Beyond the Sky Outline

SPOILER WARNING
This page contains spoilers for Beyond the Sky!

First book in the Lemuria Series, Beyond the Sky follows the perspective of alien main character Velli, as she is caought up in a revolutionary struggle against the industrial slave-state of Mespreth, on a planet inhabited by multiple sapient species—and in orbit of which an Exploration Service survey mission has recently arrived. When a chance opportunity arises to kidnap Takji, Crown Princess of Mespreth, in revenge for the suffering of Velli's country, Jepsei, both find themselves confronting the reality of impending first contact, and a grave threat brewing on the planet below.

Characters

Lemurians

• Velli of Three Trees Town: A Cepic fighter in the Jepsei National Front, a revolutionary army seeking to free her homeland from Mespreth rule, which she joined after her brother Mekim was kidnapped by slavers.
• Takji: Crown Princess of Mespreth, and heir to the throne currently held by King Delvar, her father.
• Glint Sparkhands: A mysterious color-changing "Shadowstalker".
• Commander Udan: Leader of the JNF cell of which Velli is a member.
• Naaca: Another Cepic a few years younger than Velli, who at the outset of the story saves her from a slave raid. In gratitude, she joins the JNF to try to free others.
• King Delvar: Ruler of Mespreth, a harsh man who once ordered the destruction of a dozen cities with nuclear weapons.
• Warmaster Nellan: Perpetually-suspicious chief defense minister of Mespreth.
• Commissar Breval: Head of the King's Eyes intelligence service, which reports exclusively to Delvar himself
• Toras of Clan Gulin: Trinn special-forces operative in the Steel Hand direct-action arm of the King's Eyes. Charged by Princess Takji to investigate the sighting of mysterious craft in Mespreth's borders and beyond.
• Elacmagolintec: Notorious Strider slavelord in the Jepsei city of Trez Yafan, a major player in the slave trade with Mespreth.

Challenger Crew

• Arthur Benson: Captain of the Exploration Service starship Challenger and leader of the survey mission to Lemuria. There, he finds an industrial planet teetering on the brink of nuclear apocalypse.
• "Ollie": Tofflan science officer to Captain Benson. His species' homeworld suffered a nuclear war over a century ago, before contact with the Stellar Compact.
• Selva: Lupen agent of the shadowy Existential Risks Directorate, an international agency charged with protecting civilization from catastrophe.
• Carter: Artilect shipmind of the Challenger.
• Ingrid Orsen: Foreign Directorate diplomat with a strict devotion to the Perelandra Protocol, lest Captain Benson make the same mistake again.

Plot

Part 1: The Princess and the Rebel

The story opens with Velli and her JNF squad preparing to defend a village from a slave raid. For years now, ever since the Kingdom of Mespreth invaded Jepsi and re-instituted slavery, residents have lived in fear of being taken and sent north, to work in the factories and mines fueling the wealth of Mespreth and its military might. The JNF, on the other hand, has vowed to do something about it.

The slavers attack, arriving in trucks, and supported by a contigent of Yunes, Lemuria's flying species, who drop incendiary bombs to light the village ablaze. Though the slavers are repulsed, they manage to escape with a truck full of captives. Giving chase, Velli and Teliv, another fighter, catch up with the truck and board it. Climbing to the roof, Velli faces the slaver leader and fights him, killing him by throwing him from the moving vehicle after he is stabbed in the foot by one of the captives, Naaca.

Distracting more pursuing slavers while the captives escape, Velli leads them in a chase along a river and to an abandoned bridge which marks the border of "the Pit", a ruined town now inhabited by Shadowstalkers, a mysterious nocturnal species. With no other choice, Velli runs in, and the slavers do not pursue. Her hopes of a quick crossing without alerting the Pit's denizens are dashed when she suddenly senses dozens nearby. The Shadowstalkers chase her into an abandoned town square and surround her in a wordless confrontation. She pleads for her life, saying they hate slavers just as much as she does, and, to her surprise, they let her go.

Returning to the village to seek out her comrades, she instead finds a strange black craft, shaped like a triangle, landed outside. It is clearly an aircraft, but like nothing she's seen before—an impossibly-smooth surface, eerie lighting, and inscrutable markings. Checking inside reveals a locked cockpit and storage compartment of glass panes that display text like a computer screen. Leaving, she runs into its occupants: monstrous creatures with four long limbs, and helmets over flat faces, which subdue her and depart in the craft.

Shaken, Velli returns to her squad's base, where she informs Udan, her commander. Though skeptical, he has never known her to tell a lie and brings up recent news: sightings of mysterious craft, a so-called "Black Triangle", and is clearly repulsed by Velli's description of its occupants. Now reunited with her squad, she meets Naaca, the captive she rescued, who is also joining the JNF.

Meanwhile, the top leadership of Mespreth, one of Lemuria's twin superpowers, holds a conference in their underground War Room, turning their attention to reports of the Black Triangle. Sightings have been reported far and wide, in Mespreth and its client states. Naturally, the assembled staff cast suspicion on the rival Iruktak Amalgamation, but are unsettled by the apparent level of technology displayed in the sightings, and rumors of its strange pilots. King Delvar charges Princess Takji with running an investigation into the sightings, suspecting the military is hiding something. Toras Gulin is appointed to assist, and though they postulate several theories, none seem to fit.

Meanwhile, flush with their recent success against the slavers,a conference of JNF squads proposes an ambitious plan: to attack and kidnap Princess Takji on her scheduled visit to Jepsei, due to happen soon. But during preparations, another crisis erupts—the population of Edjhar Deeps, a town of the subterranean Slee species, has vanished. Investigating, the squad finds no trace of the missing Burrowers, and learn from its warriors and nursery Matron that the underground town was attacked with gas. The warriors and breeder caste sealed themselves in the nursery, and when they emerged the town's workers were gone, save for a single one who happened to be wearing a gas mask. Commander Udan requests to check on a secret project the town's engineers were working on for the JNF, involving components in crates, but these are gone as well. The only other thing remaining in the empty town is a disk-like hovering machine of unknown origin, which escapes and meets up with the Black Triangle as it arrives outside. The squad and remaining Burrowers blame the disappearance on its unknown controllers.

Despite the loss of the Burrower project, Udan pushes ahead with the kidnapping plot. By using a submarine a small strike team are able to evade detection and assault the island on which Takji is staying. In the battle Takji escapes and Udan is wounded, but Velli pursues with the help of Jasam, a Trinn slave who joins the fight on the JNF's side. Reaching shore, Velli pursues the Princess on foot, but both are shocked when the Black Triangle returns, flying down to land in broad daylight. Velli and Takji are stunned and taken aboard, while Jasam and Takji's servants watch from a distance.

Velli awakes in a white-walled room, immaculately clean and like nothing she's seen before. Investigation reveals no apparent way out, until a voice comes over a speaker. Velli demands to know where she is and who is speaking, in response the voice merely invites her to look and commands the shutters on a window to open. Velli is actually in space, aboard a vessel in orbit of her planet, visible below. The voice's owner enters—Arthur Benson, a human. Velli objects, saying this can't be real, that he can't be an alien, to which Benson invites her to consider the view outside and says, if other stars are suns just like hers, is it not the height of arrogance to think her world the only inhabited one in the cosmos?

Benson takes Velli to meet the aliens' other abductee, Princess Takji, only for Velli to immediately draw a knife and attempt to kill her. She is stunned by Ollie, a three-legged, three-limbed Tofflan, and Benson demands an explanation. Velli replies the Princess is the heir and symbol of Mespreth, the Slaver Regime which has stolen her brother and killed her friends. To which Takji replies she doesn't even know her, which Velli says is the entire point—she doesn't care about the people she hurts.

Benson continues, saying he brought them togther for a reason. This is his starship, an interstellar vessel on a survey mission to Lemuria, their planet. What he's found has disturbed him: a world on the brink of nuclear war, two superpowers viewing each other with enmity, each with enough warheads to kill billions several times over. For their part, Velli and Takji are dumbfounded by Benson's statement that humans were the only intelligent species to originate on his homeworld, Earth. The others, like Ollie, come from different planets entirely, and indeed until now it was thought impossible to have multiple sapients co-evolve on the same world, that one would outcompete the others and drive them to extinction. Benson asks for their help in resolving the nuclear standoff and opening public contact. Takji is hesitant, but Velli agrees.

Benson shows them a disturbing find: the Burrowers in Velli's home territory, the ones involved in a secret project for the JNF, appear to have been handling nuclear materials prior to their disappearance (which he disclaims any involvement in), leaving behind traces of radioactivity. It seems they were working on nuclear weapons. As Benson explains, and Takji reluctantly confirms, uranium in Lemuria's crust exists at a natural enrichment of about 3%, low compared to weapons-grade standards but still enough to build a crude reactor with and begin producing plutonium. (A consequence of its young age for a habitable planet—only about two billion years.) This means nuclear programs do not require laborious, expensive enrichment processes to obtain weapons-grade material, rather reactors can be built and plutonium production started about as soon as the relevant physics are understood. Mespreth, and presumably the Amalgamation too, have known this for decades and suppressed the relevant knowledge, dividing the industrialized world between their spheres of influence. Lemurian civilization faces an uncertain future, one which Captain Benson and his people aim to help them avoid.

Meanwhile, Toras Gulin arrives to investigate Princess Takji's disappearance, finding her servants inconsolable and crying about Flat-Faces (humans) and Black Triangles. Knowing he dare not show his face back in Mespreth without Takji, he resolves to get to the bottom of it. His investigatons lead him to a man whose chance run-in with the Flat-Faces resulted in him being stunned and the creatures fleeing, suggesting their intent is not immediately hostile. But he is still puzzled, with any answers he gets only raising more questions. To resolve them, and locate Takji, he arranges to infiltrate Velli's JNF cell under the guise of "Dobok", a Trinn mercenary whom Mespreth intercepted and took the papers of.

Part 2: The Starmen and the Slavers

Returning to the surface to gather information for Captain Benson, Velli confronts Commander Udan over the nuclear-weapons plot. He confirms it, saying the intention was to strike Mespreth by floating a bomb into its harbor, and the Burrowers had acquired three such devices, two of which were functional. At night Velli is met by a Shadowstalker, Glint Sparkhands, who confirms this and claims slavers working for local broker Elacmagolintec had taken them along with the Burrowers. The squad plots a raid on Elacmagolintec's compound to recover them.

Back aboard the Challenger, artilect shipmind Carter verifies his estimate: the superpowers of Lemuria have so many ballistic missiles and warheads between them that, in an all-out launch, the starship will be unable to shoot them all down in time. The expedition must be careful, the situation is fragile and an overt advertisement of their presence could easily trigger catastrophe. Foreign Directorate diplomat Ingrid Orsen berates Benson for his actions thus far, in taking aliens aboard his ship and risking exposure, saying the last time he tried this, he caused a war and the introduction of the Perelandra Protocol forbidding contact with developing civilizations. Still, Benson says he cannot sit by and watch, he must do something. Takji learns more about the alien mission and familiarizes herself with the ship, including an abortive attempt at fleeing in an escape pod.

The squad attacks Elacmagolintec's compound with the help of the Burrower warriorsm one contingent to free the captives and another to find the stolen bombs. While searching, Velli and Naaca come across the slavelord himself, hiding in the upper floor of his mansion. Conducting an impromptu interrogation, Velli demands to know where he sent her brother, and when he cannot answer shoots him dead in rage. The mission falls apart: the bombs are gone, and the only person who could tell them where they've been sent—Elacmagolintec—is now dead. Worse, the attack has drawn the attention of Mespreth occupation forces. Returning to their hideout, the squad makes preparations to flee.

They are saved from an airstrike by the intervention of Captain Benson, who sends a scoutship down. The Black Triangle's masters are revealed, and with some persuasion Velli gets her people to board it. They fly to Ghanat-Tahj, a mountainous refuge-nation where slavery is illegal, and deposit her squadmates near its border.

Part 3: The King and the Bomb

Toras/"Dobok" stays aboard, however, and once back in the air reveals his true identity and attempts to hijack the craft, being thwarted when the pilot reverses the simgrav to throw him to the ceiling. The scoutship proceeds into space and docks with the Challenger, where Toras reunites with his Princess.

Another stowaway is revealed, too: Glint Sparkhands the Shadowstalker, who is captured and taken to the ship's doctor, Cooper. Benson gains his trust by offering unconditional help in healing numerous injuries he has sustained. In a meeting, Glint explains the bombs were retrieved by Deep Ones working with Elacmagolintec, obtaining them from a sunken Mespreth bomber and laundering them to the Burrowers for repair before double-crossing them and gassing the town with a colony-collapse-inducing chemical agent, causing the Burrowers to panic, lose social cohesion, and flee. Glint, having distant evolutionary ancestry with the Burrowers, was sickened but not seriously affected. The bombs are now back in the Deep Ones' hands, who intend to use them to take revenge on the superpowers for decades of war and pollution—both they and the Striders have suffered greatly since the rise of Lemurian industrialization, dependent on marginal habitats which are easily fouled. Glint, too, has a reason for revenge. Twenty years ago, Glint's home city was hit by a nuclear weapon, part of Mespreth's strikes to end the Long War which had raged for decades. Never having had much warm feelings towards the "Day People" (Lemuria's other land-dwelling sapients), Glint wishes them to suffer as he, and his people, did.

Benson formulates a hypothesis about Lemuria's evolutionary history. Millions of years ago, an unknown event exerted pressure on multiple lineages to evolve towards increased intelligence. But rather than one outcompeting the others, each sapient species instead specialized for a particular niche or environment. Takji's species, the Fesk, are kangaroo-like endurance hunters, Velli's desert omnivores, while the Yune (Flyers) could migrate to greener pastures and another species, the Nevi, were in essence domesticated by the others and act as their servants. The Shadowstalkers, however, adapted to survive through stealth, living in hidden places and off the detrius of the other sapients. They have a rich history and culture, though the others know little of it, suspicion having reigned on both sides for millennia. Benson convinces Glint to see the other sapients as people, too, and help avert the bomb plot before it is too late.

Takji and Toras are sent back down to warn her father, King Delvar, while Selva, Velli, and Challenger crewman Abdul take the scoutship down to where the bombs are thought to be: the Forsaken Lands, a region left abandoned after decades of industrialized total war. A crisis is brewing on an offshore island, where the Amalgamation intends to build base over Mespreth's objections, which has sent a fleet to confront them. Glint and Carter take a modified survey drone into the ocean to find the Deep Ones.

The scoutship crew locate one bomb in an abandoned warehouse and disarm it, escaping a group of Amalgamation soldiers, but fail to find the second bomb before it detonates off shore. A mushroom cloud blazes and knocks them to the ground. In the War Room, King Delvar and Warmaster Nellan react, believing themselves to have just become victims of an Amalgamation nuclear strike, while the Amalgamation leadership likely believe the same thing. Both sides are now on a trajectory to nuclear war.

Taking to the skies in the scoutship, Selva and Velli avert a confrontation between Mespreth and Amalgamation fighter jets ordered to engage each other, by entering the battlefield as a distraction and shooting down the missiles. Glint and Carter locate a Deep Ones settlement and communicate using a sonar-language translator. The Deep Ones confirm their role in the plot but refuse to stop it, saying it is too late.

In the War Room, Delvar prepares to launch what he believes is a retaliatory strike at the Amalgamation, but one which will almost certainly lead to genuine retaliation and nuclear holocaust. In orbit, the Challenger prepares to drop its observation shield and start shooting down missiles, aware that they cannot stop them all. When prompted, Mespreth Prime Minister Wirar refuses to input his launch codes, unwilling to be an accessory to the end of the world as Mespreth will be destroyed regardless if they launch or not. This gives just enough time for Takji to arrive and convince Delvar to stand down and call the Amalgamation leadership instead. A tense ceasefire is arranged, and the immediate crisis avert. Lemurian civilization has escaped destruction, at least this time.

Velli agrees to return with the Challenger expedition to Starweb space in preparation for a public-contact mission, along with Glint. Later that evening, Takji watches Mespreth City from the balcony of her palace, its inhabitants blissfully unaware of how close things truly came, and all but her ignorant of the truth about the stars. But one day, perhaps soon, the aliens will return.