Until recent history, it was not known exactly how long ago the Shapers developed genetic surgery. However, several of their favorite legends attribute the mastery over all flesh to a court officer and physician who later usurped his lord’s throne and began the ‘Time of Beasts.’ After his rebellion, several of his creations ran amok, escaping his fortress. His soldiers pursued them, destroying all the runaway monsters, but tales of their exploits have persisted across the main continent.

  Suleg the Wise took a step beyond these legends, styling himself with a new title as he sought to conquer his entire world. He understood that ruling required more than strength; it required absolute control. He pondered a solution for the other jealous Saromes who sought either war spoils or peace assurances in exchange for their fealty.

  “Do we buy their loyalty with gold?” an advisor asked.

  Suleg shook his head, his gaze cold. “Gold fades. Power lasts. We will give them something more enduring—fear.”

  One Sarome lord, braver or more foolish than the rest, spoke up. “And when fear turns against you? When your own beasts see through your illusion?”

  Suleg stepped forward, placing a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Fear does not turn, Lord Ravam. It only needs proper direction.”

  Ravam vanished the next day. No body was ever found, only a single Panit standing at the gates of his city, its clawed fingers red with drying blood.

  And so, Suleg united the main continent, subduing three rival Saromes who stood in his path. Unlike his predecessors, who relied on selective breeding or crude surgical alterations, Suleg envisioned something greater. The Saromes had long bred warriors for size, strength, stamina, and agility. To ensure victory, they also surgically grafted armor onto their bodies, implanting secret weapons within them. Yet, Suleg saw this as primitive.

  Under his rule, the Panit evolved.

  By his time, a Panit warrior stood an imposing eight feet tall, a burly giant encased in armor anchored to his bones. Reinforced plating protected the neck, abdomen, spine, shoulders, thighs, hands, head, kidneys, and chest. So formidable was their armor that small arms fire was almost useless against them. Their skin, thick and fast-healing, made them even more resilient.

  During a demonstration of the latest Panit enhancements, one of Suleg’s commanders observed, “A spear may find a gap, but the wound seals before the enemy can press an advantage.”

  Suleg smiled, watching the Panit in the training pit tear through dummies like they were paper. “A beast that does not bleed cannot be hunted.”

  Another general, less convinced, folded his arms. “These creatures—do they have minds of their own?”

  Suleg’s expression darkened. “They have what I allow them to have.”

  The Panit were not merely armored soldiers; they were weapons. Their skull armor featured ridges of spikes running from the neck over the brow, sometimes arranged in rows of up to six. Each metal boot bore a short spur knife at both the tip and heel. The thumb and index finger of each hand remained flesh but were reinforced, while the other three fingers were replaced with adamantium steel claws. At the base of each palm, two curved hooks jutted out, aiding in climbing and close combat. Additional rock spurs on the instep of each boot further enhanced their ability to scale terrain. The knees were capped with three-inch spikes, useful for both combat and ascent, while the elbows bore rounded, heavy plating, allowing them to bludgeon foes.

  To the common people, the Panit were living nightmares—hulking, armored titans who patrolled the streets in eerie silence, their mere presence enough to enforce obedience. Tales spread of their endurance, of their ability to stand unmoving for days without rest, of their eyes that glowed in the dark like embers smoldering beneath steel. Parents warned their children to behave, lest a Panit come for them in the night. No rebellion was necessary, for the fear of these creatures ensured that Suleg's vision remained unchallenged.

  In full armor and carrying his weapon—the anock—a single Panit could weigh over six hundred pounds. The anock itself was a marvel: an eight-centimeter-thick metal shaft, ten feet long, tipped with a three-edged spear point on one end and a three-bladed mace-axe on the other. Overall, the weapon stretched nearly twelve feet and weighed ninety pounds. A Panit wielded it as a staff, pike, thrown spear, axe, or mace, attacking barriers under twenty feet high with ease. When needed, Panits used them as vaulting poles, ladders, or bridges when lashed together. In defensive positions, the mace-heads were buried in the ground, forming stockades within trench perimeters.

  Fielding a Panit force required precise organization. Each unit comprised thirty-one warriors. Of these, six were leaders—Panors. The senior Panor commanded the entire unit, while the other five each led squads of five warriors, enforcing absolute discipline.

  Unlike their soldiers, Panors did not wield anocks. Instead, they bore a massive war axe slung across their backs, an equally large curved sword at their hip, and a thin, metal-braided rope coil draped over their shoulder. This two-centimeter-thick cable, when unrolled, stretched a thousand feet and could support twenty tons. Each individual Panit carried a four-meter section of this rope, using it to lash anocks together, set tripwires, or fashion snares.

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  “Why do the Panors not carry anocks?” a junior officer once asked.

  A veteran soldier grunted. “Because they don’t need to.” He nodded toward a Panor sparring in the training pit. With fluid ease, the commander swung his war axe, cleaving through multiple training dummies in a single stroke. “The anock is for breaking the enemy. The Panor is for breaking the Panit.”

  The Panor fought alongside his men as one of them but commanded strict obedience. Military justice was swift and merciless; the Panor was judge, jury, and executioner. If a Panit faltered, his punishment was immediate. It was said that fewer Panits fell to enemy blades than to the discipline of their own leaders.

  When questioned about such harsh measures, Suleg merely replied, “A weapon that can disobey is not a weapon—it is a liability.” Another advisor, perhaps too bold, whispered, “And what of a ruler who forgets that men are not weapons?”

  And so, under Suleg’s reign, the Panit became more than soldiers. They became legends. They became fear itself.

  By Suleg’s time, these groups were being incorporated into a larger body—the Panan, or as it translates, the War-Horde. It consisted of a hundred Panits and twenty new warriors called Panomes, or generals. The Panomes were also surgically armored but carried only two weapons: a firearm called a Doram, or wall hammer, equivalent to an earthly recoilless rifle or bazooka of the twentieth century, and a three-and-a-half-foot-long straight, three-edged sabre. Each Panome led fifty Panits into battle and answered only to the Sarome.

  Throughout history, the Veihran city-states were sometimes ruled by a Panome upon the Sarome’s death, or until the city-state the Panome conquered could name him Sarome. According to legend, Suleg attacked his own Sarome, Ulbati, with two hundred of his so-called “beasts made men.” These beasts, however, were not supernatural but rather Suleg’s creations of genetic surgery. Their armor and weapons were grown, not built, and implanted. Much of the source of Suleg’s genetic material came from a Panit he had drugged and dissected named Maron. Using Maron’s basic body structure information, Suleg infused animal genetic material for specialized enhancements. Over five years, he cloned each successful individual, creating a ferocious force under his command.

  The diversity was startling. There were Maron clones with feline agility, ursine strength, bat-like echolocation, reptilian resilience, and lupine speed. Their movements were surer and quicker, their armor stronger, their senses keener. They stood eight inches taller than the average Panit and weighed thirty pounds more. They carried nothing and could march vast distances without rest. To sustain them, Suleg devised a processor that converted any organic material into a high-protein and carbohydrate powder, with water extracted from the source material.

  The night of the coup was swift and brutal. Ulbati sat in his war chamber, unaware of the treachery brewing within his ranks.

  Suleg entered with deliberate steps, his feline-enhanced warriors at his back.

  “You should have listened, Ulbati,” Suleg said, his voice calm, almost amused.

  Ulbati, seated upon his throne of war, barely raised an eyebrow. “And what wisdom have you to offer, Suleg? Another lecture on how we must change the way of the Panan?”

  “No,” Suleg replied, drawing his weapon. “Not change. Replace.”

  Before Ulbati could rise, the Maron-beasts struck. Claws and blades slashed through the guards as if they were paper. The chamber filled with the sounds of screams, the clash of steel, and the wet crunch of flesh being torn apart.

  Ulbati lunged, his own weapon cutting toward Suleg’s throat. Suleg sidestepped, faster than any normal warrior, and drove his own blade deep into Ulbati’s gut. He twisted it, watching as the light faded from his Sarome’s eyes.

  As Ulbati collapsed, gasping for air, Suleg crouched beside him. “You were strong,” he said. “But not strong enough.”

  The Maron-beasts stood silent as Suleg rose, their eyes glowing with eerie intelligence. He turned to them, lifting his bloodied sabre. “Tonight, the old ways die. And with them, the weak.”

  With the Sarome’s forces in disarray, Suleg’s troops overwhelmed the city. They slaughtered 3,200 Panits, 300 Panors, and 25 Panomes in ten hours. The Maron-beasts then hacked the dead to pieces and fed them into the processor, their own fallen included. Over the next 1,400 years, the “Sons of Suleg” dominated the planet, continuing their war-eugenics program to shape their race into the ultimate warriors.

  The beast-adapted warriors now carry the old traditional weapons as well as several new ones. In the ten thousand years since, the Veihrans encountered a space traveler, stole his ship and technological knowledge, and fed him into the processor. For the first time, they realized that the universe itself could be conquered and looted. Thus began their galactic wars: Eridanus Two, Procyon Six, Hercule Three, Elyrion Four, Cladios Three, Arcmentes Five, and Perseus Seven—to name a few. All these planets fell to the Shapers, their populations experimented upon as part of the eternal war.

  After reviewing all of ADAM’s information on the war and Veihran history, the primary leaders of the UW government and military gathered in the Science Council’s anteroom. Present were Chairman Hughes, Jeff Calan (now training corps commander), Ted Harmand, Murray Dean, Russ Carlin, Doctor Hopewell, Professor Sackett, and a scientist Russ did not know, introduced as Walter Chambers.

  Russ knew that even as they met, something new was unfolding. Several hundred technicians, medical teams, historians, and archaeologists had been rushed to this UW base in Colorado, the long-ago site of NORAD Headquarters, nestled inside a mountain of limestone and granite. He also knew that five hundred more ships were being designed to Avenger’s specifications, all capable of jumping time just as ADAM—and now the UW metallurgists—had adapted his ship to do.

  The Shapers did not have nuclear power, either fission or fusion, meaning Russ’s ship could shift at will without the need to recharge after each jump. It had been sheer luck that Terra Twin had spotted the sphere during one of its dormant periods. Without that discovery, humankind would have stood no chance at all. Now, thanks to Russ’s bold attack on the sphere and ADAM’s invaluable data, the odds had shifted.

  And for the first time, humanity had hope.