Truthseer

by Jay Aspen

  His words brought back painful memories. ‘I want to talk about Fin but not yet. It’s still too soon.’

  ‘When you’re ready.’ He squeezed her hand, a shadow of concern on his face. ‘I’m aware I may not be able to help much. If my own grief for Fin is too visible to a truthseer with your perception...’

  ‘Raine... I don’t think I need that kind of reassurance any more. Fin taught me a few things before she...’ Jac fought back tears as the memory cut into her thoughts. ‘What I mean is, I’ve learned a new kind of healing technique. It’s exhausting, but I think I can make it work with us.’

  She sensed his surprise. And something else, admiration and hope, as if he knew or could guess what Fin had managed to pass on in those last few desperate days.

  ‘Jac, I can’t wait to see it. But we have to wait a bit longer.’ He stepped away from her as Bel extricated herself from the greetings of her friends and walked over to them, her hand closing around the blue phoenix at her neck.

  Raine could read body language and put his hand over hers. ‘Bel, not yet. You’ve done a brilliant job here but the islanders need you for a bit longer. When the convoy’s gone we’ll talk.’ He turned to the driving team from the Tarn. ‘Sorry to push you but you need to get the vehicles away from here. The Warren’s on permanent high alert as you know.’

  The lead driver hesitated, hand on his jeep’s open door. ‘We’re one driver short. Bel dropped Cass at the Tarn this morning.’

  ‘I know. I asked Cass not to risk coming here again. Evie volunteered to take that jeep and walk back.’

  Evie ran out of the house, threw herself into Bel’s jeep and followed the convoy as it disappeared down the steep switchbacks leading to the Warren bridge.

  Fox walked over to them, suddenly looking unsure and apprehensive in unfamiliar surroundings. ‘Is there anywhere safe for the hawks?’

  Raine pointed. ‘We fixed up a temporary mews in one of the barns.’ He led the way across the courtyard and Fox signalled the other falconers to follow.

  Inside the shadowy interior Jac could feel a gradual calming of the nervous atmosphere as the islanders settled their hawks on the prepared perches. She smiled. Home was where your people, your family were. She could understand now how that might also include companions with feathers.

  .

  Epilogue

  .

  Raine lay awake watching the moon slip behind silvered clouds in a dark sky. Jac was sleeping, nestled in his arms.

  Too many decisions that could cost people their lives.

  The rangers he’d sent to the mountains for training with Pendrac would return the following evening, which meant that with the islanders and rangers already at the Warren there would be almost a hundred souls at the farmhouse for one night. The very risk he’d tried to avoid.

  But it was only for one night. Then Bel would leave with thirty tough but disorganized islanders and the rangers who had been based at the Warren or out on patrol would go to join Pendrac in the mountains.

  And I need to talk to Pen now this newly-funded campaign of Parry’s is about to be let loose on us in the next few days or weeks.

  Jac stirred and wriggled closer.

  And how do I keep her safe? I shouldn’t be thinking about her more than the others but...

  Her hand slid across the pillow to cover his eyes.

  ‘Stop thinking. You’ll wear yourself out.’

  ‘You’re not supposed to know I’m even awake.’

  ‘Then don’t think so loud!’ She reached long brown arms around his neck, hands caressing his shoulders and spine, her fingers exploring their way down the lean muscles of his body. ‘The only way I know to stop you thinking for a while...’

  Suddenly planning and strategy wouldn’t form logical patterns in his mind any more. He caught his breath and turned towards her, sliding one hand down her back and cupping her breast with the other, feeling the nipple alert and full beneath his palm. He still found it extraordinary that her strength and agility could be contained in such a delicate frame, restraining himself in the sensuous challenge of holding back so as not to hurt such a fragile creature.

  And when she arched herself against him, her hands pulling him fiercely towards her, he let the fiction of her fragility melt into the image of the strong, resilient woman he knew her to be, exulting in the reckless way she surrendered to his need as passion overwhelmed them both.

  *

  .

  Afterword

  Thank you for reading Truthseer.

  If you enjoyed it and have time to leave a review, that would be great, it really helps a new author to make books more visible! If you’re ready for more adventures,

  book 3, Firestorm, will be out in 2019,

  book 1, Resistance, is available on Amazon.

  A list of upcoming novels is on www.jayaspen.com. If you'd like an update / alert when I have something new, do sign up for my newsletter. (and get a free short story!)

  Social media fans can find me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

  .

  Author’s note:

  The Phoenix Enigma series was partly inspired by the unsung heroes of Médecins Sans Frontières, but I also wondered how the future would look without either exponential tech progress or blasted wasteland. If today’s threats destroy much that we take for granted, but self-interest forces those in power to maintain control in order to stay at the top – before the wasteland gets too savage to recover? (bearing in mind that leaving it to people who want to be at the top brings its own problems...)

  After that, I freely confess to taking plenty of liberties with the actual science! Psychoneuroimmunology is in its early stages and shows great promise, although it hasn’t reached the level that Jac achieved. Science predicts that when sea-levels have drowned coastal cities, conditions on land really will be ‘blasted wasteland’ and food production would be even more precarious than in the story.

  And while scientists haven’t predicted the jetstream winds would change and form a barrier, well, they didn’t predict the current polar vortices either! But if you’ve been high in the Himalaya when the jetstream intensifies in winter, and experienced those seething winds first hand...

  .

  Acknowledgements

  Enormous thanks to my wonderful support team who helped me through the maze of getting my story finished and out there:

  My editor, Michael Rowley, who doesn't mind taking the proverbial axe to anything he deems too convoluted, Roger Buglass, cyber-guru who patiently extricated me from numerous IT pickles, and Christopher Brewster, tech-guru who educated me on the strange possibilities that might be achieved in a world of re-use-and-manage.

  Thanks also to supportive beta-readers Simon Moss, Rufus Wondre, Kevin Elliott, Laura Demol, David Friese-Greene – and last but not least, Paul Campbell who provided invaluable feedback on the TV script version of Phoenix.

  .

  Truthseer is a work of fiction.

  Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  First edition 2019.

  Copyright © 2019 Jay Aspen.

  .

  .

  Book 3, Firestorm; preview

  .

  .

  Colonel Michael Parry stared at the map on the wall screen in his office, trying to make sense of the information in front of him. A line of blurred shapes moved north towards the jetstream barrier. Then the whole image went haywire for a few seconds before vanishing altogether.

  ‘Run it again.’

  Ted Rankin, the young captain under his command, keyed the sequence to repeat. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Unregistered convoy. Picked up by one of the new long range hunter-spy drones. Then it just disappears. I contacted the team staking out the pass and they saw nothing.’

  ‘Did they search the area?’ Ted keyed the sequence a third time, peering at the screen.

  ‘Nothing. No vehicles. No drone wreckage. The roads are all
fractured on the pass, nowhere for the convoy to go round the roadblock. It must have turned back south but it couldn’t have got far ahead without driving all night and the patrols didn’t pick up any lights.’

  ‘You going to send another drone?’

  ‘No point. And they’re too expensive to waste.’ Parry was feeling increasingly impatient. ‘This is all a distraction from F2 anyway. When will your new units be ready?’

  ‘Another week for the first three hundred. Two weeks for the next lot. Will Moris let you have more?’

  ‘Only if I produce a result. Kill or capture Raine and Pendrac. Other Resistance leaders as well if possible.’

  Ted raised a questioning eyebrow. Parry keyed a new page on the screen.

  ‘Not good so far. The old units I sent north... usual mess. Anyone they capture is unlikely to make it back as far as us in one piece for questioning.’

  ‘That report yesterday?’

  ‘Exactly.’ Parry moved the report on-screen. ‘So-called battle with terrorists, taking out their riverside base. More likely some wretched survivalists in an unregistered holding.’

  ‘You want me to go up there, sir?’

  ‘No. You’re to stay here to complete the training program––’

  Parry’s handset buzzed and he gave a snort of exasperation as he forwarded another hazard icon to the second-screen city map plotting the pattern of F2 attacks of the last few weeks. ‘Another one. Soon as it starts to reach the exclusive suburbs they’ll want us to deal with it. And by then it’ll be out of control.’

  It would only take one really nasty incident and the whole city could erupt...

  He’d kept the new units in the city where the need to deal professionally without alienating the public had become essential now F2 had managed to stir up discontent to fever pitch. He’d already spent a clandestine proportion of his increased budget on surveillance on F2’s activities, but trying to keep out of sight of the target and of Moris at the same time made the job a deal more complicated.

  He was finding Moris harder to deal with than Burton. His new boss was cunning, unfathomable and nearly always one jump ahead in devious complexity. Not to mention his insistence on hunting outlaws ‘somewhere’ in the western mountains.

  Parry had spent sleepless hours trying to figure out why the president was so determined to focus on the Resistance rather than F2. The traditional need for an external enemy to make the population fearful enough to be kept under control didn’t fully explain the extent of the rabid obsession.

  Reluctantly, he keyed the screen to a map of the mountains. ‘This is a senseless diversion from the real threat in the city. We’ll get spread across a huge area of rough country achieving nothing but having our time wasted.’

  Ted stared at the map. ‘Pendrac must be in those mountains somewhere. Where it’s remote enough to be difficult to get our patrols in. But a base there is too far out to access the city.’

  The other half of Parry’s sleepless nights had been filled with piecing together the little they already knew.

  ‘That has to be why Raine had a group of rangers based at the Warren. It’s much closer. After we attacked them there he must have moved to another base similar to the Warren, still no more than a days’ ride from the city, large enough for the kind of numbers they need to patrol the whole forest...’

  He broke off suddenly. Ted stared at him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s obvious. He’s gone back there. Because that’s what I’d do. He’d take a risk we’d think it stripped out and we wouldn’t attack again.’

  Ted brightened considerably. ‘We go in, wipe them out, get Moris off our backs then get the city back under control.’

  Parry hesitated. It didn’t feel right and he knew why. He could still hear Raine’s voice as they’d stood together that night, in the moon-shadows above the Warren.

  ‘Be gentle with the old place. It’s been good to us for a long time.’

  When there had been a kind of truce between them.

  When I asked Raine to try to find out if Jess was still alive...

  ‘Colonel?’

  Parry could see Ted was wondering what the hell had been distracting him. ‘Just thinking it through. You’re to stay here and concentrate on completing the training schedule. Send Smith in.’

  Ted stared at him and Parry knew he’d spotted the hesitation but the young captain said nothing. He went out, shutting the door quietly behind him. Parry sat down heavily at his desk, staring uncomfortably at the photo of the dark-haired teen he’d last seen six years ago.

  Jess, I know what you’d say. Don’t betray a trust. Because I know he won’t betray me whatever happens. But to hell with it! There’s always collateral damage. The city has to be kept safe.

  He looked up as Smith knocked abruptly at the door and walked in.

  Parry didn’t wait for his second in command to say anything. Somehow it would have made his next order too difficult to articulate.

  ‘Get everything into the advance base by tomorrow. We hit the Warren again soon. And this time we finish the job.’

  Sorry Raine. I did give you the chance to turn yourself in.

  .

  ***

  .

  .

  Did you love Truthseer? Then you should read The Phoenix Enigma by Jay Aspen!

  Would you risk everything for freedom?

  In a near-future world of flooded cities and failed crops, resource wars have wrecked most things from refineries to satellites while the ruthless Avarit faction took control of the surviving outposts of civilization.

  When Jacinta's isolated farmstead is raided by enforcer patrols she travels to the newly-rebuilt city and meets Raine, charismatic leader of the Resistance. Jac is drawn into the life of the outlawed rangers, protecting citizens from the regime's exploitation and from the terrorist attacks of F2 paramilitaries agitating for a civil war they cannot win.

  With Raine hunting a traitor in their ranks, Jac finds herself in a race to perfect the rangers' heightened-awareness lieth training to enhance her physical strength and medic skills, hoping that trust and loyalty will be enough to defeat the regime's heavy weapons and surveillance…

  Available now on Amazon!

  Read more at Jay Aspen’s site.

  About the Author

  Jay writes from experiences in wilderness travel and extreme sports; snow peaks in the Andes, big walls in Yosemite and Baffin Island, sailing the Irish sea to photograph puffins and dolphins. A science degree and training with Himalayan shamans led to an interest in bio-psychology. She lives in the wild Welsh Borders, sings jazz, rides horses.

  Read more at Jay Aspen’s site.