Khyber is Istorica for the exiles, the one entrusted with remembering all their history, everything they've learned. Despite the support of her grandmother, Dayree, Khyber feels she's let down her family by not being able to step between worlds and take the exiles home. She has many gifts, but her talent for telling stories becomes the most important, when it offers the exiles a chance to reach out and find other exiles from Rehdonna. However, enemies have followed the exiles to Earth, and the only way to protect her family and village is to live separated from them under a false name. For the sake of the exiles, Khyber will do whatever it takes...and in the process find her way home.
It's a time of turmoil in the Central Allied Worlds when the governor of Rensler, his wife and eldest son are forced to attend a "conference" of colonial governors. They leave the youngest son, Edrian, and the colony in the care of his grandfather, the former governor. The two begin a secret project by befriending the sentient, nocturnal Nightskimmers. As Edrian grows up, and unrest intensifies, he learns real heroes sometimes operate in secret. His position as youngest brother of the next governor requires him to present a false face to the world against the day when he must strike out on behalf of the colonists if they're to keep their freedom. When the expected revolution does erupt, Edrian's father and grandfather are taken away, accused of treachery. His older brother flees to the wilderness to lead the rebels, and Edrian and his mother become hostages. Edrian hides behind his false reputation of being sickly and studious, allowing him to move freely at night, freeing prisoners and striking in defense of the colony. Only a boy on the verge of manhood, yet the Talon's reputation has already taken root...
K'reeth and her sister, K'rin, were named for the moonbirds--sister raptor birds who share parenting duties, one the nurturer, the other the hunter and defender. Orphaned by catastrophe and adopted by the High Mistrada of the T'bredi scholars, they're teachers entrusted with all the gathered wisdom of the Ayanlak. Their bond of sisterhood is tested when K'reeth falls in love with the Wind Walker Talon. The relationship is further strained when the new peace with the Colonist invaders includes a promise to send home all the children who have been rescued by and raised among the Ayanlak--and K'reeth is the first. Her forced journey to be reunited with a family she doesn't even remember eventually takes both sisters across the continent and into the nest of political intrigue and contention that may tear their world apart--on the very brink of peace and the fulfillment of ancient prophecy.
Before the Commonwealth existed, there was an expanding, multi-galaxy civilization, that disintegrated. This is the story of its downfall, where colony worlds learned to survive by their own strength...or were abandoned to die. Three novellas in one volume explore the birth of the Khybors, whose descendants will impact the Downfall, the rebirth of civilization, the return to the stars, and the Commonwealth far into the future. Khrystalis: Kerin was the youngest child of two powerful, intelligent, gifted research scientists. When the military interfered yet again in her father's research, the resulting lab explosion filled Kerin's body with experimental bio-crystal, long before it was ready for human testing. She was changed. Bio-crystal was meant to aid the body in repairing itself, when medical science was incapable. As it penetrated down to the genetic level, Kerin learned to change herself, and to sense the world in totally new ways. When her gift reached out beyond her own biology, she stood poised between being the bearer of a great gift for humanity, or a threat that would change the universe. Ambush: The twins, Casta and Pol, should never have been born, and there were many enemies who would still try to destroy them as they reached adulthood. Hidden away on a remote colony world with their uncle, they were allowed to explore all their potential, develop all the gifts they could imagine. That potential was put to good use when their home was attacked and their uncle was kidnapped by enemies intent on destroying first their world, then civilization. Their favorite game was called Ambush, and now the game had become reality. The enemy would never know what hit them. When the smoke had cleared, they had regained more than their uncle. Now what they were had a name: Khybors. Wing and Claw: Lor and Jae led the Khybors, training them to be the frontrunners of exploration teams clearing alien worlds for colonization. They had learned young not to trust the powers-that-be when they spoke of peace and cooperation between the emerging groups of augmented Humans and the rest of the Human race. All the signs were there, that the enemies who had been quiet, hiding in the shadows for generations now, were ready to emerge and attack once again. The time had come to reach for the stars, for Khybors to flee to the furthest limits of explored and colonized space, and find a world where they could live in peace and safety. First, they had to rescue the people who dared to stand up for them and speak on their behalf, before their voices were silenced permanently.
Of all the races that are part of the Central Allied Worlds (CAW), the augmented are the most feared, despised and threatened, considered no longer Human because of their abilities. But the time has finally come for the children of Norbra to act... After generations of cycling back and forth between abuse and praise, friendship and fear in the galaxy, Elin and Rorin and their descendants have a plan and the technology to save all Khybors. Utilizing the mind-machine bond with their Skip ships, they can create Wrinkles in the fabric of space. For the first time, fleeing beyond the reach of politicians, genetic purists and extremists like those led by the vicious Set'ri allows them the means to invisibly get to safety and provide evacuation for their allies. But an unprecedented discovery alters everything. They aren't simply Skipping beyond the reach of the sensors, they're Leaping to alternate universes, perhaps new dimensions...where the CAW can never find them. In alien space, the only certainty is that they need to protect themselves from other races that may prey upon them and their unique talents. Born of loss, pain and despair, the first law of the Leapers is set in stone: Harming one Leaper amounts to harming all. Attack and the gift of the Leap will be removed from cities, countries, worlds…the entire cosmos. An act of survival on the part of the children of Norbra ushers in an era of unimaginable change
He was an immense creature. He sat in an upright chair that seemed to have been provided especially for him. The great bulk of him flowed out and filled the chair. It did not seem to be fat that enveloped him. It seemed rather to be some soft, tough fiber, like the pudgy mass making up the body of a deep-sea thing. One got an impression of strength. The country was before the open window; the clusters of cultivated shrub on the sweep of velvet lawn extending to the great wall that inclosed the place, then the bend of the river and beyond the distant mountains, blue and mysterious, blending indiscernibly into the sky. A soft sun, clouded with the haze of autumn, shone over it. "You know how the faint moisture in the bare foot will make an impression." He paused as though there was some compelling force in the reflection. It was impossible to say, with accuracy, to what race the man belonged. He came from some queer blend of Eastern peoples. His body and the cast of his features were Mongolian. But one got always, before him, a feeling of the hot East lying low down against the stagnant Suez. One felt that he had risen slowly into our world of hard air and sun out of the vast sweltering ooze of it.
Refugees from the Downfall Wars, separated by centuries of spaceflight, clash on a far distant world. Caught between them are Tayree--native, Wind Walker, visionary, and a recent widow--and Arin, a foundling raised by the invading Colonists. Tayree's visions send her to find Arin, stolen from her tribe when he was an infant. She knows him from childhood dreams...and because his twin brother murdered her husband and infant sons in an attempt to possess her. Arin and Tayree could be part of prophecy to bring peace between the Ayanlak natives and the invading Colonists, but only if their hearts can heal. Tayree has a chance to fill her empty arms, but claiming her rights of recompense from her enemy's family could destroy the future for her tribe and Arin's love for her.
Khybors flee to Norbra for a safe place to raise their children, far from enemies who want them declared non-Humans, or want to enslave or annihilate them entirely. Like the selfish, arrogant queen of legend for whom the planet is named, Norbra has a reputation for destroying all life. Elin and those who settle the planet believe no one else will want it. They hope their enemies will leave them in peace while they wait for Norbra to do the hard work of destroying their troublesome race. However, Khybors are made to survive. They make Norbra their home and use the dangers of the planet for their own defense. Then. as the generations go on, they make a long-range plan for survival, aware that their enemies won't give up. The only way for Khybors to survive as a race is to withdraw so far away that the Set'ri and other enemies will never find them, and in time, may even forget about them. Rorin Pace comes to Norbra to win Elin's heart, to follow his dream of piloting one of their ships, and to find a way to protect all Khybors. Kheeran, their daughter, reaches new dimensions as a pilot. Their son Banjer dives deeper within the computer world and discovers the vital element in the Khybors' long-range plans of escape to the far reaches of space. Zeph, a Wrinkleship pilot, allies with the Khybors in building their fleet and brings them a damaged ship called the Nova Vendetta, full of prisoners, pirates, and a growing artificial intelligence. Errien, Kheeran's daughter, leads the pilots who search for new gateways to other universes. Meanwhile, their enemies grow stronger and come closer, and the countdown begins to the destruction of the Central Allied Worlds.
Niall Encardi is ready to graduate after long, intensive years of medical training and go home to the colony world of Sorendaal. His life-long dream has been to become a healer and help the people his uncle, the governor, leads. The revolutionaries who overthrow the current government of the Central Allied Worlds have other plans. When the homeworlds of Niall and his classmates don't immediately give support and approval to the revolutionaries, the medical students are labeled enemies of the state and transported to prison. Despite every effort to stay focused on his first calling, healing and medicine, Niall becomes a leader, first on a prison planet, then on the prison space station known as the Abyss. Every time the government changes hands, he and his friends and then his allies in the prison society are labeled conspirators and sympathizers and condemned to yet more imprisonment. By the time the Abyss is attacked, Niall and his people have become a force to be reckoned with in their goal of freedom...even if it means turning pirate, like the falsely imprisoned nobleman who once sailed the ancient seas, on a ship called the Vendetta.
