them, it had probably been obvious from the start what was going on.

“I’m sad to lose a friend here, but I look forward to staying in touch and hearing how she grows into her new role.”

His father nodded sagely. “Some relationships are what you need at the time.”

“Yeah. This will be good for her. And me.”

“I hope you know, I’m always here for you if you ever need to talk.”

“I do, thank you. I’m good. Really.”

“Okay.” He looked down at the digital reports fanned out on his desktop. “This situation is going to demand our full attention, I’m afraid.”

“I’m ready.”

“Good,” his father said, “because I’ll need you to help Michael keep an eye on things around here for a few days. Your mother and I are taking a trip to Tararia.”

“Seriously, a social visit now?”

“Yes, it’s a good opportunity to see your sister, but that’s a bonus, not the reason.”

Jason felt the burn of embarrassment for jumping to conclusions. He hadn’t seen his sister much in the past decade. It was unfortunate that their two paths had taken them apart, but such was life.

“We’re going to look through the Priesthood’s physical archives to see if there’s anything else about the treaty,” his father continued.

“There’s more you haven’t gone through?” When the organization had been ousted five years prior, the TSS had conducted a raid of the island’s structures before handing it over to Ryan as the new seat for the Dainetris Dynasty. Jason had assumed that any physical archives found in the depths of the former monastery had been seized at the time.

“I never conducted an inspection myself,” Wil said. “There’s only one way to find out if the other Agents missed anything.”

“I wonder what else you might come across down in the depths.”

His father nodded. “The Priesthood kept a lot hidden. Admittedly, I haven’t gone to search before because I’m hesitant to find out what else they might have been keeping from us.”

“I think it was the right call, at the time, to not dig too deeply,” Jason said. “It let us get a fresh start after they were gone. History is great once you have proper perspective, but it can color judgment.”

“It can. But now, we need the kind of insights only past experience can offer.”

“I hope you find answers.”

“Me too. This ancient war is a mystery.”

“Do you think the Priesthood intentionally buried the records of that war, too?”

“My impression is that this conflict pre-dates the Priesthood’s existence—by a lot. So, any records that may exist would have been locked away simply because no one knew their significance.”

That was a strange thought. The Priesthood had an omnipresence in Taran society that made it feel like the organization had been around forever, even though Jason was aware it had only wielded significant power for the past two thousand years or so. Records from before that time had been intentionally destroyed or altered to help the Priesthood’s nefarious ends, so it was anyone’s guess what Taran life may have been like during a war a hundred thousand years ago. Finding records about the war would not only help address their current alien problem, but it might offer a fascinating window into their own race’s history. That was well worth an exploratory trip.

“I hope you can find the text of the treaty,” Jason said.

“It would certainly make things easier.”

“I’m happy to go with you, if you want another set of eyes.”

His father gave a morose nod. “Under any other circumstances, I’d love for you to come along so we could all be in one place as a family for a change. But… Well, let’s just say we’re going to leave the Conquest here. If there’s an incident here at Headquarters