by Drew Briney
by
Drew Briney
Cover Illustration by Grant Hansen
Copyright © 2014 Drew Briney
All rights reserved
ISBN: 978-1-61463-990-9 (Nook/ibook)
ISBN: 978-1-61463-991-6 (Kindle)
ISBN: 978-1-61463-992-3 (Paperback)
Reader Reviews
1 | the Order
2 | the Magic Woman
3 | Companions in Conundrum
4 | Dangerous Wetlands
5 | the Explosion
6 | the White Griffon
7 | Finding Elayuh
8 | the Massacre
9 | Enslaved!
10 | the Foolproof Plan
11 | the Natives
12 | the Launch
13 | the New Evelia
14 | Jerron
15 | the Conspiracy
16 | New Memories
17 | the Hearing
18 | the New Captain
19 | Befriending Toka
20 | Aliens
21 | 3 Hours
22 | Psionic Surprises
23 | New Beginnings
24 | the Exiled Team
25 | Home
26 | Destiny
About the Author
Sample | Slice: a Short Story
COMMENTS FROM READERS WHO READ THE RAW, UNEDITED VERSION
It captures you and drags you in fast and strong. Even your longest chapter felt like it was flying by. Moon 514 is just as thrilling the second time through as it was the first time. Funny … Tragic … Loved it.
@coppertree
Wicked! My heart was racing. It's official: I'm addicted to your book. Once you start reading, it’s almost impossible to stop.
@JeckoJasher
Your characters are believable and the story progresses well. I loved the ending! Awesome book.
@CinnCinn
I don't think that my heart will calm down for quite a while.
@TheShadowThree
Blaze has definitely kept me up until the wee hours. The paragraph that starts, “Another hour until sunrise...” keeps echoing in my mind. I love the way you have with words.
@laurab
Great job. I'm hooked.
@MartinBennett1
You are sooooo good at twists … lots of surprises to capture the audience. Your play on aliens is very unique, interesting, and delightful. The imagery is amazing! I love the detail and descriptions … brought tears to my eyes. … I like how you made it exciting and new to come back to earth.
It really needs a second book very soon!
@todreamadream
People flock to your writing! I can't wait to read more. I find myself entranced by this woman, she seems amazing.
@phantomx
I like the beautifully descriptive glimpses into the magic woman's mind … beautiful sentiments worth pondering. You set up all sorts of interesting leads for what might be next … you have a great deal of creativity and complex webs of interaction.
@AprilSunshine
You are amazing!
@girlonfire02
DESPERATE, BLAZE DOVE, ROLLED, AND FELL into an defensive posture to await his attacker. But the beast was already upon him. Without a moment to spare, he slashed at his opponent’s neck while diving sideways a second time. From the unnerving sound of shrieking behind him, Blaze guessed that he had successfully slashed a tender spot on its neck but he had no time to carefully assess the damage.
The young warrior had resorted to dive rolls precisely because his legs had been injured so badly. It was the only way he could quickly gain significant ground. And bulbous swelling on his throbbing right arm suggested a significant fracture. He tried hard to ignore the almost debilitating pain and realized he was running low on options. He stood up and spun around in one fluid movement, preparing to make a desperate last thrust with the bladed end of his staff, but the beast was already too close for him to avoid its attack. Checkmate. With no time to look at his opponent, aim, or otherwise methodically prepare for his attack, Blaze fell into instinct and thrust the blade parallel to the angle where the alien had attacked before - while simultaneously bending his torso to avoid a possible bite to his own head. As the beast crushed into him and pinned Blaze against a rock wall, the young warrior lost consciousness.
“Simulation ended,” announced the emcee.
Nearly instantaneously, the simulated, painful throbbing mellowed down to nothing and Blaze’s alertness flashed back to normal. He was always grateful when the simulator functioned well. It’s a tricky thing to manipulate the psyche. Sometimes the pain lagged on for several minutes. This time, the pain had been so intense that Blaze couldn’t help but to rub his legs out of instinct. Moments before, they had been a mangled mess, whole pieces of tendon and muscle torn from the bone. It had been difficult to suppress the body’s natural drive to panic in situations like that but now, his legs were perfectly whole. Still, a disquieting self preservation instinct lingered. Adrenaline coursed through his veins. He was ready for round two.
Blaze noticed the spear ominously peering out of the beast’s backside and then watched as his simulated opponent dissipated into nothingness. Simulated terrain followed suit and disappeared. Blaze took a deep breath. He won. He had been knocked unconscious but the beast had been slain. It looked like a modified velociraptor with spikes, bulky muscles, and long forearms, he mused. Jim usually came up with innovative simulations. This one seemed old school and lacked creativity. It just didn’t seem to fit Jim’s personality. He must be busy with another project, Blaze considered as he anxiously watched a few of his friends approaching.
“UNINTIMIDATING,” HE GRUMBLED IN FRUSTRATION. “That was the word she had used – unintimidating. Is that even a word?”
Evelia couldn’t have deliberately chosen a more damaging thing to say to bruise a young warrior’s ego had she thought about it carefully and preplanned the entire exchange. His voice growing louder and clearly betraying his mood, Blaze continued, “I mean, can you even create the negative of intimidating like that?”
“Oh, come on Blaze,” Jazz responded energetically, “she also said you were the best fighter on earth – how ‘bout that?”
“No contractions,” Blaze reminded the young boy, “We are not supposed to use contractions.”
“Sure – but that was a nice compliment don’t you think?”
“You did it again,” Blaze grumbled.
“Oh, come on Blaze,” Jazz encouraged. “You can’t be depressed when someone gives you a compliment like that!”
“No contractions!” Blaze reminded his young protégé with more gruffness than he used the first two times. “Context is everything.” He looked down into Jazz’s admiring eyes. “If you did not notice, she said that although I was ‘the best fighter on earth,’ I also held the element of surprise over anyone that I would meet outside of the Order because I was unintimidating. At best, she was warning me not to ask her father’s permission to date her. At worst, she was slamming me.”
“I think she likes you,” the young one contradicted. “She’s just trying to make sure she isn’t too obvious.”
“NO contractions!” Blaze emphasized in frustration. “You know, I will have to report you to the head mistress if you continue to employ sloppy language like that – our whole society will become corrupted.”
“You are just trying to avoid the subject,” the young lad retorted wryly. “You do not have a good response so you have to resort to a conversation about grammar – you will become quite the bore if you don’t … uhhh … do not stop that!” he jested.
Blaze hated to admit it but the young boy was probably right – there we
re very few girls to choose from and he really only held an interest for one young lady and she rarely showed the slightest interest in any of the other men – let alone him.
“You may be right my young friend,” Blaze responded in melancholy tones, “… about the changing the subject thing – but you still need to be careful. We have less than five hundred people left in the Order and only a very small handful of us are under fifty years of age. How we speak could change our language forever and the whole purpose behind the Order would be in danger of being lost. Do not assume that just because you are so special – being the only child in the entire Order – that you do not have the same responsibility as the rest of us. If anything … you have the greatest responsibility of us all.”
“Best fighter on earth,” Jazz repeated dreamily. “I would not be discouraged if someone said that about me.” His eyes gleamed as he pondered the thought.
With roughly five hundred known people left on the planet, the compliment could have been sloughed off as a jest. However, Blaze always fought the simulator – and he always fought the most difficult opponents that could be simulated in the database – everyone knew that. And many of them would come to watch him take on particularly tough opponents – and being designed as dynamic characters, simulated opponents could improve every time they fought a real person so they were far from challenge free simulations.
To give himself the ability to fight heavyweight opponents, Blaze regularly made adjustments to the simulator, preferring the disadvantage of fighting larger, heavier, and faster opponents. This time, his ears were still ringing. There must be something wrong with the fight enhancer, he considered. The enhancer was supposed to deal true-to-life blows but they were precisely calculated to avoid any significant damage. The punch should have come slightly softer to avoid hurting my ear like that. Or, Blaze considered more thoughtfully, perhaps I surprised it by being more unprepared than usual – the result of being distracted by the young lady.
“I am going to ask permission to leave the Order.”
“WHAT?” the boy shouted in astonishment. “Leave the Order? Why?”
“There have to be others who survived,” Blaze began. “I recently checked the database again. There is some chance that a small percentage of the population would have been resistant to the mutated diseases and radiation. There is some chance that some of those people are not sterile and therefore, there is a chance that there are people out there who could help us to continue our heritage. The Order is small now.” Blaze’s demeanor retrograded to gloominess again. “Even if we were able to continue reproducing at our current rate, we would be back to the proverbial Adam and Eve state within a few generations if the sterility problem does not subside – and despite all of Doctor Boyd’s advancements, I see little hope that he can reverse our situation.”
Blaze turned to Jazz and tapped his shoulder encouragingly. “Maybe you will be assigned to a pretty girl for a while! That would be a worthwhile change would it not?”
“Well,” the boy began, “I don’t think anyone could be as great of a teacher as you are,” he confided with a barely concealed blush.
NO CONTRACTIONS, Blaze silently shouted – he wouldn’t dare correct the lad after a confession like that. “Thank you,” Blaze answered. “I will put in a good word for whomever you would like to take my place – think about it and I will see if I can arrange it.”
“Evelia,” the boy quickly blurted. Evelia was the young woman that he and Blaze had just finished discussing. “Maybe I could put in a good word for you,” he finished with a beaming smile that was, without a doubt, both enthusiastic and sincere.
It never hurts to have someone like him on your side, Blaze mused, even if he is less than a dozen years of age.
“Do you suppose you could tell me why your hair is like that if you are really going to leave,” the boy asked. “You promised that you would tell me when you were not going to be my teacher anymore.”
“Right,” Blaze conceded. “Perhaps we should wait to see if my proposal is approved though – don’t you think?” he playfully jested.
“Do you really think they would say no, Blaze? After all – if things are really like you say they are, maybe there is no other choice.”
They would also risk losing one of their few young males, Blaze silently contradicted. In fact, it may not be worth asking permission at all – it may be better just to take my copy of the database and leave a letter of explanation. Or maybe … no, Evelia would not concede to go with him and if she said no, all of the elders would know faster than lightning.
The boy was still waiting for a response. “Blaze?”
“Sorry,” he answered. “Okay. I was born with a birthmark on my head.”
“A what?”
“A birthmark. I am not entirely sure how to explain that – anyway, there is a thing called a birthmark and if you get it on your head, sometimes it will change the color of your hair. That is why I have a blaze of white hair instead of it all being dark.”
“Nuh uh!” the boy answered. “Tell me – really.”
Blaze grinned at his young friend and ruffled his hair. “Really – I tell you the truth,” Blaze assured him. “I had it from the moment I was born and it was so obvious that everyone started calling me ‘Blaze’ right away. It was only supposed to be a nickname but it stuck. Plus, many people in the Order saw it as some sort of sign. One would think that with all of the education we receive that silly things like that would be abandoned by our people – but I guess they were feeling desperate and needed something to hope for.” He took a deep breath and sighed. “Like it or not, that is the truth – sorry there is no more glamorous explanation than that.”
“Glamorous?” the boy asked.
“That just means that it is exciting or especially interesting.”
“Oh,” he considered. “Well, I think it is really interesting if it is true – how could a birthmark do that?” he finished.
“You know, with all of the information that was preserved in our database, one would think that we would know the answer to that question, huh?” Blaze paused. He wondered if he should really engage in such sloppy speech even if it was for the purpose of cheering up the young lad. “But,” he continued, “none of us have ever read a thing on the subject in the database – and with all of the reading that goes on around here, I suspect that this means that we will never know.
“Mmmm,” Jazz mumbled almost inaudibly. What would life be like without Blaze, he wondered. It doesn’t sound very fun, he concluded. The young lad had unabashedly admired Blaze since he was a toddler and although years would pass, that admiration would never diminish. He had requested Blaze as his teacher for a number of years before the elders dared to approach the young warrior about taking on the only child in the Order. Although Blaze was known to be ready to serve others and to have a gentle temperament, he was also known for being neurotically devoted to his studies and to excessive athleticism.
Unintimidating or not, Blaze was athletic and strong – he just didn’t have a hulky build to prove it – nor did he have impressive height to give him the appearance of someone who was to be feared.
I really am unintimidating, Blaze thought as he looked over his shoulder and into the mirror. He wiped his brow and reached for the toothbrush in the bottom corner of the left cabinet as he considered another factor – I have a baby face, he thought. I look seventeen when I count nearly two dozen years since my birthmark gave me my name.
ECHOING THE DAY BEFORE, HE SILENTLY GROUSED, Unintimidating. His bruised ego was obstinately sore and it was showing in his disposition this morning. With furrowed brow, he tensely rehearsed a staff kata of his own invention, flexing his muscles as tightly as possible while slowly moving through the form. Liquid misdirection, he silently drummed into his subconscious mind. Although very young, Blaze had been trained by Master Kitana – a nickname that was so engrained in everyone’s mind that few remembered his birth name – Xun. Training with
Xun was an advantage for anyone but few were able to be trained from their youth like Blaze had.
Xun had studied the entire UWC (The Ultimate Weapons Contest) database and several forms of martial arts before he died at 116 years of age. The natural extension of all hand to hand combat forums, the UWC took fighting to its inevitable climax: what style of martial art and what weapon would come out on top in battle with real weapons? Initially begun with smart armor and inert weapons designed to prevent permanent damage, the sport was woefully unpopular because it lacked realism. Decades later, as technology increased, the sport was revived with a simulator that allowed each opponent not only to feel simulated pain from blows received, it also simulated injuries so that a deeply cut muscle would fail to perform as it would in real combat and so that simulated blood loss would result in faster fatigue and lessened strength. Other advances eventually allowed the athletes to fight until one of the parties would have been killed in real life – but at the end of the simulation, each athlete would essentially leave the simulator physically unharmed – apart from occasional and unpredictable imperfections – or “glitches” in the programming.
Criticized for being too similar to the barbaric practices of the Roman gladiator games, UWC was a popular sport for centuries and eventually replaced nearly every form of martial arts practiced during the Classic Ages.
But Xun did more than watch the UWC database, he dissected it, digested it, reviewed its most significant contests, and developed his own form of martial arts. Founded upon empty handed techniques, Xun’s style was largely based upon modified, redirected circle theories and only focused on practical weapons that survived the millennia. Although Blaze learned several weapons under Xun, he was essentially addicted to bo staff and short sticks. Every other weapon, it seemed to Blaze, was just a modification of these two weapons; in private, he would admit that this was not really true but in public, he regularly jested that the only reason to learn other weapons was because it was important to know what to do with your opponent’s weapon once you disarmed him.