The Zygan Emprise: Renegade Paladins and Abyssal Redemption Read Online Free Page B

and I were given a hero’s welcome when
we finally arrived at Kepler 6b. Turned out the Andarts had used
their own communications disrupters to block our distress signals
from getting through, isolating us from our pursuing pedagogue as
well as any local intergalactic Zygfed patrols. Escaping the ambush
relatively unscathed, without help from the Zygan “cavalry”, meant
we’d not only passed our field test, but earned ourselves a
commendation--and a chance to apply for Zygfed’s elite Sentinels
team after graduation. The offer was tempting, but, after
consideration, I declined. John‘s trail, and mine, was with Zygan
Intelligence, not the Sentinel Corps.
    I was amazed that Spud demurred as well. He
told me it was because the Sentinel Corps would fill his
brain-attic with “feckless experiences without satisfying his
intellectual curiosity”. My pedagogue told me weeks later that he’d
told her he’d been loath to break up our team, considering we
worked together so well.
    I had to admit, that was a really nice thing
for him to say. And even nicer was that he never snitched that I’d
rushed into space without waiting for my pedagogue, my “training
wheels”, in the first place.
     
    * * *
     
    Kingdoms like Zygfed need their warriors—but
they also need their enemies. Nothing better than a passionate
struggle between good and evil to hold an alliance together, right?
And evil is a simple recipe. Take a teaspoon of the devil, a pinch
of brute, add a name based on mors , the Latin word for
death, simmer, and, presto! You have an archfiend that makes your
side look heroic. You’ve seen it on our TV show (or, considering
our ratings, maybe not): every week, Tara Guard and her cohorts
fight the good fight for the Phaeton Alliance, against the
dastardly killer Mordmort.
    But, in reality, you don’t need horns,
flaming retinas, and smoke from your facial orifices to represent
evil. Zygfed’s enemy du jour is a balding, fifty-something
human named Theodore Benedict, who wears bifocals and looks like a
tax auditor. iii Evil exists all around
us, and usually looks like a tax auditor. It’s the crimes, not the
costumes, that make the villain; and Benedict’s crimes have
included trying to violently overthrow the Omega Archon and His
Highness’ government, and “damn the collateral damage.”
    To achieve his malevolent aims, Benedict
enlisted the Andarts, champion guerilla fighters from populated
planets all across the universe, to launch terrorist attacks on
Zygfed. My primary job for Zygint, and that of my fellow
catascopes-to-be at Mingferplatoi Academy, would be to stop
Benedict and his terrorist thugs and safeguard our King and his
subjects.
    Studying to be a Zygan catascope was hard
work, but it beat spending four years at Earth’s military
academies; I was done with the classroom in only six months. I’m
not going to bore you with all the details of our education. I
mean, everybody has to go to school, right? Then, we moved on to
our internships where we could focus on the fun stuff, learning to
drive, fly, fight, and work our Ergals.
    What’s an Ergal? It’s an instrument, a tool,
that does, frankly, almost anything you could wish for, kind of
like a Zygint version of a Swiss Army knife. An Ergal allows a
catascope to transport from one location to another, change his or
her appearance, levitate (lev), shape-shift matter (anamorph),
become invisible, and, of course, travel in time. Sweet, huh? Our
scientists say it works through a process called CANDI, Cascading
Auxiliary Neurosynaptic Discharge Interaction, that sends wireless
signals directly to the brain. Gary calls it magic, but then his generation is notoriously uncomfortable with new
technology. My brother’s antique watch, I discovered to my
amazement, was an Ergal, anamorphed to resemble a timepiece.
Anamorphed to look like a cell phone, his Ergal would be mine as
soon as I graduated. Sweet.
    But, as always, there is a catch. Ergals are
only