Unique: Read an Extract From Peter F. Hamilton’s “Exodus: The Helium Sea”

Even after greater than two years since its debut at The Recreation Awards, Archetype Leisure’s sci-fi motion RPG Exodus stays one of many trade’s most intriguing mysteries.

Between cinematic trailers, a gentle drip-feed of gameplay teases, and a full gameplay reveal anticipated quickly, the previous BioWare builders behind the undertaking have solely simply begun to disclose the scope of the formidable science fiction universe they’re constructing.

Whereas we have seen glimpses of that world, a number of the deepest insights thus far have come via a sequence of official novels written by acclaimed sci-fi creator Peter F. Hamilton. And, forward of the discharge of the second guide in that sequence, IGN can completely reveal an extract from “Exodus: The Helium Sea”.

Exodus: The Helium Sea – Unique Excerpt

IT HAD TAKEN Chief Octain and his small workforce of engineers a frantic thirty minutes to load a worn-out distant upkeep pod with modules from different ancillary craft. Even because the previous pod was ejected from the Diligent’s hangar, they had been nonetheless operating diagnostics, praying the kludge would work—a minimum of for some time.

It drifted away from the kilometer-long starship, chilly gasoline thrusters burping to stabilize its sluggish tumble. Sensors began to scan round. On one aspect of the pod was a broad circle of darkness the place the lonely Gate of Heaven blotted out the shimmering multicolored clouds of the Poseidon Nebula, which surrounded the Kelowan system.

The Diligent’s green-and-orange navigation strobes had been seen towards it as the traditional starship glided in towards the middle of the colossal Elohim machine. On the alternative aspect, the place Kelowan’s star gleamed warmly, the pod’s onboard community recognized the 13 shiny lightpoints of the liveable planets.

Hexagonal panes, jutting out from the pod’s fuselage like a set of darkish uneven sails, modified their array phasing to deal with these distant gleams of life. There was additionally an omnidirectional broadcast, boosted by further energy cells, that the technicians hoped would final lengthy sufficient as they dealt with voltage ranges far past their supposed limits.

The transmission started. Just like the pod itself, it was a rapidly contrived message that the human societies of the Kelowan system would come to name The Sibling Plea.

Finbar Jalgori-Tobu sat on a chair within the Diligent’s command and management heart, wanting worn to the purpose of sickness as he stared unflinchingly into the digital camera. He was flanked by his sisters. One, Otylia, was his twin—now separated by forty years organic growing old from the price of time dilation, however their similarity nonetheless apparent nonetheless.

The different was his elder sister, Zelinda, the ex-marchioness of Santa Rosa, whose reign lasted lower than an hour after her mom had been killed.

That demise was the end result of occasions whose firestorm of reminiscences had been plaguing Finn’s thoughts at a debilitating degree. Ever since he’d purchased the Diligent in alternate for Hafnir—a broad tract of coastal land he owned, so the passengers might settle there—he’d had one goal.

He was going to be a Traveler: one of many people who had their very own starships, unearthing technological Celestial treasure from Remnant Period worlds, and bringing it house to assist people stay with dignity in star techniques whose Celestial overlords had been implacably hostile—once they might really be bothered to even acknowledge people.

Proudly owning the Diligent had given him a novel alternative to strike a blow for human freedom. His erstwhile good friend, and fellow Traveler, Gyvoy Enfoe, had offered them with an opportunity to strike an actual blow for the people of the Kelowan system.

Millennia in the past, Celestials had began shifting Dolod, a gasoline large from one other star system, utilizing certainly one of their Archimedes Engines to fly it to Kelowan. Dolod was a wierd world even by the requirements of the Centauri Cluster: an iron unique, which, if it was steered into orbit shut sufficient to a star, would actually rain iron. The metallic may very well be harvested from the environment at a value far decrease than people mining it from the bottom on a strong world—a change that might impoverish the human financial system. Gyvoy’s plan was enticingly easy.

As an alternative of permitting the Archimedes Engine to convey Dolod neatly into orbit, they may ship it again out into interstellar area, leaving the financial system of the Kelowan system unchanged. All they needed to do was discover a copy of the Archimedes Engine’s working system, which might permit a uranic human to vary Dolod’s course. Gyvoy, naturally, knew the place to discover a copy of the working system; and Finn was a uranic human, one whose DNA had been altered so he might interface immediately with Celestial know-how.

It was, Finn determined on the time, the want of the Goddess Asteria Herself that had introduced all of them collectively. Then, when the Diligent returned to the Kelowan system, he discovered his homeworld of Gondiar was below Celestial martial regulation.

His mother and father had been killed, and his siblings had been operating for his or her lives. In his grief and outrage, he noticed an alternative to strike again towards the Celestial monsters, and as a substitute of utilizing the Archimedes Engine to slingshot Dolod out of the Kelowan system, he used the momentum switch to fling Boksrock—a small lifeless world—immediately on the capital planet the place a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of Imperial Celestials lived.

Solely after he’d completed that did he uncover that he’d been performed by Gyvoy, who wasn’t even human. The socalled Traveler was really an Imperial Celestial agent, whose group had their very own very completely different agenda. Not solely had Finn been fully fooled into committing what was basically a declaration of battle between people and Celestials, Gyvoy had one way or the other managed to fade, making Finn look much more responsible.

The Diligent had no alternative however to flee to a different star system, confirming their guilt—though Zelinda had mentioned that they had a final probability to try to mitigate what’d occurred by an attraction to the Empress of the Crown Dominion. Finn thought it a ineffective gesture, however by then he knew his means to make any kind of determination had been swept away by distress and guilt, so he simply agreed to all the pieces she urged.

“I want to tackle this message on to the empress herself,” Zelinda mentioned with excellent composure. “Majesty, my household has been in service to you because the time people first arrived within the Crown Dominion. We’ve served faithfully for all that point, and nonetheless think about ourselves loyal to you.

“Empress, we even have data that confirms that the so-called rebel that occurred on Gondiar, which Normal Avone-Valerio now seeks to suppress, was additionally manufactured by a international dominion.

“People have been manipulated by an archon. He’s a Celestial at the moment disguised as Gyvoy Enfoe, and we imagine he has one way or the other escaped Dolod.

“On this assumed kind, he’s been utilizing some type of neural compulsion to manage numerous people, together with my brother Finbar. I’m positive you should understand by now that it’s not attainable for a human—even uranics like us—to change the operation of an Archimedes Engine. We’re not liable for Boksrock’s orbit being modified, neither is this atrocity the results of some group of human malcontents attacking Kelowan. People profit enormously from our allegiance to the Crown Dominion, and we are not looking for that to vary.”

Otylia cleared her throat. “The broadcasts from my ex-husband, Josias Aponi, are pretend, cooked up by a CI routine. The Goddess alone is aware of, Josias shouldn’t be an ideal man, however he isn’t silly. Greater than all of us, he understands the madness of a collapsing society, for he has witnessed it firsthand. He has walked on Outdated Earth, and he fled Sol due to what he noticed there. That’s not him within the messages agitating for additional disobedience, so don’t fall for it, I implore you.”

“I used to be on the Archimedes Engine station,” Finn confessed eventually, his eyes filling with moisture. “The archon pretending to be Gyvoy put me there. In Kingsnest, he gave me the technical data of the engine’s working system. He twisted my thoughts in order that I needed to do what he wished—to kill Kelowan. I don’t know which dominion he comes from, however I do know he left me there and flew to a different station; I don’t know which one.

“Empress, I urge you and all of your forces to search out him. Discover out who he actually is and what he needs. So many individuals will endure and die till he’s caught and stopped. I’m so sorry for what’s occurred. I wasn’t . . . It wasn’t me that did this. I’d by no means . . .” His lips pressed collectively and he turned from the digital camera, his misery apparent. Otylia’s hand got here down on his shoulder, squeezing reassuringly.

“We’ve nothing to achieve from telling you this, Empress,” Zelinda mentioned. “So I hope you’ll a minimum of think about what we now have advised you.” She inclined her head respectfully. “The Jalgori-Tobu household stay your loyal topics.”

The message ended and started to repeat. One other type of gentle illuminated the modified pod because the Diligent entered the ingress Gate—a hoop of shiny radiance that flared across the machine’s rim and flowed quick down the concave floor till it was a single level on the heart. The Diligent shaped a small darkish speck throughout the glare, then vanished, flung alongside the road of quintessence to Capo Frois by a science no human would ever perceive.

Left behind, the pod continued to play the message regularly for the following three and a half hours till a Celestial cargo starship arrived on the Gate. It fired a single maser cannon shot on the pod, vaporizing it. The starship sailed onward with cosmic indifference, to be embraced by the Gate and dispatched throughout interstellar area.

THE DREADNOUGHT DRACAENAE, flagship of the Royal Wynid fleet, had been accelerating at three gees ever since Boksrock’s trajectory grew to become obvious. It was surrounded by the remainder of the fleet’s warships, arrayed in a neat spherical formation throughout six thousand kilometers. They had been heading immediately for Kelowan, with Thyra asserting in a systemwide broadcast that they had been going to supervise the planet’s evacuation.

She’d spent most of that point on the bridge, with temporary sojourns to the admiral’s day lounge subsequent door for conferences with senior fleet intelligence analysts and division heads. It had taken what remained of the courtroom on Kelowan 5 hours after the destruction of Carolien-Amaia’s fast-evacuation craft to message the Dracaenae with the admission that the empress was useless.

Verak’s safety workplace claimed that one way or the other the Human Liberation motion had managed to sabotage the emergency automobile Carolien-Amaia was utilizing to succeed in orbit and the protection of her dreadnought. She’d launched from the palace as quickly because the information broke that the people on the Diligent had managed to fling Boksrock at Kelowan. Worse than the anguish of that outrage was that the Verak safety workplace didn’t perceive how they’d completed it. Their greatest—in reality solely—idea was that some unknown Remnant Period weapon had been used.

Three hours after the official notification, Thyra had obtained an ultra-secure message from Queen Luus-Marcela. She was quietly happy to notice her sister queen’s traditional mien of superiority had been vanquished by shock. It didn’t take a neural connection to know precisely what Luus-Marcela was pondering. If they will kill the empress . . .

“I’m heading straight for Kelowan,” Luus-Marcela mentioned. “We’re going to wish all of the engine energy we are able to muster to get the habitats away from the georing. You’ll be pondering the identical, so we’ll alternate real-time comms after we’re in vary.” She hesitated, drawing a breath. “Dearest Helena-Thyra, I acknowledge you are actually Empress of the Crown Dominion. I hope the opposite two queens will likely be civil about this, as a result of we’re on the brink right here. We’ll must rewrite the Accord to replicate what’s occurred, in fact. Whoever these shits are, they took out poor Carolien’s princesses as properly, so it’s the tip of her line. First precedence is to save lots of Kelowan’s inhabitants—bought to like the irony in that, eh? And, Empress, it’s a must to prioritize discovering out which goddess-cursed dominion did this. It’s a declaration of battle. They’ll come for all of us now. We’ve to strike again so exhausting the entire cluster will suppose we’ve resurrected the Remnant Period.”

Her picture vanished.

Thyra turned to Lord Bekket, her father, and Iuntin, who was masquerading as Ualana-Shoigu so as to go as her chief archon. Nobody else was within the day lounge. The three of them gripped fingers to provide themselves a safe neural connection.

“I see her sympathetic aspect instantly put in an look,” Bekket sneered. “That discuss of shedding the princesses: she’ll wish to carve up Verak between the remaining queens.”

“Naturally,” Iuntin mentioned. “There’s a robust precedent, as that is what occurred to Kelowan after the Accord invasion. Thoughts you, they did kill each member of your grandmother’s household.” His lips rose to a skinny smirk. “Or in order that they thought.”

“Certainly,” Thyra mentioned. “Proper now, I’m extra involved with these goddess-bedamned Jalgori-Tobus. Everyone on this system has accessed their message. There are going to be questions—particularly as soon as Ramona-Nuk and Inessa-Marwa arrive with their fleets, which goes to be any day now. How the hell did they discover out Uncle Dagon’s an Imperial Celestial?”

“Don’t fear about your uncle,” Iuntin mentioned. “He and your aunt can care for themselves. Hell, they’ve been round virtually so long as me.”

“Everybody goes to be in search of him.”

“So? He’ll simply morph out of his present kind when the time is correct. His physique was modified to do exactly that.”

Thyra gave him a cautious look, retaining her personal ideas degree. “You mentioned you transferred your character into this Shoigu host. Are you additionally concurrently in your individual physique?”

“Sure,” he mentioned flatly.

Out of the nook of her eye she noticed her father’s shock, the briefest flinch, however she knew he was as startled as she was. However like her, his ideas remained unruffled. She skilled a flutter of apprehension as one other of these rogue ideas snuck into her thoughts: So what else is Iuntin retaining from me? “So which is actually you?”

“We each are. I’ll merge our reminiscences as quickly as that is over, and Shoigu’s physique will likely be disposed of.”

“I see,” Thyra replied neutrally.

“Dagon can’t change his look simply but,” Bekket mentioned. “We want the 2 human mercenaries he and Liliana are utilizing to finish their a part of the plan. The annexation of Capo Frois has to occur so we are able to isolate the three remaining queens. As soon as they’re out of the way in which, you can begin to amalgamate the Crown Dominion star techniques prepared for Khepri’s rule.”

Iuntin shrugged. “Nonetheless, Thyra is appropriate concerning the Jalgori-Tobu message being unlucky. It makes ongoing operations tough for Dagon. And other people may even doubt any additional proclamations from Josias.”

“Dagon can deal with a number of people,” Bekket mentioned. “However denouncing the Josias broadcasts as CI fakes is a slippery slope. When you begin decrying your opponents as unreal, you open your self as much as the identical query. Was the Jalgori-Tobus’ message a pretend, too? In that case, who made it? Why? The Jalgori-Tobu siblings have made an elementary political mistake by flaunting their honesty and earnest integrity.”

“Possibly,” Iuntin mentioned uncertainly. “But it surely was Otylia, his personal spouse, who uncovered the deceit.”

“Was it? We all know that, however doubt will develop throughout the Kelowan system. Conspiracy theories are a treacherous thoughts virus; they by no means cease feeding on themselves to multiply—the one true instance of perpetual power. My brokers will launch a plethora of counter theories progressively rising extra excessive. Finally, this primary spark of uncertainty the Jalgori-Tobus have unleashed will kindle a firestorm. No person will know what to imagine.”

“We’ve to handle this head-on,” Thyra mentioned. “Each archon within the Kelowan system is now determined to search out Uncle Dagon. I must sound believable once I meet the opposite queens.”

“You’ll merely agree with them that discovering the Gyvoy character is of paramount significance,” Iuntin ventured. “Individuals will settle for that this hunt will in all probability take years. And if opinion shifts that this isn’t only a human rebel, so what? Then everybody will begin obsessing over which dominion is behind it. The human rebel was all the time a diversion for our profit. If something, the Jalgori-Tobus denouncing Josias and Gyvoy solely provides to the intrigue of international intrusion. Dagon is secure within the Arcadia’s Moon. It’s ship—unusual, however greater than succesful. Not that anybody is aware of that’s the place he’s. They’re stealthed and presumably already on their solution to the Capo Frois ingress Gate. I counsel you not worrying about Dagon.”

“Very properly.” Thyra gave a reluctant nod. “However we do must care for the Diligent.”

“It is going to be destroyed,” Iuntin mentioned. “Squadron Twenty-Three will make sure that of that. Our triumph is inevitable.”

“I respect your optimism,” Thyra mentioned. After the primary thrill of assembly Iuntin, she wasn’t positive she authorized of him; he all the time appeared he was speaking right down to her.

The dreadnought’s community alerted her that Queen Inessa Marwa’s fleet had begun to reach via the Cheluli egress Gate. She brightened. “Ah, some politics to take care of. Let’s see how shortly my pricey sister queen falls into line.”

Robert Anderson is IGN’s Senior Commerce Editor and resident offers skilled on video games, collectibles, buying and selling card video games, and extra. You may observe him @robertliam21 on Bluesky.