Double Suns - Twisted Mirrors (ePub)

There was an abundance of life on the planets when the flickering of the star first signaled the beginning of its death. Many looked upward in despondence and desperately prayed for deliverance from the unfeeling cruelty of the darkening star as shadows begin to dance across its face.

They called their sun Tannex and while it slowly wound its way across the many horizons it seemed to twist in a crippled path as though it were a great wounded beast struggling against their skies. The fear grew with each rising and setting and the people cried out to their gods in misery, but to no avail, for stars, like all other things, must eventually die.

There were among them those who sang sad songs and told the saddest tales of woe. These self- proclaimed soothsayers told any who would listen ... and there were many ... of how in the end, the star would erupt and cover their worlds in searing, radioactive gases and how in a single, blinding flash they would all be gone.

Holding high the books of scriptures these prophets of doom stood on nearly every street corner, atop buildings and shouted out that past sins must now be repaid and that this would be the end ... a final death for them all.

They said that they would be gone forever for without bodies for rebirth their souls would be doomed to drift through the blackness of the universe for all time never again knowing the sweetness of life, the laughter of a child or the smell of a flower.

But ... as in all times of survival, there were those who didn't listen. A few that were different ... those that still held out in hope and refused to give up. Among them a race of warriors that lived on the third planet from the sun, a world called Finakka. Throughout time eternal when it comes to survival the brutal truth is it's not about who is right, only who is left.

The Finakkans were a technical society, well-schooled in the sciences and in waging of war. A race staunch in belief and durable in purpose, they took heart and became determined to surmount the impending tragedy and began searching throughout the galaxies for another world to call their own.

Additionally, their scientific and engineering communities madly scrambled to develop super-heavy, transfermium elements with extra-strength external magnetic fields along with the computer control technology that could provide them an exit gateway and paths to these distant worlds.

Much of their energy in searching for an exit gate was focused on a constellation with a blue-white giant as its brightest star. A star with the extreme gravitational fields necessary to amplify nuclear magnetic fields provided by transfermium elements and serve to fold space and time in on itself.

This star was known as Alpha Lupi. Alpha Lupi along with a set of opposing stars on the opposite side of the galaxy called the Anteres star pair would provide the bending of space necessary for space-time transient and represented their best chance of survival.