THE END OF BEGINNINGS

PROLOGUE

"Son, fear not. Remember who we are. All will be well."

    With its small engines roaring, the little, gray ship slipped swiftly from the dense veil of noisy atmosphere and into the deafening silence of space. Its flight did not become a gentle cruise in a lazy orbit. This vessel was on the run, racing away from pursuers that had begun their chase back near the ground.
    The ship was called the Pilgrim. Its pilot was a boy of seventeen, just barely becoming a man. His nervous hands worked the controls like a veteran, yet he was anything but a seasoned pilot. He'd been learning to fly the antique craft for years, almost as far back as he could remember. But those times were only memories he couldn't think about now.
Brilliant beams of searing plasma zipped past the viewports of the cockpit. Alarms wailed noisily. Indicator lights blinked frantically, alerting the tense teen of systems needing attention, of conditions in the small ship, and where he was in space. The boy named Moros was aware of it all. But it was the weapons fire threatening to tear the Pilgrim apart that had his full attention. His eyes glimpsed the missed shots pass the viewports. He flicked the wrist of his right hand, ticking the throttle back another notch. His left hand tilted the steering yoke sideways, rolling the spacecraft to the right as it accelerated over the cloud-wrapped planet below.
    Almost immediately he pulled the controls back the other way and toward his seat. The rounded front of the Pilgrim's hull lurched upward as it rolled to the left. Moros pulled back more on the throttle, pushing his family's vessel higher into orbit. He hadn't shaken off the ships keeping chase. They fired again. More than half a dozen fiery spears of searing energy sprang forth from the dart-shaped fighters. They closed the silent distance immediately. A few of them missed again. A few struck their target. The rattling fuselage popped with each stinging strike. The Pilgrim's shield, already weak, barely kept the brunt of the shots from punching open its metal skin.
    As soon as Moros felt the ship shudder from the weapons' strike, he was maneuvering away from the next round he knew the fighters would unleash. With new alarms blaring, Moros sent the Pilgrim into a shallow dive, barrel rolling away from the half-dozen bursts that had been aimed at the ship's stern. Before the old vessel had even fully responded to his commands, Moros changed direction again.
    The small, navigational thrusters around the outside of the fleeing craft were working at their maximum, moving the Pilgrim back to the right then suddenly upward once more. Plumes of pressurized gas jetted out of partially hidden nozzles above and below the cockpit. Moros was braking. The spherical bow suddenly pitched hard to the right. The ship's skin shook with the shock of the radically changing g-force. The weary passengers on the Pilgrim made even more noise than the hull at the painful kick their bodies received. Moros stayed silent, gritting his teeth through the spine-squeezing pressure.
    His bold piloting paid off. The flurry of weapons fire zipped past. Moros exhaled the burning breath he'd been holding when the viewports to his left lit up with the fiery glow of each missed bolt. His eyes didn't stay focused on them for more than a heartbeat. Instead, he looked back down at a narrow crystal that had tumbled across a flat space of the console in front of him.
    He'd almost forgotten about the little, narrow ingot during the last few minutes. His sweaty fingers swiped it off the flat top of the console. He stared at it for a long moment, his gaze flooded with a pained sense of wonder. His father had stressed how important it was. Moros was holding the key to getting the ship and his passengers to safety. It was one of the last things the teenager had been given by his father. The other was the chance to escape.
    Moros bounced violently in his seat, the pale-purple crystal nearly falling out of his grip. The passengers in the compartment behind him shouted frightfully before the whole ship shuddered again. The young pilot blinked, bringing himself out of the fog of his memories. His eyes glimpsed a series of small displays near his seat. The shield protecting the Pilgrim was nearly gone. There was damage on one side of the ship. It was minor, at least so far. Moros breathed deeply, looking at the pointed ingot one more time.
    "Now or never," he said to himself, then leaned forward. There was a slot above the flat space where the the crystal had been laying and tumbling back and forth. The hexagonal cavity was the perfect shape for the crystalline structure. Moros watched as his blood-stained fingers pressed the ingot into the drive.
    The Pilgrim jumped and rattled once more. "Moros," cried the voice of his sister, shaking the teenager all the way out of his stupor.
    Moros didn't watch the crystal disappear into the computer panel. He wiped a layer of sweat from his face that was threatening to fall into his eyes. He could smell the sharp scent of blood, his blood. There was small gash on the top of his bruised brow. It throbbed dully. It was nothing he could worry about just then.
    His sweat-slicked hands returned to the controls. He barely had time to dodge the next wave of weapons' fire that had been racing toward the weakened ship. When it didn't seem like his father's crystal had done anything at all, the computer in front of Moros loudly began to whirr. The lights around the cockpit suddenly blinked then changed completely. The wailing alarms fell silent one by one. When the noise of the computer in front of him finally ceased, a pleasant voice rang out from the speakers that had been flooded by alerts.
    "Installation complete. Seegan fully online. Hello, Moros."
    Moros looked up toward the switches above his head. There was no real reason to do that. He didn't know why he looked there, only that it was his first instinct. "Hello."
    "I've stabilized the ship systems and analyzed the tactical situation. The gate is ahead and slightly above our current position. I'll put a navigational guide on the display in front of you."
    "Who are you," Moros asked, maneuvering away from another round of plasma bolts.
    "I am Seegan. You must hurry. Once you are closer to the gate I can dial in the address."
    "What address? Where are we going?"
    A bolt of energy pierced the Pilgrim's shield. It bit at the fuselage, tearing open the thin metal just behind the cockpit. A bubble of sparks and smoke exploded behind Moros. He flinched forward as the whole ship quaked from the hit.
    "The forward shield is almost completely depleted. You must hurry to the gate, Moros."
    "Okay!"
    The Pilgrim's small engines glowed white-hot as Moros accelerated higher into orbit. The dart-like fighters leapt easily upward, staying close to their target. A few seconds later, the teenaged pilot spotted the ringed-shape of their destination. The stargate hovered high above the accursed world Moros and his passengers had barely managed to escape. The pale-yellow light of the distant sun glinted dimly off the gate's idle surface.
    "I don't understand what good this will do," Moros said.
    The speakers in the cockpit buzzed softly before the voice answered him. "It will get us to safety."
    "But there's no dialer. That was in the maintenance compartment. And that's..." Moros' voice trailed off. A powerful sense of grief choked his words. Before he could try to say anything else, the flat top of the nearby panel clicked loudly. The place where he'd laid the crystal down in a hurry days before separated into equal halves. The two panels splayed open, revealing a detail of his family's ship he'd never known about. Moros' eyes widened with surprise as he glimpsed into the shallow compartment.
    "There's a dialer up here," he asked and exclaimed simultaneously.
    "Yes," Seegan replied. "I believe you are in range now. I will attempt to enter the address."
    Moros looked down at the open panel. Thirty-six ancient glyphs he didn't recognize were stamped onto flat, square tokens tightly arranged in three rows of twelve. One by one, a symbol began to glow. Beyond the fleeing ship, the idle gate began to awaken. The tattoos of dark constellations on its inner ring strobed consecutively. The dark chevrons on the outer ring turned on with each illuminated character locked into place.
    "You are going too fast, Moros," said the voice in the speakers.
    "I...know. I'm trying...Wait! How many symbols is that? Where are we going," Moros asked urgently, glancing back and forth between the glowing glyphs and the view outside.
    "Terra," said Seegan as it locked in an eighth and final symbol.
    The dark vacuum around the front of the gate suddenly exploded with light. The event horizon flushed outward then retreated back into the dazzling puddle contained within the energized rings. Moros watched the gate activate in awe as the Pilgrim raced just below it.
    "You have to turn back," said the Seegan.
    "I know!"
    "You must hurry, Moros. This path requires a great deal of power. I have rerouted all the Pilgrim systems I can. But there is only moments left before the connection is lost."
    "Got it! Hang on!" Moros breathed out then said softly, "This is going to hurt."
    All at once, the teenager jammed the controls forward, shoving the yoke and the throttle away from himself. He forced the Pilgrim to flip end over end. The spherical flight pod he was seated in was suddenly facing the trio of enemy fighters and the glimmering stargate behind them. With the violent change in inertia strangling his limbs and torso, Moros yanked the controls back as hard as he could.
    The little engines kicked the Pilgrim forward with a gut-punch of speed. Weapons fire from the dart-shaped ships in pursuit brushed past the Pilgrim's hull. It was moving too fast for them to find purchase. The enemy pilots scrambled to change course and follow the ship that had slipped past them once more.
    "The stargate is on your right," said the Seegan.
    "I know! I have to turn us aro-"
    "Ships approaching out of hyperspace," the Seegan suddenly announced.
    The viewports of the cockpit lit up at that moment. Blooming clouds of dazzling energy distorted the star field beyond the planet. The dispersed pockets of particles gave way to gleaming cruisers zooming out of the infinite ether they had pierced.
    "Great," growled Moros. "Now the calvary shows up."
    "Moros, there are only seconds left before the connection is lost."
    "Got it! Hang on. We're turning around again!"
    With the four massive ships getting larger in front of him, Moros slammed on the brakes again. Once more the little craft flipped end over end. As the Pilgrim's engines flared brightly, kicking it forward, Moros glimpsed the attacking fighters rocket past his bow in a wild blur of motion. He couldn't be sure they were still behind him. There were flashes of light on the edges of the viewports. It could have been weapons fire from the darts, or from the much bigger cruisers that had, at long last, arrived on the scene. Moros didn't care at that point. He was only focused on the gate ahead.
The throttle was as far back as he could take it. It still didn't feel like they were going fast enough. Moros saw the wormhole flicker. "Come on," he said to no one as the Pilgrim sprinted toward the active stargate.
    "Five seconds..."
    "Come on!"
    "Collapse is immanent!"
    "Hold on," Moros yelled over his shoulder.
    The nose of the Pilgrim touched the glimmering puddle within the ring of the gate. It hesitated at the shimmering surface for a fraction of a fraction of a second. But the Pilgrim's engines pushed the little vessel forward into the portal, overtaking the event horizon. Immediately, the light of the wormhole began to swallow everything in and on the ship. In the heartbeat before everything around him went silent, Moros closed his eyes and remembered to exhale.