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“Panoply of Sins” – a free to read novel!
Hello, and welcome to Panoply of Sins, a free to read novel posted here in the Forums at Paizo.
This is a Fantasy novel, set on a world that could easily be a setting for a Pathfinder (or Dungeons & Dragons) adventure, but it will contain some Science Fiction elements.
My hope is that I will post the first several chapters of this novel today, and then, a new chapter every few days.
But, I also have other hopes, and one of them is that if you, the reader, find something about this story you like, or dislike, you will post a comment here, and don’t be concerned with upsetting the flow.
Finally, I hope that even if you do not feel inclined to leave a comment, that you at least find that reading this free novel was not a waste of your time.
Thank you
Panoply of Sins
© 2012, D.H. Austin
Synopsis: A caravan crossing a desert on a very typical seeming fantasy world discovers a downed life boat from a space ship.
Chapter 1
Carmen Sran clung to the straps that crossed her chest as the capsule plummeted toward the planet below, and tried not to worry about the future.
The future?
Until only a few hours ago, Carmen had forgotten what it was like to imagine a future. When she had been fourteen she was sold to her maternal aunt to settle a debt of twelve credits owed on the repair of a sewing machine programmer. At sixteen she worked the bath houses of the Turangen Barges of the mercenary shuttle services over the planet of Athcor. Those were the good times.
Before the end of her twenty-first year Carmen stood trial for accessory to Interstitial Grand Larceny, conspiracy to sell illegal technology on an orbital sanctuary, and criminal intent to do bodily harm to an officer of the Interplanetary Relief Society. Her trial lasted four months, her sentencing hearing another three. She was separated from the rest of the conspirators. Rehabilitation consisted of fourteen months on an IRS orbiting women’s prison asteroid. During her incarceration she had assaulted nine guards and thirty five inmates. She lost the first finger on her left hand, and her right eye. Transfer to the long term incarceration barge orbiting Celarax was inevitable. Her death, at the hands of the guards or inmates there, was also inevitable. Her inability to accept her fate was as inevitable as these things, but she was unprepared for the future. Transfer to a new prison, and a chance at redemption, seemed inconceivable, a huge lie, something meant to break her spirit once and for all, but then Carmen met June.
They were not much alike, Carmen and June. Carmen was built lean. June was plump. Carmen had black hair, as black as the space between distant stars. June had yellow-gold hair that shone like a rising type-five sun. Carmen was quiet, moody, private, and suffered from a lack of emotion.
June was explosive, loud, violently passionate, and filled with a desire to make everything right, everything.
They did not know it at the time, but they were the same age, and their birthdays fell within the same season (although Carmen never knew exactly when she was born, only the year of her birth was coded into her Phanea, the small organic plate attached to her skin near the base of her spine). They had both arrived on Celarax at the same time.
Carmen had come to Celarax to die. She could not know that June had come to Celarax to find people desperate to live.
It was a disaffected administrator’s cruel joke, that Carmen was selected from the prison population to be included in June’s experiments.
Seven inmates were selected from the population of the orbital prison barge to be transported to Sanafield Research Planet. June Abercrole (acting as Assistant Director of Project Execution for the Ninth Section, Unit Seven, District Eight of the Interplanetary Relief Society: Core Affirmative Relocation Experiment, or 978 CARE) had checked the medical histories, biological compatibility reports, and skill assessments of the seven, and oversaw their transfer from the prison barge to the shuttle, Parathan, and loaded a copy of each individuals Bio-memes, from their Phanea into the suppression hoods built into the shuttles acceleration couches. Thirty seven hours later, the Parathan suffered an implosive field generator fault. June evacuated the prisoners, abandoning the acceleration couches of the main bay for full restraint pod-cradles in the third, dorsal mounted, long-term-life-support-pod, strapped herself into pod-cradle number eight, and launched the life boat.
The life boat was now spiraling down toward the surface of an uncharted, type-seventeen planet, in the remote boarder zone between the Gallie Republic of Solar Systems and the Narag’ic Empire.
Carmen’s stomach rolled and twisted, her head, held tightly in the clamps of the pod-cradle, ached from the changing G-forces. She screamed, swore, cursed, and for the first time in years, fought the fear of death that tried to overtake her senses.
She would survive.
These kinds of life pods were well known for their ability to land, guided through even the most extreme atmospheric conditions by redundant hazard-resolving proto-tier bio-compressed logic inversion programs. She would survive, and she would have a future. All she had to do was kill the agent of the IRS, the lady with the bright hair and white smile. As soon as June was dead, and the signal-nota-responders disabled, and maybe she would have to kill some of the other prisoners, she didn’t know any of the other six of them, then, she would be free, and the rest of the universe would never know whatever became of her. That was Carmen’s plan, to escape, to kill, and be free. She never imagined that her plan would be altered, or that she would need to keep people alive or how that would change her life forever.
| Terquem |
Panoply of Sins
© 2012, D.H. Austin
Chapter 2
Meanwhile on the planet below
“We don’t have any other choices, Henry,” Father Timothy was saying. “It’s not as if we are sentencing them to die. There is a chance they will all live, and the community needs the money. Prince Alfred has signed the papers that will allow you to take them across the border and once they are sold you can return here and do what you want, what you really want, for the rest of them. There are just too many of them. We cannot feed this many, and they are the oldest. No one will adopt them, and the city has so many unemployed laborers now. It is either this, or we indenture them and send them across the sea to work in the cotton fields of New Aragorma. You know what the captains are paying for contracts of indenture, the prices are drastic. Selling them to the slave markets in Dalaz’Nembre will bring more, and they will have a much better life in the fields of the Nembre Nobles than in the plantations of the southern islands. Please, Henri, don’t be so upset. It is for the best.”
All that Henry Dowl ever wanted was to become a priest of the Order of Saint Marco Desrinault, but after twenty years of working as an ostler in the stables of the Third Avenue Temple, he had failed the exam for the tenth time. He would never be a priest. Father Timothy, the rotund and young Second-Councilman, had tried to explain to Henry, a week ago, that some men were called to the priesthood, while others were called to different work. Henri could stay on, caring for the horses of the temple, or, if he agreed to take a mission, a difficult mission, on behalf of the temple brothers, to transport thirteen orphans across the desert of Al’Gathin to be sold in the slave markets of Dalaz’Nembre, he would share in the profits of the sale, given a full third of the monies, and allowed to open a new orphanage, in the town of Canrick Upon-Sullin, where Henry had been born and raised. As Director of the new orphanage he would always be working closely with the priests of the faith, and he would be in a position to make a difference in lives of many young people. It seemed like a reasonable offer.
Henry would lead a team of six small, but strong, horses, pulling a train of four covered wagons. The trip would take four weeks. The first two wagons would carry the orphans, and Henry, and the second two wagons would carry enough food and water for the trip.
At first Henry was reluctant. He was not young. He was often sick, and his body was not in the best shape it could be. He had been kicked by horses, one of his legs had been broken twice, and he walked with a limp. His hair, thinning and turning grey, barely kept his head warm, and he could not afford to buy a hat. He ate well, but he didn’t seem to have the natural ability to put on weight. He was thin, and tall, and his cloths fit him poorly. Travelling for a long time across the desert frightened him. He did not like the idea of selling children, even if most of them were between the ages of fifteen and eighteen, into a life of slavery. It took a week of pleading and explaining it to him that the remainder of the children would fare better, that the conditions of slavery in Dalz’Nembre were not terrible, and that the alternatives available to these children here were far less predictable before Henry relented and agreed to make the journey.
On the morning of Theladay, the first day of the week, in the month of Nofver, the wagons were loaded. The children were separated into groups and placed in the first and second wagons by age, with the eldest in the second wagon. The sacks and crates of supplies were loaded in the third and forth wagon. All of the wagons were small. There was hardly enough room for the children to lie down, but they could, if they squeezed in close to each other. It wasn’t expected that they would sleep in the wagons, unless there was a freak desert shower, and they would probably sleep on the ground on blankets each night.
Hours after the wagon-train had left the city, passing under the great Western Arch, and as it was shambling slowly across the prairie grass stretching westward toward the high desert lands, Father Timothy walked along the courtyard promenade with Arch Deacon Phillips.
“How much food do they have?” the arch Deacon asked.
“Enough for fifteen days,” Father Timothy answered, “the sacks and crates on the bottom of the stacks are filled with rags and weeds. They should make it as far as the bridge over Akumal Gorge, and maybe a day or two past that. Once he discovers he is out of food, he will have to continue on, and ration whatever he has left. He isn’t very bright, and it is imagined he will feed the children well, and by the time he realizes what was done it will be too late for him to do anything about it. They might reach Dalaz’Nembre, but the Nembrians will kill him and take the children. He and they are no longer anything for us to worry about.”
“Well done, Timothy,” the Arch Deacon said.
Nine days later, while camped for the night, Henry watched as a bright, flaming star fell from the sky. The star burned in bright colors, red, then gold, then blue-green, and as it fell it grew in size. It grew in size and came closer. It changed from a star into something else, something very strange indeed. It looked like a needle, a very large needle. It was black and silver, and as it fell from the sky it came directly toward the place where Henry had camped for the night.
| Terquem |
Panoply of Sins
© 2012, D.H. Austin
Chapter 3
A Diwares Technologies, type Nine-Romeo lifeboat is a remarkable craft. Its listed displacement is twenty tons, but the Diwares comes in at just around twenty three. It is fully auto-piloted, capable of 1G of constant acceleration for thirty tree hours, and can make planet fall on any class E planet. The Diwares can carry forty people (of average humanoid build, within the C thru F, Tiller Body Mass Index Guide), and has equipment and supplies to sustain that number of people for four months.
One of the more impressive aspects of the Diwares lifeboat is its tested and reliable Inertia-Compensation-Refractors (ICRs). The ICRs of the Diwares are the same ones used on all Interplanetary Relief Society Schooner Class System Response Boats. The design is over forty years old, and has never been improved upon. When landing, even at re-entry speeds of over twelve hundred miles per hour, the ICRs maintain a stable and level craft regardless of atmospheric or terrain conditions. Once the Gravity-Nullifying landing pods, or skids, are deployed, any Diwares lifeboat will sail smoothly and comfortably down to a computer selected surface with practically no possibility of error.
Practically no possibility of error at all.
Inside the lifeboat, Carmen could hardly feel the deceleration of the lifeboat as it entered the atmosphere. With her body fully restrained in the pod-cradle, she could not see any of the other passengers, but directly across from her, just above the starboard storage cells, she could see the four colored lights of a standard Axial-Control-Orientation panel. All four lights were green. That was a good sign.
It meant the lifeboat was descending in a near perfect orientation.
Carmen had been in a Diwares lifeboat before, in fact, for a few weeks, she had lived in one that had been converted into a low orbit shuttle. The friends she once associated with had stolen the lifeboat from a crippled Laboratory Ship, used it to escape with stolen cargo, and while hiding out in an asteroid field, remodeled the lifeboats interior, scrubbed its identification markings, reprogrammed its computer, and then piloted the boat to a passing Subsidized Merchant passing through the system. Carmen was intimately familiar with the Diwares lifeboat.
Carmen knew what kind of gear was stowed on a Diwares Lifeboat. There would be no firearms of any kind, standard IRS protocol, but there would be knives, axes, and even a dozen collapsible spears, in addition to supplies of compressed rations, water, and small recycling units. In the time she had lived on a Diwares she had learned practically everything there was to know about the vessel and its systems. The most important thing she had learned about a Diwares lifeboat was how to shut down the signal generators.
While in motion, the lifeboat emitted a very weak signal, most power of the on board plant was directed toward keeping the lifeboat in the right orientation, and powering the Inertia Compensators. Once the Lifeboat had exhausted any fuel for thrust, and once the lifeboat was stable, either in orbit, adrift, or grounded, the batteries and power-collectors would fire up the signal generators, sending out powerful pulse-signals. Compressed information on the exact location and status of the lifeboat would be sent out in regular timed intervals, and with the buoys of the IRS dispersed throughout the galaxy constantly listening for just those kinds of signals, it was typically only a matter of weeks before you could be sure a rescue ship was on the way. The use of a lifeboat was common knowledge to every citizen of the galaxy, even if it was uncommon. Typically a lifeboat was only manned when the ship it was carried on suffered a catastrophic accident, otherwise it was always safer to stay with a ship, even a derelict and drifting ship, with minimal life support was a better option than a lifeboat. But, in the case of a catastrophic accident, it was best for the lifeboat to maneuver as far, and as fast, away from the accident – even the minimal activity form emergency powered systems of a destroyed space ship could interfere with the signal generators of a lifeboat, preventing anyone from ever knowing where you are, preventing your quick recue.
Carmen did not intend for there to be a rescue. As soon as the ship was stopped, she was going to be going after those signal generators. That was her first priority.
Priorities.
That was what she had learned in the years since she left her family. Everything was a matter of priorities. Once you know the priorities, everything else is simple.
| Terquem |
Panoply of Sins
© 2012, D.H. Austin
Chapter 4
Eight days before the needle appeared in the night sky above Henry’s camp site, Father Timothy was distressed.
The Arch Deacon was not well. The very next day Father Timothy was called to visit the Arch Deacon in his private chambers, but the idea of visiting the ailing Arch Deacon made Father Timothy uncomfortable. When he entered the large, spacious room, he remained by the door.
“Timothy,” the Arch Deacon rasped from the bed across the room, “is that you?”
“Yes sir, I am here,” Timothy replied.
“Come closer, we need to speak.”
“But, sir, the cough, it is probably contagious, don’t you think?”
The Arch Deacon sat bolt upright in his bed. His thinning white hair was plastered on his head in a glistening sheen of sweat. He held himself up while both of his arms shook, his hands placed flat on the mattress on either side of him. He shouted, “Get over here!”
Timothy raced toward the large bed. The orange and white colors of the bed linens reflected bright sunlight streaming in through the window behind the bed. When Timothy was close enough, the Arch Deacon whispered, “What is the condition of the Prince today?”
“His condition worsens, sir. His doctors, our people, say it is only a matter of days.”
“This is very good, very good. Now, Timothy, you understand that when I die, you will be made Arch Deacon, yes?” The Arch Deacon stared into Timothy’s eyes and nodded as he spoke as if to say that he expected nothing less than complete agreement.
“Yes, sir, as you instructed,” Timothy replied.
“And everything is in place to complete the ritual for my return, and make no mistake, Timothy, Arch Deacon Timothy, that should this effort fail, I have agents who will see to your demise before you can finish tailoring the garments of your office, this is also understood?”
“Yes, sir, I understand,” Timothy said with difficulty. “Duke Rouson and his men are camped in the Heredy Valley. We, I mean, our men will send for him once the Prince’s death is announced. He has agreed to everything you put before him. But, sir, there is one thing I still worry about.”
“There is nothing left to worry about, Timothy,” the Arch Deacon said as he lowered himself back down onto the bed.
“All those years ago,” Timothy said turning just slightly away from the ailing Arch Deacon, “the young queen’s death was such a tragedy. So many people loved her, and there were always rumors that she died in childbirth. Her husband, the king, had only passed a few weeks before she died, but everyone at the court believed she carried his child. When his brother, Prince Alfred, took the throne, there were rumors that he would be only a regent, for the King’s child, but, well, sir, all these rumors, surely someone must have known the truth.” Timothy turned back toward the Arch Deacon with an accusing look on his face.
“It is a funny thing,” the Arch Deacon coughed. “How truly funny it is that people, who think they know the truth, tend to die more readily than people who aren’t sure of anything at all. Come closer Timothy, and I will tell you the truth.”
Timothy leaned over the edge of the bed. The Arch Deacon’s hand shot upward and took Timothy by the throat.
“Every single person who knows the truth about that child is dead,” the Arch Deacon hissed. “Do you understand? If they knew the truth, then they are dead. The prophecy, silly things that they are, kept the child alive. But soon that child will be of age,” his voice rose in a rasping tremble, “and that prophecy will not be fulfilled. The child will also soon be dead. You and I took care of that just a few days ago. Now you know the truth, Timothy, or should I ask you this, what do you know?”
Father Timothy, struggling against the strong, boney grip of the Arch Deacon, shook his head from side to side. The Arch Deacon released him, and Timothy quickly reached his own hand to sooth the pain around his neck as he said, “I don’t know anything at all, anything at all.”
“That is very good, very good indeed. Tell me, Arch Deacon Timothy, get used to that, I think you’ll like it, tell me,” the Arch Deacon said as he fluffed his pillows, “How go the preparations for the festival.”
“The festival, sir?” Timothy asked, puzzled.
“Yes the Festival of the Harvest, yes I suppose you haven’t been keeping up with things, but it is approaching. I suppose that the town will be saddened to hear of the passing of the Prince, but these things have happened before, Kings, Queens, Princes, they tend to die at the most inopportune times. I imagine the festival will go on as it always does. Send someone into town and have them buy a few loafs of the sweetened bread we like. We will want to celebrate, wont we?”
“Yes, sir, I will, but…” Timothy began to say.
“We should appear as if we are unprepared for the things that are coming, it will help us win over the people when they realize that their country is being overthrown, don’t you think?” the Arch Deacon said.
‘Yes, I suppose that’s a good idea,” Timothy said as he left the room.
The Arch Deacon died that night.
It was the same night that Henry, camped in the desert far to the west of the city, watched as a star fell out of the sky.
| Terquem |
Panoply of Sins
© 2012, D.H. Austin
Chapter 5
Something was very strange about that star. As it fell out of the sky, it first appeared to be headed directly toward Henry’s camp. It was strange to see something like this, and he had never seen anything like it before. It concerned him, but he didn’t panic. He tried to keep his head, and he strained his eyes to look in the direction of the falling star. It was night, the moon was three-quarters full, and there were millions of stars out, and no clouds to inhibit the light that shined from those stars. Henry stared at the path of the falling star for several long moments, and then he was sure. The falling star wasn’t falling at all, it was sailing, if sailing was the right word at all in this case.
The falling star moved, just slightly, as it fell, angling to the right, and then to the left, changing its path ever so slightly each time as it did. Against the background of the dark night sky, and the silvery shadows created by the light of the moon and the stars, it became obvious to Henry that this falling star was being controlled by someone, or something. The falling star was angling to find a place to land. That was what Henry decided. For a few moments the star leveled off, as if it wasn’t falling at all anymore. For a moment it even appeared as if it was gaining altitude, as it approached a place, off in the distance, where Henry though he could make out a field of strewn boulders a few miles across in size. To his horror, as the falling star seemed to fall again angling to avoid the boulders, Henry realized that those were not boulders at all.
Suddenly the boulders were leaping off of the ground.
They were not boulders. They were Rockbacks. Rockbacks are giant, four legged, desert beasts, each one nearly the size of a small cottage, with short, fat heads, and huge rounded bodies covered in hard plates that folded against each other when the beasts lay down to sleep. If it had been daylight, Henry would have noticed them right away. Rockbacks were mostly black in color, and stood out against the brown desert sand, when they could be seen in the light. Very few of any sort of creature ever dared to disturb or cross a Rockback on purpose, and their distinct color, and bony shells, gave everyone and everything plenty of warning to avoid them.
Somehow the falling star had not known anything about Ruckbacks. Somehow whomever or whatever was guiding the falling star had made a mistake.
When the Rockbacks were startled out of their slumber, and leapt onto their feet, their backs rose into the air a good fifteen feet. The falling star was just barely that much above the ground when it passed over them. From where Henry was watching he couldn’t make out any details of the falling star, but something must have been hanging off of the bottom of the thing.
In rapid succession the falling star, or something hanging from it, struck, one after another, a dozen of the Rockbacks as they were stampeding away from the falling star. The impacts, bang, bang, bang, rang out through the quiet of the night, and Henry watched as the falling star began to spin.
It spun, the falling star, round and round, and appeared to veer, out of control to the right, to Henry’s right. And then, angling downward it slammed into the ground nose first with incredible force sending a plume of dust and sand high into the desert sky.
At first, Henry had been worried the falling star was headed right for his camp, but it wasn’t after all, and he didn’t have to worry about that. It had crashed, the falling star, into the desert a good quarter of a mile away.
What Henry had to worry about now were the Rockbacks, hundreds of them were now stampeding right toward him.
| Terquem |
Panoply of Sins
© 2012, D.H. Austin
Chapter 6
Practically no possibility of error at all.
There wasn’t any way Carmen could know how much longer it would take for the lifeboat to land. She didn’t know anything about the planet, its surface, atmosphere, any details at all. She knew that the lifeboat’s on-board systems would be scanning the planet for the best possible landing zone within the range of its fuel supplies. The only thing she could count on was that moment when the landing gear was deployed. That would be the signal that the lifeboat was only seconds away from a landing.
And the landing should be noticeable, not rough, but noticeable. The landing gear of a Diwares lifeboat consisted of four skids, one each would be deployed from one of the four quadrants of the bottom of the lifeboat, forward and aft, and port and starboard. The skids were each an array, approximately one and a half meters in length, of two parallel inertia compensators mounted above a high impact shock absorbing assembly. There were no wheels (wheels meant a need for brakes, and any child could tell you that an inertia compensator was far better at controlling motion, than any set of wheels with brakes). When the landing gear was deployed, passengers aboard the lifeboat would feel the vibration of the sudden extension of the inertia compensators. It was a slight vibration, rumbling through the hull that typically lasted a few seconds. Carmen would know the feeling. She had felt it many times before. She waited, watching the colored lights on the bulkhead on the opposite wall from her pod-cradle, and prioritized her tasks, listing, in her mind, each step, and each action she would need to carry out, as soon as the lifeboat had landed.
There was a sudden jolt, slight, from below her, and then Carmen felt the unmistakable vibration of the inertia compensators of the landing gear. Then all hell broke loose.
She would not be able to remember everything that happened, exactly, but it went something like this.
Immediately after the vibration of the lifeboat began, due to the deployment and activation of the landing inertia compensators, there were several violent collisions. Each collision shook the lifeboat hard, jolting it upward. There was the sound of a minor explosion, and then the lifeboat lurched to the left. Carmen would remember seeing that three of the four colored lights against the bulkhead across from her turned from green to red, bypassing orange and yellow completely. The loss of stabilization of the lifeboat’s orientation triggered emergency landing systems. She could not see the red cross of light that flashed across her face, but in less than two seconds a full face respirator was forced down upon her face, as her pod-cradle rotated thirty degrees. A whiff of yellow smoke filled the respirator. Carmen thought it smelled faintly of bananas, and then she lost consciousness. The pod-cradle, normally an open three-quarter containment, high shock resistant, full body restraining chair, sealed, as two clear protective canopies snapped into place, completing the total containment of the occupant, and then once sealed, a rapid expanding pressure dissipating gel was sprayed into the pod. The complete sequence took less than five seconds.
The forward port landing skid had impacted seven large, armored, herd animals. The fourth impact was sufficient to fracture six of the eight mounting rods of the skid. The landing skid, and its inertia compensators, continued to function as it dangled below the lifeboat still connected by the remaining two rods. When the skid struck the fifth, sixth, and seventh animal, it was completely severed from the lifeboat. The landing skid, now operating only on internal emergency reserve batteries, struck the ground and then ricocheted up striking the lifeboat on the starboard side, causing the craft to begin to spin. The life boat spun more than fifteen times, throwing all on-board systems (with the exception of emergency safety systems) out of order. Without the rapid response of the life saving systems, the passengers on board would have suffered terrible, if not fatal, injuries from the massive G-forces created by the spinning of the ship, and would surely not survive the following impact.
Thirteen seconds after colliding with the herd animals, the life boat nosed downward, due to a burst of energy sent to the rear compensator landing gear, and crashed into the surface of the planet at four hundred seventy three miles per hour.
The entire forward quarter of the life boat was compressed into an unrecognizable tangle of twisted metal, cables, and components. Fortunately, this part of the life boat housed primary navigation, propulsion control, internal diagnostics, and signaling equipment. The more important systems, life support and environmental diagnostics, where housed in the third quarter of the life boat, just ahead of the propulsion units. The second quarter of the life boat held the forty pod-cradles, in four rows of ten (twenty on each side, port and starboard with a central, very narrow, aisle way between them).
The gas released into the full face respirators of each pod-cradle would ensure that each occupant would be fully relaxed, physically and emotionally, for the duration of the crash event. The masks incorporated full life monitoring scanners, and would ensure that each occupant’s respiration and heartbeat remained normal. The life boat’s backup systems would evaluate the condition and integrity of the ship, the environment of the planet, and the extent of damage to all ship’s systems. If an imminent threat was detected to the passengers of the life boat, another gas would be introduced to the respirators, waking the passengers, as well as giving them a dose of inhalant pharmaceuticals designed to enhance performance and thinking. If no imminent threat were detected, the passengers would be kept sedated for a full thirty minutes, before a milder, slow working gas would be introduced to bring them out of their sleep with as little disorientation as possible. The short term effect of the slow acting gas was to cause the passenger to feel mildly elated, happy, and calm, and was designed to give survivors a moment to collect their thought, asses their situation, and also allow time for the on-board systems to play recordings of protocols for passenger required actions following an emergency crash landing.
The lifeboat’s systems detected no dangers. The canopies of the pod-cradles opened, and because the life boat was sitting at a rotational angle of 270 degrees clockwise, all of the impact gel drained out of the pods as soon as the canopies began to open.
Carmen slept for thirty minutes, and then felt herself rousing from a very relaxing sleep. She felt good, and warm, but she could not remember what it was she was supposed to do. Even the thought nagging her that there was something she had wanted to do after the ship landed, didn’t distress her. She remained in the pod-cradle with her harness pressing against her body from the gravity of the planet gently pulling her downward and listened to a soothing male voice go over proper life boat passenger protocols.
She felt fine, mostly, but for a moment she had a thought that made her uncomfortable, for just a moment she felt as if she had wanted to hurt somebody, but she couldn’t remember who or why. Carmen smiled, happy that she survived the landing, and continued to listen to the recorded message.
Before the recorded message ended, something was banging against the hull of the life boat, and drowning out the words of the message. That seemed rude, to Carmen.
| Readerbreeder |
Terquem - I would like to copy-and-paste this into a Word file, so I can read it offline. Is that OK with you?
| Readerbreeder |
Thank you, Terquem, for your kind permission. My intent is simply to be able to read offline -- I don't always have internet access where I am.
| Terquem |
Panoply of Sins
© 2012, D.H. Austin
Chapter 7
Sometime after the needle had crashed into the desert to the west
Kyle Barrnum hurried through the streets of the city of Corill as the sun was rising in the east. The early morning fog, the city was famous for it, shone with a golden glow as the sunlight cut through trying to brighten the day, and even though it would be another warm day, the fog clung to Kyle’s shirt and hair, and gave him an uncomfortable chill.
Kyle had come to like living on this world, and knew that he would be both happy and sad when his tour was completed, in another two, standard thirty day months. As a volunteer of the Interplanetary Relief Society, Kyle had served for three years on this world, and in return he would be given a commission in the Scout Service, and if his review were high enough, possibly a scholarship to the academy.
Until today, for Kyle, It had been a mostly uneventful assignment.
Kyle was in good shape. He was a fit young man. His genetic profile placed him in category 16G, which the locals would call human, in their language, but his face was bit longer than normal and his eyes where small, and set wide, nearly on the sides of his head. He did not normally go out in public without a small mask, with a built in view screen that allowed him to see even though the artificial eyes of the mask were placed to the front of the face. This morning, Kyle ran through the city, with his mask in his hand. He had picked it up on his way out of his apartment, but in his excitement he had forgotten to put it on. It was lucky for him that he didn’t run into anyone this morning.
When he came to the chief administrator’s house, Kyle didn’t even bother knocking on the door. He quickly pulled a small plastic pass-key out of his pocket, and waved it over an otherwise common looking spot on the wall near the plain wooden door. The locks, a technological improvement made on the small brick and wooden frame work house, clicked open, and he barged though the door as fast as he could move. He ran through the house, and into the chief administrator’s bedroom. She was sleeping. Her long brown hair was piled on top of her head, and she slept on her side, with her head resting on a fine feather pillow. She had the covers pulled up close below her chin, and one hand, her left hand, under her check. She looked very peaceful.
“Ma’am,” Kyle said loudly when he came next to the bed, “There’s been an event.”
The chief administrator woke startled, and rolled over onto her back.
“Is it serious? How was it scaled by the Evaluator?”
“The information hasn’t been entered into the Evaluator at this time, Ma’am.”
She sat up in the bed and swung her legs over to the floor. When she looked up at Kyle she stared in disbelief.
“Were you out in the city, without your mask?”
Kyle looked down at the mask in his hand and gasped, “Eye, sinanmbru,” he said in his native tongue. “I’m sorry, Ma’am, I forgot,” he added speaking in the local common language.
“And why wasn’t the Evaluator updated? What are we talking about here, Kyle?”
“It’s a lifeboat, Ma’am,” Kyle said.
Rising slowly, Linda Hathaway, the Chief Administrator of the Interplanetary Relief Society, Northern Hemisphere, Sectors 25-80, stood up next to Kyle, gently took the mask from his hand, and placed on his face. She then retrieved her own mask, a much smaller mask, with a nose and two normal human green eyes, from the stand beside her bed. Making a display of the effort, she purposely fit the mask slowly to her face, and smiled at Kyle saying, “Protocol at all times, cadet.”
The chief administrator was a 12G, making her almost as human as one of the locals, but her nose was practically nonexistent, and she had the solid black eyes of her race, something that would stand out here. She went to the closet across from the bed and took out a light robe, and put it on as she waited for Kyle to fill her in on the event. When he finished his report she stood for a moment in thought.
“And you say there was an initial message from the satellite monitors,a tracking signal only?” Linda asked puzzling through the information, “But nothing transmitted from the boat itself.” She moved toward the hallway outside of her bed room, paused, turned toward Kyle, and asked, “Has it landed safely?”
Kyle opened his mouth to say something, but then merely shrugged.
Linda turned away, and then led Kyle through the house to the pantry adjoining the kitchen, then through a secret door that revealed a flight of stairs, going down into a basement below her house.
“I think it’s safe to assume it did not, land safely anyway,” Kyle was saying as they descended the stairs. “The initial message was captured earlier this morning. My computer tracked an object that was headed for a normal entry, about five hundred kilometers to the northwest. If it was the lifeboat, it should have landed just after four o’clock this morning, about two hours ago. There’s been no signal. It would have landed about two hundred fifty kilometers west of the city of Polmah, in the country of Earlamon, a country we have been watching closely for a few years now. This could be very problematic.”
“Do we have an agent in the area?” Linda asked as she sat down in front of a multi screened computer terminal. She busied herself with bringing the system up, and typed furiously on the keyboard as each screen came to life showing different status conditions of the operating system.
“Yes, Ma’am,” Kyle took a small cylinder out of his shirt pocket, it was about the size of a stack of twenty pennies, and he sat it down on a clear glass box next to the chief administrator’s keyboard. “The password is hexaflexagon magic fourteen.”
She typed her own system password into the keyboard, and then noticing a ready icon on the screen to her right, she reached out and touched the icon lightly, a male voice came from a small speaker over the screen, “System voice recognition on line, access to storage device ready, please state the reader security pass code and device access code now.”
“Buttered rum toddy, access portable file media, Kyle Barrnum, hexaflexagon magic fourteen. Seek file, agent, vicinity of Polmah,” Linda said.
“Her name,” Kyle said, “is Theolonia Dolominara Haspur Geomanasp, but she prefers to go by the name Theo.”
“Access authorized,” the computerized voice said, “good morning Administrator Hathaway. File loaded. Would you like me to activate the remote terminal?”
“Pause,” the administrator said.
“System paused,” the computer responded.
“Kyle, do you know this agent. Is he a local, or a remote field operator?”
“She, ma’am, it is a female, and she is a local. I’ve spoken with her on a few occasions. She can seem eccentric, but she’s very intelligent, and has earned a level four security clearance. I think we can trust her with about anything, really. And don’t let her behavior fool you. She is older than she pretends to be.”
“What is her genetic codifier?”
“Ma’am, our system would identify her as a four alpha, but she is a bit sensitive about that. She prefers to be classified under an ancient descriptor, Aurum Draconum. I’m not even sure what language that is, but it is important to her.”
“It’s old Earth, Latin, I think,” the chief administrator said quietly, and then she addressed the computer, “Restore, open a direct optimized transmission channel to the remote terminal, now.”
| Terquem |
Panoply of Sins
© 2012, D.H. Austin
Chapter 8
Henry’s first thought was that he was going to die.
Rockbacks are not known for their speed. They are huge, lumbering beasts. He had seen a few of them in the city. They were used as draft animals by the nomads, and he knew they could pull heavy loads, but he had never seen one run. Henry had never seen a Rockback at a full run, let alone a herd of them at a stampede. His first thought was that he was going to die, but then he realized that he had time.
The herd was coming toward him. It was moving, thundering, but it wasn’t moving quickly.
He ran toward the back of the lead wagon and began shouting, “Up, up, everyone, get up!”
When he had brought the wagons to a stop earlier in the evening, Henry had unhitched the horses, and let them off to graze on the sparse desert grass. There was no way he would have time to round up the six animals, yoke them, and move the wagons, so instead Henry did the next thing he could think of. Wake the children and get them running as fast as they could run. He was glad that there were no small children. He was glad that they were all healthy adolescents, and that given what he had just seen, the not too terribly fast approach of the stampede, he believed they could out run them. He was glad, and he was terrified. If they could outrun the beast long enough for them to disperse, regain their sense, they might survive.
Henry ran to the first and then the second wagon, and at each one he grabbed the side rails of the open wagons and shook as hard as he could, “Get up, we’ve got to run!”
The children woke. Some of them woke clear headed, excited by Henry’s shouts, and jumped out of the wagon in only their shifts. Others woke more slowly, rubbing their eyes and asking, “What?”
Henry reached across the gate at the back of the second wagon and took hold of a young boy’s night shirt at the front and heaved. Henry wasn’t as young as he used to be, but he was still strong, and he lifted the boy, who could not be more than sixteen or seventeen years old, out of the wagon and dropped him onto the ground shouting, “Run, run for your lives!”
Henry’s yells grew louder, and he circled the wagons just one more time making sure there were no more children sleeping in them, and then with a quick glance over his shoulder he saw the Rockbacks were close, two, not more than maybe three hundred yards was all that was between them now.
He grabbed at shifts and shirts, arms, even hair, and pulled, first one then another, then another. Henry moved quickly getting their attention and shouting all the while, “This way, we’ve got to outrun them!”
In only a moment the children realized the danger and began running away. They outran Henry. His limp slowed him down a little, or maybe he only wanted to be sure they were all in front of him. Henry didn’t think of himself as a hero. Henry wanted them all to survive, but he wasn’t thinking about them at all. Henry was thinking about what would happen to the wagons.
They ran. The children, eleven of them (Henry counted them), seven girls and four boys, ran with the strength and vigor of youth. They pulled away from Henry gaining ground ahead of him with every step. Henry ran as best as he could, and behind him he heard the crashing and destruction of the wagons as the herd of Rockbacks trampled over everything in their path.
Eleven?
Wait! Henry realized the mistake in shock and almost came to a stop. There were supposed to be thirteen. Thirteen children, he had counted. There was supposed to be thirteen children, eight boys and five girls. He could almost remember all of their names. Henry peered ahead of him through the moonlight and starlight, and counted again. This time he only counted ten. And then he counted eight, no seven, wait five.
Henry ran off of the edge of a gulley.
It was a dry river bed. The fall was only six feet. When he ran off the edge he spun his arms wildly, thinking to himself, “this is a funny way to die, falling off of a cliff trying to outrun a herd of Rockbacks”. He hit the ground on his hands and knees and was surprised to learn the river bed was full of soft powdery sand.
That was why he miscounted. The children running the fastest had come to the gulley first, and had fallen in.
There was very little time. Henry shouted out through the darkness, “If you can move, fall back against the wall of the gulley. We’ll survive if we stay close to the edge.”
Henry scrambled, thankful that he didn’t break a bone or strain a muscle. To his left was a young brown haired girl. Her name was Rowduin, and to his right was a boy of eighteen, with square shoulders and short cut black hair. The boy’s name was Audric, and he was a good boy. He was always helping around the orphanage, and everyone liked him. Henry leaned his head out just slightly and looked to the left and to the right. The children, some of them standing and some of them sitting with their knees drawn up and their arms wrapped around their legs tightly, were all close by.
The thundering sound of the Rockbacks grew closer and closer. It filled Henry’s ears. The wall behind his back began to shake violently and dirt crumbled off the wall and fell down the neck of his shirt.
And then there came a strange silence. As dozens of the animals approached the edge of the gulley at the same time, the air was filled with a sudden silence. The sound of the thundering hoofs of dozens of more Rockbacks approaching could still be heard, but the immediate sound of the closest animals stopped as they (knowing the terrain by instinct) leapt into the air and cleared the width of the narrow gulley and then with a tremendous pounding that shook all around them the animals landed on the other edge. It amazed Henry that these huge beasts could leap so far, and what he watched from below filled him with awe.
One after another, whole groups of Rockbacks sailed overhead. There would be the approaching thunder of the hoofs so close, then a silence, then a crashing as they landed fifteen feet away. The moonlight and starlight above was blotted by the continuing waves of the animals soaring across the sky over them.
Thundering, silence, crash
Thundering, silence, crash
It seemed to go on forever.
When the last of the animals cleared the dry riverbed, the sound of them thundering off away from them was the most joyful sound Henry would ever hear.
There was no sound from behind them, but still Henry, and the children, stunned with the fear and amazement of what they had just experienced, stayed hunkered down against the edge of the gulley.
Henry’s assessment of time was distorted. What felt like hours of waiting, was actually only a few moments. Finally he took one step away from the wall, turned slowly and asked, “Is everyone alright?”
| Terquem |
Panoply of Sins
© 2014, D.H. Austin
Chapter 9
As caves go, it was a comfortable place to live. It was dry, and clean. Theo had taken time to reinforce the walls and the ceiling, doing most of the work herself, and only occasionally hiring out the more complex tasks. The entrance to the cave wasn’t well hidden, but it was difficult to get to. The cave entrance was high up on a side of a mesa and there was only a narrow path that led up to it. The mesa, Theo liked to call it “The Little Sister” because there were three mesas all in a close group and her cave was on the smallest of the three, stood only three hundred feet above the desert floor and it had a commanding view to the south, across the high desert, and to the north the mountains were only a few miles away.
She rarely had visitors. Theo didn’t let that bother her, much. She knew that those of her kind were better off staying out of the regular populations, but still, she was young, and she liked people.
It had come as a great thrill to her, when Theo had met the first of the aliens to her world. They came looking for her, originally, as a way of establishing permission to do what it was they had come to do, and that was eighty years ago. At the time, Theo was only a child, but for some reason these aliens sought her out and asked her to speak to others of her kind and reassure them that these aliens were friendly, and did not mean to interfere with the world as it was, which to Theo seemed silly. Because, to Theo, and to most of her kind, Interfering with the world was what you did whether you wanted to or not, just by being who and what you are. For her, it was obvious, if you don’t interfere with things, how can you possibly hope to learn anything at all about the world?
So it was that Theo came to an honorary member of something called the Interplanetary Relief Society. A Society (actually more like a corporation, even if Theo wasn’t sure she had come to understand all that that meant) made up of intelligent aliens who had made it their purpose in life to help other kinds of beings whenever catastrophic calamities occurred. It was all very noble, or so Theo believed, and they were, these aliens, rather smart, and had some very interesting things to make their lives easier.
Some of those things worked with electricity, a development that this world was slowly coming to understand, while others worked with energies and materials that Theo did not understand at all. Strangest of all, was that these aliens seemed to have difficulty mastering the simplicity of Magic. Oh, they understood its behavior, and origins, yet they were reluctant to harness it, and instead chose to rely on the more predictable nature of the technologies they possessed. The unpredictability of Magic (to those with lesser talents than her kind) was one of the things that made mastering it so much fun in the first place, and for this reason, often, Theo wondered if the aliens were as intelligent as they claimed to be.
So it was that her cave, Theo’s cave, came to be modified, improved they would say, and modernized. For a Dragon, this was a bit unnecessary, but for Theo, who preferred to spend most of her time in a form other than her natural form, the comforts of her modernized cave were actually quite nice.
Theo had been washing out the shower, a routine she knew needed to be done regularly, otherwise mildew and hard water stains would dull the bright white finish, when the picture box on the table in her sitting room began to call her name.
“Theo, Theo, are you there? This is Chief administrator Linda Hathaway. I’ve remotely activated the communication equipment, and I am sorry to bother you like this, but I need your assistance. Are you there, Theo?” The voice of a woman was speaking out of the box, and an image of her, from the shoulders up, was displayed.
Theo ran to the sitting room.
The image of the woman on the screen was amazingly clear, crisp even.
The woman on the screen was small, Theo could tell by the size of the objects in the room behind her, the ones that she could see. On this world, Theo would call her a Halfling, a half sized Human, but she knew that this woman was probably not a Halfling at all, and the mask that this woman wore, though it gave her an attractive appearance, was not difficult for a Dragon to notice.
“Hello, yes. Hi, I am here. I was just doing some house cleaning,” Theo answered as she pulled a small padded chair to the front of the picture box.
The form that Theo had been in for the last twenty years was one of a normal human, a normal human girl of about twenty five years, which would be about the same as she was, in Dragon years. She liked being tall, and thin, and she liked blond hair, but lately she had not decided if long straight hair, or short, but full, wavy hair was better for her face. She felt that her face was a good representation of her Dragon nature, her features were bold, and the lines of her nose, and cheeks, were straight. Her ears were small, but her eyes were large, not too large, not large enough to appear odd, but large enough that she would stand out from other people, if she ever had a chance to be around other people. And her eyes were brown, golden brown with flecks of red. Most of the human people of the world had blue eyes, some had brown eyes, but none of them had brown, golden brown, eyes with flecks of red.
The small woman on the picture box smiled and said, “Theo, we need your help, if you are available. One of our craft, a life boat, has crashed, or landed, we’re not certain, near you, in the desert to the southeast of your location. We don’t anticipate that anyone will discover it any time soon. Our records indicate that practically no one lives in the immediate area, and the nomadic peoples we have tracked would be avoiding the desert this time of year. So, we are hoping that you can get to the location as quickly as you can, and, well, let us know what the condition of the craft is, and tell us if, if there are survivors, and help us take care of the situation before it can cause people of this world to, well, you know, have a situation they aren’t ready to handle.”
Theo listened intently, moving to the edge of the chair as the small woman described the situation.
It was exactly the kind of thing she had always hoped they would ask her to do. Well, perhaps not exactly, she really wasn’t sure what a life boat was, but the words crashed, and landed, and maybe causing a situation, well, those where things Theo understood.
“Are there going to be aliens, like you, on this craft?” Theo asked, and then a thought occurred to her. “You said it may have crashed, so will that mean if there are aliens they might be hurt, or, or worse?”
“Yes, Theo, that is a potentiality, and that’s why we need your help. If there are people, um, aliens, like us on the life boat, they may need our help right away. I’m going to send you a map, it should print on your printer soon, and it will show the coordinates for the location we think is where the life boat has come down. It is about ninety kilometers from your location. How soon can you get there?”
The soft humming from the machine the short alien woman called a printer started.
Theo jumped out of the chair and ran to the printer. She took the map, recognized some of the natural features, and then said, “Oh, I can be there really fast. I’m going to take the motor cycle.”
| Terquem |
b]Panoply of Sins[/b]
© 2014, D.H. Austin
Part 10
Knock, knock, knock
The knocking was faint. Carmen tried to clear her mind and identify just where it was coming from, but she couldn’t. She needed to do something. It was an overwhelming feeling that pressed upon her like a weight. Only she could not remember what it was she was supposed to do. She dropped down onto her knees and lowered her head, closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
Knock, knock, knock
Carmen had survived the crash, and she knew that she was under the influence of a powerful inhalant. There was no way she could know just what drugs were coursing through her body. It was well known that any particular lifeboat in service in the galaxy could be outfitted with a variety of crash survival medications. Mostly it would depend on when the last upgrade was done on the boat. Hell, she knew that if the boat hadn’t been updated in more than a couple of years, she could be feeling like this for days, such were some of the installed systems that were in use back then.
At the moment, other than the knocking on the hull, Carmen was aware of only a few things. She was uninjured. She was not on any kind of accelerated adrenaline rush (she knew what that was like all too well) and she knew she was not alone.
After a few more depth breaths, Carmen raised her head. For the first time Carmen was able to see the others onboard the lifeboat.
Knock, knock, knock
It was either the medications working on her body and mind, or the others were moving deliberately slowly. And the knock was definitely coming from somewhere else now.
Carmen could see, at the far end of the small enclosed area that held the cradles, the woman she had only briefly met back at the prison. Her name was June. She was a tall, fit, and slightly thick woman with golden blond hair and a round friendly face.
Friendly? That was not a term Carmen normally thought about when thinking of anyone. It had to be the meds.
From where she was kneeling on the floor, Carmen could see six other people either standing, or getting out of one of the pod cradles.
Knock, knock, knock
They were, from the closest one to her to the one standing next to June; a short dark haired Mordite, one of the people from the mining planets, then a elderly Cycloceine, a woman with only large eye, a male Sanshain, young, too young to be here and that confused Carmen, then there was a male Gymnaga with tattooed arms and a shaved head, across from him was a small female of a kind Carmen didn’t recognize, this woman was busty, and had a thick braid of red and black hair that started at the top of her head just above her brow and fell to the middle of her tiny waist. The small woman was standing up in the cradle she was in, and looked as if she wasn’t sure it was safe to get out. The Gymnaga fellow leaned toward the small woman and lifted her by putting his hands under her arms. She smiles, the small woman, and said, “Thank you, William.”
The last of the six people, the one standing close to June was a man, a typical human man, although Carmen knew he could be of any of four types of human from C through F on the scale. He was above average in height, built like an athlete with square shoulders and a muscled frame. He had a square jaw and a bent, but not large nose, and his hair was cut neat, black, and combed back away from his face.
There were six of them, and the woman June. Six other prisoners, or so Carmen believed, but something was wrong. In the brief exchange she had had with the woman, June, Carmen was made to understand that seven prisoners were selected from the population to participate in a program funded by the IRS, the Interplanetary Relief Society. But Carmen didn’t buy that. She didn’t believe one word of it. When June had mentioned Sanafield Research Planet she knew June was lying. Sanafield was known throughout the galaxy as the most dangerous inhabitable planet ever encountered. It was a place where only the very brave, the very stupid, or the very unlucky go. If seven prisoners were selected, if Carmen was one of them, then she would know the others. They would all have come from the same section. Carmen should know these prisoners, and she had never seen them before in her life.
Knock, knock, knock
Carmen had heard all the rumors. That Sanafield was where the IRS conducted secret experiments on prisoners who are too dangerous for conventional prisons. She had heard that the IRS tested new weapons, new technologies, and new genetic codes on the ones unfortunate enough to be transferred there. No one came back from Sanafield, no one that went there as a guest of the IRS. No one survived their lies.
The thing that Carmen needed to do was right there. It was right there on the edge of her conscious mind. Right there nagging at her, and as hard as she tried she couldn’t bring it to the front of her thinking. Then the Mordite came toward her. He had a strange look on his face, and he reached one hand down as he said, “You’ll be alright, Miss. It was a rough landing, but we survived. Let me give you a hand.”
It was just at that moment, with the knocking that kept sounding in the distance, and the feel of the cool clean air in her lungs that was purging the inhalants that Carmen remembered what she needed to do.
With all her strength Carmen leapt to her feet and shoved the Mordite to the side. She ran toward June. As she went she shoved the others away. The Cycloceine was sent face first into a cradle that had not drained, then she elbowed the Sanshain in the back of the head knocking the strong but young reptilian unconscious. She moved too fast for any of them to realize what she was doing or why. The small women let out a sound that was half gasp and half shout, and then the Gymnaga spun around just in time to get Carmen’s boot planted in his solar plexus.
He went down grasping for air and the small woman was dropped onto the floor. As Carmen passed them she swept the small woman off her feet as she rolled across the floor in a tumble designed to bring right next to the woman named June.
When Carmen sprung from the roll she was reaching for June’s throat with both hands.
The man standing next to June panicked and scrambled back out of the way.
Carmen was going to kill June.
June, naturally, was having none of that.
June reacted with a degree of training and expertise Carmen was not expecting. June ducked, easily avoiding Carmen’s attack, and then with a graceful side step and a swift extension of one hand she caught Carmen by the wrist of her right arm.
Carmen swung a round house with her left.
June simply leaned back slightly and the blow swept passed her harmlessly.
Carmen pulled hard to the left, and tried to use the counter momentum to head-but June.
June leaned away, and keeping hold of Carmen she let the girl’s momentum carry her forward until she collided with the man that had been standing there when Carmen attacked.
The three of them fell to the floor with Carmen face to face with the man, and June on Carmen’s back holding her right arm pinned up and against her shoulder blade.
Knock, knock, knock
“I don’t want to hurt you,” June said.
“Well, that’s your mistake,” Carmen hissed and tried to roll out of the pin.
June pressed upward and then brought her right knee up into the small of Carmen’s back.
“No, really, I don’t. You’re having a reaction to the inhibitors. Take a deep breath. You’ll be fine in a moment.”
Carmen struggled violently, but could not break free of June’s hold.
“You’ll be dead as soon as I get free,” Carmen shouted.
“I very seriously doubt you have the capacity, the talent, or the training to kill me, Carmen. Please, just relax. Everything is going to be alright.”
“Everything will be alright when you are dead, scout. And if I have to, I’ll kill the rest. I’m not going to be picked up by your kind. I’m not going to die on Sanafield.”
‘Carmen, please. What are you talking about?” June said. She leaned close to Carmen’s ear. “You are having a paranoid reaction to the inhibitors. It’s not uncommon. No one is going to Sanafield to die. We’ve crashed. You were gassed, and like the rest of the people here you were selected from the population of a prison ship because of your exemplary behavior and unique talents to participate, as a volunteer, in a test program of the Interplanetary Relief Society that will, upon completion, reduce your sentence to time served. Do you understand?”
Carmen was confused. Her strength was fading. She knew that she had already put everything she had into her effort. She knew that the drugs in her system were still working to keep her calm even as she forced herself to act against them.
“You’re lying,” Carmen said.
“No, Carmen. I’m not lying. Once you’ve come down from the reaction, you’ll remember. This is not like you. This is nothing like you.”
Knock, knock, knock
Carmen dropped her head and fought back tears that she could not control.
“What are you talking about?” She shouted. “This is exactly like me!”
Maybe it was the inhibitors that still lingered in her system. Maybe it was the culmination of years of fighting to survive. Maybe it was the realization that it must somehow, eventual, end, and this was as good an end as any other, but Carmen surrendered.
“What are you talking about?” Carmen cried. “I’m from section 2 A, 2A. Don’t you get it? Don’t you read the files? I’m from 2A, damn it! I was supposed to die months ago. I’ve, I’ve killed nine prisoners and two guards. They, they’ll never let me go.”
Now it was June’s turn to be confused.
“That’s not correct,” June said, tightening her grip on Carmen’s arm. “That’s not correct. You, like the rest, are from 11 D. You are a minimum risk, low security convict. It’s in your file. I read your file. You were arrested for price manipulation of controlled, parceled imports to a red zoned planet while under a licensed contract for exploratory trade, a minor offense. Two years of clerical duty. I read you file. Administrator Finley gave me your file personally. He recommended you first, before any others were even selected from the applicants.”
“Ha. Haha, ahahahahaha,” Carmen laughed hysterically.
“What is so damn funny, Carmen Sran?”
“Finely. Finley! That son of a b@$#@ Finley tried to rape me, twice. I broke his collar bone the first time, and nearly did it again the second time. He doesn’t know how to use a neural pulse rod worth a damn, missed the zone each time by a couple of centimeters. I’d have killed him if I could have, but he wised up after his second failure. That bastard played you for a fool. You got me, Carmen, that’s right, Carmen Sran, from 2A! He probably tried to float a fake copy of my records over my Phanea. There’s no way he could break the encryption. So, here’s what I want you to do. Run three hundred volts, 90 hertz, through the Phanea for three seconds, and then read it again.”
Knock, knock, knock
“That will kill you.”
“Didn’t kill me the first four times you did it. You know you can pay people all over to float fake records. You guys in the IRS know that. You know how to reset them, too. Don’t play dumb with me.”
“Alright,” June whispered. “A record clean isn’t something I’m happy doing, to anybody. Let’s just restrain you, for now. See if your attitude changes with time. Maybe you’ve read too many stories, right? Maybe you just believe you are what you say, and in a few hours you’ll remember who you really are. If things don’t improve, well, if things don’t improve I’ll do the clean, but it’s on your head if it goes bad.”
Carmen relaxed.
Slowly, June brought Carmen up off of the floor, but she did not release her grip on Carmen’s arm held tight behind her back.
“William,” June said, “there are some restraining gauntlets in the lower left cabinet on the starboard side, just forward of where you are standing. Can you get a couple of them for me?”
“Yes, ma’am,” William said as he raised his upper body off of the floor and supported himself on the single knee of his long tail like lower body. He rubbed his chest and then said, “She kicks like a mule.”
Knock, knock, knock
“Is everyone else alright? Is anyone injured?” June asked looking around the cabin space.
There were silent nods all around.
Knock, knock, knock
“Can I ask just one thing?” Carmen asked.
“Yes, go ahead,” June answered.
“Will somebody please find out who the hell keeps knocking on the hull and ask them to shut the hell up. It’s driving me crazy.”
| Terquem |
Part 11
Written by – D. H. Austin, rights belong to this site
Theo dressed as quickly as she could, selecting light weight pants and a shirt, in dark green colors, and then adding the heavier leather chaps and jacket over the top of those. She choose the high leather boots, the ones with the metal ring worked into the outer sides with a strap that could be adjusted to pull the top of the boot down tight on her feet.
She was careful in packing a back pack, filling almost half the pack with first aid supplies, and then adding two blankets and four canteens filled with water. She listed everything she was taking on a small pad of paper, to check herself, and then with a smile, she added one flask of bourbon, her favorite kind, and then went to the garage to get the bike.
When Theo reached the garage, she went first to the opening in the wall that faced south and walked out onto the small road, a path really, that wound around the mesa several times and dropped eventually to the desert floor, almost four hundred feet below. She put the pack over her shoulders and then stuck her arms out as far as she could to each side of her, and took a deep breath. The desert air was cool, but the temperatures were rising fast, it was only moments after sunrise, and she could see the bright yellow glow of the rising sun to the southeast. Below her the desert was still and quiet. Still holding out her arms she breathed in and out a few more times all the while thinking to herself
”no, my brother is absolutely wrong. Flying isn’t the most exhilarating experience one can have.”
Dropping her arms slowly, Theo took one more deep breath of the clean cool morning air, and then tuned and went to the motorcycle park in the center of the garage.
It was not a sophisticated machine. It was simple, elegant, and reliable. The wheels where exactly 16 inches in diameter, the engine, built by her lovingly by hand one part at a time, had 1200 cubic centimeters of stroke, and could deliver almost 17 horse power, giving it a top speed, across the desert floor of almost fifty kilometers per hour.
It had taken Theo almost two full years to build the motorcycle, from designs and information see was able to find in the data library files Kyle, her friend in Polmah had smuggled to her. She had friends in Polmah who supplied her with the raw materials, and she used her own machine shop to form almost every part of the frame, engine, and transmission her herself 9some of it through trial and error when the plans she had were found to be incomplete and lacking in important tolerances).
The frame was painted yellow with black accents, and the seat was covered in rockback hide, which had stood up to the passage of time remarkably well. Her helmet was still right where she had left it the last time she had gone for a ride, dangling on the handlebars, on the left side. The helmet was a repurposed Cornegian Palace Guard Battle Helm, shortened in the back and widened in the brow, with a tight fitting pair of leather goggles stretched across the top ready to be pulled down over her eyes.
Theo picked the helmet up lovingly, wiping the desert dust off the dark black finish, and blew gently across the dark glass of each eye piece of the goggles. Her smile grew as she lowered it over her blond hair, and with a few twists and shifts, pulled it down snug enough to fasten the leather strap under her chin. She took a large yellow cotton cloth from her jacket pocket and tied it so that it covered her nose and mouth and then tucked the bottom of the cloth into the top of her shirt. She scrunched her nose a few times to make sure it would stay in place, and then pulled the goggles down over her eyes.
Finally she put both hands on the handlebars, and with her foot she raised the kick stand, pushing forward at the same time to free the bike from its stationary position to resting on both wheels. She pushed the bike in a tight circle, turning it around and pointing toward the opening in the wall to the south.
Theo, by her nature alone, had excellent balance, but this was one of those times where a little magic helped make things a little easier, well maybe not so much easier, as more fun anyway.
Releasing the handlebars with one hand, she weaved her fingers through the air and spoke a few words in an ancient tongue. The spell she cast stabilized the machine and kept it upright while she threw one leg over the seat and climbed up until she was standing on the cruising pegs. Under her mask, she was smiling; smiling in anticipation of what was coming next. With a quick look down at the gasoline gauge, and seeing the needle well peg on the bright red letter “F” she moved her right foot to the starter, raised her body up as high as she could reach, almost standing on just her right toes, and then she thrust her right foot down with all the weight she could bear, in this form.
There was the sound of a thunder crack that echoed through the garage that was followed by a nearly deafening ruble as the engine settled into a low idle. She put both feet on the ground, at first, then drew back on the clutch, and lifted her left foot to the shifting lever. She gunned the throttle one, then twice, and then in a series of well practiced motions, hands and feet working together in synchronicity, she launched the motorcycle forward with a burst of acceleration.
It was a mere forty feet to the road outside of the garage, and that road, that small path was a mere ten feet wide, after that it was a sheer drop of four hundred feet to the desert below.
Theo pulled hard on the brake just as the motorcycle reached the road and pitched her body to the right and down, putting the motorcycle into a sharp skid. The back tire through dirt and rocks high into the air as it tilted on its side. The bike pivoted to the right, and was now pointed straight with the path. Theo through her weight to the left, brought the bike upright, went through two gears in rapid succession, and then accelerated hurling the machine at half its top speed along the path.
Round and round the small mesa she went, once, then twice, and almost three times. At the bottom there was a break in the road, a small place where rain water during the wet season would wash away the road as it ran off the mesa. Theo pulled up on the handlebars, gunned the engine, and launched the motorcycle into the air, leaping across the eight foot ditch easily. When the bike landed the front tire squirreled, but only for a moment, before Theo righted the machine and accelerated again.
She was pulling away from the mesa now, racing the machine as fast as she dared go across the mostly flat desert terrain. The sound of the engine thrummed across the quiet landscape. Small flightless birds, lizards, coyotes, and rabbits scampered out of the path of the machine. As she raced away from the mesa the sound of the machine grew fainter and fainter, until it could almost not be heard at all, and the only sign of Theo at all was the trail of dust behind her.
On her motorcycle, Theo’s heart raced with the rhythm of the engine, thumpity, thumpity, thumpity, and her shouts of pure joy challenged the roar of the engine. Her mind was almost completely empty of thoughts, ideas, things she might have wanted to remember, list she should have made, where wiped from her conscious mind, and only one though repeated in her mind over and over.
”Oh yes, her brother was so wrong, flying was crap compared to this.”
| Terquem |
Carmen’s request brought June’s mind around to the current situation as it was unfolding.
They had crashed.
She took the restraints from William, and placed them on Carmen’s hands, behind her back, and then went to the data console near the hatch of the lifeboat.
According to the readings the lifeboat was mostly intact, suffered some damage, and was grounded on a world with a breathable atmosphere.
June looked at the others in silence, and then opened the lifeboat’s door.
The light outside was bright, intense even. The sky was clear and had a soft blue color. Standing right in front of the open door was an old man
