by F. E. Arliss
The Force Paradox: Maodun
By
F.E. Arliss
Table of Contents
Ruby’s Redemption
Violet Runs Amok
Saved, To Die
Purple Shit Hits the Fan
Reality Aboard
Gaiaca
Zabados 9
UN18G
Unity
Unmolded Clay
The Spear and Shield Paradox
Harley
Not Gonna Happen
Live To Fight Another Day
What Say You?
Brothers
Connection
Warajel Rescue
Kinship
The Spear
Prophecy In Action
Perfection Kills
Stronghold
Exhaustion
Fibonacci
Chapter One
Ruby’s Redemption
Ruby Monahan crawled the last sixteen yards up to the mountain temple on her hands and knees. She was filthy, sweating so copiously that every strand of hair was plastered to her burning scalp and the combat-weave shirt she’d donned yesterday was shredded and stuck to her body. What had been a perfectly good pair of elastomer battle-leggings were now just a filthy mass of dust and salt-streaked damp that bound her legs in wet confinement and made every movement a screaming effort for the final inches towards the summit.
Her hands bled. She’d torn open a gash in her eyebrow as she’d collapsed inelegantly onto a roughly-jagged stone when her legs began to tremble so badly they’d no longer hold her weight. Both palms, elbows and knees were a hash of raw meat from the climb. Her shins had long since lost any feeling as sweat ran into the scrapes and the burning had finally numbed the entire area.
Shoving her aching body over the three-foot high lip to the temple floor, she let her limbs sprawl across the sacred stone in joyful rest. Finally, she was here. Cool breeze wafted over her exposed skin. The trickle of water from the sacred pool drew her. After catching her breath for a few seconds she crawled towards the pool. The stone bed that she usually sat in for a few minutes gazing at the sky, would have to wait. She needed the healing waters.
At the lip of the clear pool, Ruby collapsed once more. She needn’t have worried. Wraithlike girls appeared in the periphery of her vision and before she knew it, her clothing was whisked away and she was gently rolled corpse-like into the pool. Cool water closed over her head. Relief washed through her body. Oh, thank you Goddess for this healing water, for the temple among the clouds. These were the things that kept her going, kept her living. Without this place of beauty, without the teachings she had here, she would die. Perhaps not physically, but at least spiritually. [1]Then she would become like the others, like the original inhabitants of this galaxy. Beasts in skins. Others said they had been sentient and highly-evolved. All Ruby could see from the records was that they had been beasts. Supercilious, judgemental, totalitarian beasts.
Reviving a bit, Ruby turned on her back and stroked through the water to the small ledge where a waterfall beat gently down onto the surface of the pool. Hauling her mauled body onto the ledge in a low squat, supported by the smooth stone, she let the water pour over her open wounds cleansing them with the healing waters.
Finally, beginning to prune, Ruby slid a few feet along the ledge and finding shallow steps, hauled her heavy body from the pool’s soothing waters. Instantly, the wisping maidens once again appeared, rubbed her body in a soothing ointment, oiled her wet hair, and slipped a soft white gown over her head. Then they were gone again into the shadows.
Feeling a great heat swirling up from the dimly lit opening in the sheltered back cavern of the temple, Ruby hurried towards it. Winding her way down the ancient, circular-carved, stone steps, she descended into the sanctuary. Waiting for her at the bottom was the goddess, Uma. Clothed head to toe in an ethereal white gown, she glowed with an internal light.
Welcoming Ruby with open arms, she led her gently to a pillow lined bench where she gathered Ruby to her and said, “Tell me everything, my darling.” With that, the flood-gates opened.
After hearing all the events Ruby wished to relay, the goddess led Ruby gently through a dark opening into a deep cavern. Guiding her out onto an arching stone bridge, the goddess indicated that Ruby should prostrate herself.
The bridge had a four foot long, half-foot wide crack at the end of it that narrowed to a point at their feet. It always reminded Ruby of a very fat tuning fork. Her music teacher had had one and used it frequently to tune the ancient piano she had used for lessons back on Earth. Now positioning herself so that she was supported easily over the depths of the cavern, the stone crack allowed her to see deep into the seething, boiling lava far below.
Heat rose around her, soothing her aching bones. The cool stone cradled her in safety. Giving in to the goddess’ urgings, Ruby allowed all the tears, bile, vomit, feces and other tar-like substances that polluted her mind and body to break free and cascade into the cleansing, roiling furnace of the lava’s creative force.
Someday that lava would break free and be transformed into mountains, hills, and bridges to the sea. For now, Ruby gave it all the poisons she no longer wished to carry. Finally, the torrent died to a trickle and eventually stopped. She was empty of negativity.
The handmaidens appeared once more. Whisking her gown off over her head and dropping it into the lava flow, they escorted Ruby up a long flight of stone stairs and out into the sunlight once again. Lowering her form into a shallow stream, they scooped the merrily running water over her body, cleansing any remnants of pollutants from her skin. Carrying her to a low-slung stone bench, worn smooth and gently shaped from millenia of the same ritual, Ruby was cleansed with oils and left to regenerate in the sun’s rays.
As the sun began to set, again the handmaidens wisped into view. Drawing a new softly-shimmering robe over her head, they led her into another large domed cavern in the mountain below them. Urging her onto a fur-lined stone dias, they tucked more soft, fragrant furs around her. Turning her face to the disc-like opening in the cavern above her, the maidens departed.
A murmuring of prayer drifted over Ruby. Incense wafted on the chamber’s gentle breezes. Softly played prayer bowls rose from the depths of the mountain temple-fortress.The goddess appeared and took her face in both softly-scented hands and whispered, “Dream now, Ruby, my precious one. Dream of the world to come. Dream your destiny. Dream now and all will come to pass as it is foretold. Sleep now, my darling one. Sleep and heal. The Mother is here. She watches over you. You are precious to her. You are precious to me. You are perfect as you are. Dream...dream...dream…”
Chapter Two
Violet Runs Amok
Violet Camden peeked out from her hiding place and shook her head in disgust. Criminey! These techs were going about it all wrong on the fold-space drive repair. They’d launch the crew into a new galaxy if they weren’t more careful with that calibration, she snorted in disgust so that only she could hear it. Amateurs with high ranks! That’s why they got paid the big credits and she didn’t. Violet sighed. It would be nice to be appreciated for her efforts in reality, not always on the down-low like this. Though the core crew did appreciate her and let her know it.
Finally, the two meatheads left the repair bay and Violet was able to scramble out from behind the support masts that held the giant space platform Frontier Station in the air. Walking quietly to the console, she tapped in a sequence of numbers, frowned a bit as she looked at the code filling the screen, then picked up a calibration wrench and headed towards the cruiser in the lift dock.
Mounting the repair ladder to the exposed fold-drive, Violet timed the calibration wrench to coincide
exactly with the data she’d re-written on the console. Seconds later the work station’s lights all went happily green and she slipped off the ladder, returned her calibration wrench to its correct location and slipped back behind the masts out of sight.
Violet only stopped to wave at a mechanic, Ben Dodge, who waved back, grinned, then shrugged his shoulders while wagging his head towards the two techs that were approaching with a supervisor. It would be fixed now. The techs would take the credit and no one but Violet, Ben and his supervisor, Jolly Jack Dughurst, would ever know that a thirteen year old girl had fixed it!
Violet had been born on Frontier Station, the only space platform that Earth had back then. She’d been the first infant to be birthed in space and every minute of her early life had been a constant hassle of people prodding, poking and testing her for outcomes to be studied.
As the daughter to parents who were both science technicians in the research bay, she’d been expected to cooperate fully for as long as she could remember, to an un-ending array of tests. No one had even bothered to ask for consent. Her parents didn’t care as they were just as eager for the informative tests on the postnatal results as anyone else.
After the first decade, when all seemed to have been normal with her growth, intelligence and physical coordination, the interest waned. As did her parents’ attention. They were constantly inundated with injured crewmen, space-sick workers or busy doing studies on the effects of space on the human body or stored organic goods.
Violet’s early years also had been privileged ones in some ways. Because of the constant need to be available for testing, Violet had home tutors. By the time she was in her early teens and the need for constant testing was over, she was far more advanced in her lessons than the common teen. When she was suddenly shoved into the normal school system on the station she was almost immediately shunned by her classmates. Her petite good looks, violet eyes and long purple-black hair set her apart.
When she turned out to be smarter and more mature than the others in her school, the others turned vicious. Talking to her parents about it did nothing to help. They simply complained to the headmaster, making her life even more miserable. Her parents had nothing constructive to say. It culminated in another girl in her form grabbing one of the solid gold earrings the platform commander had given her for her help in the science labs, and yanking it out of her ear. The resulting shower of blood, trip to the emergency room, and the oss of the only thanks she’d ever gotten for all the unending torture of the early lab tests, caused Violet to become very angry. She was pissed off at her useless, ineffective parents, at the pompous administration at her school and their lack of support for her, and at the mean-spirited, downright evil-sometimes teens she was forced to mingle with. Something had to change.
Her parents loved her in an abstract sort of way. Violet had come to the conclusion early on that they only had her because they were curious about the outcomes. She’d been nothing but an experiment that gave them a great status onboard the platform. Now their only investment in her was for her to excel in her learning and bring them accolades with her achievements as a shining example of a space-born human.
Violet pretended to be the good daughter and was an excellent student. Truthfully, her classes came easily to her and she had no reason to lock herself away in her room studying the way she did each night. Her parents were delighted with the ruse as it kept her out of their way and lessened the burden of parenting, about which they were clueless.
Violet did NOT spend the evenings studying in her room, though it never dawned on her parents to bother to check. They were smug in the superiority of their perfect daughter when other parents complained about their children acting out. Although the bullying at the school was shameful, they’d add.
Instead of studying, Violet just removed the vent cover on the air intake vent in her room, and shimmied through the narrow opening for about forty yards until it dumped her out at a small landing between the station’s support masts. Some nights she climbed clear to the top of the station’s top platform and laid on the access panel staring through the plexi-titanium glass into space. It was wonderful.
Even more fun was running along the vast aerial beams that arced over the different cargo, landing and repair bays. She was like an Olympic gymnast on the beam, running and flipping and tumbling along the beams as though she were a monkey in a jungle all her own. Only a few were observant enough to see her. They just waved and grinned at her. No one liked Violet’s parents. They were scientists and had no personalities. Or at least, no personalities that anyone liked.
Violet was a completely different person during these nights of freedom. Under her act as the good daughter and good student, she was a wild-child bent on experiencing life. Some of the mechanics let her try their booze and smoke their cigarettes and cigars - items long since banned in space. Blackmarket goods were everywhere and Violet had become a connoisseur of what could be obtained.
Mostly, Violet was raised by a grumbly old fart named Jolly Jack McCormick. He had that name because he was anything but jolly. His brilliant ability to fix absolutely anything had made him head mechanic years ago, much to his dismay. He hated managing people! He was grouchy, taciturn and only spoke when forced to. Violet liked him because the first time she’d run away from her room at the ripe young age of three, he hadn’t reported her.
He’d only rasped out, “Know how ta get back ta yer quarters kid?” When she’d nodded, he’d left her alone while she played with some tools he had laid out to clean. A few minutes later he handed her a rag and set her to cleaning them. For a toddler, the kid was smarter ‘n hell. She even put them back in the right spots on the rolling work cart when he told her their names. He guessed she could read already. Or was good with shapes. Later, he’d find out it was both. She could already read some and she was off-the-charts when tested for analytical abilities.
Jaysus, that was unsettling! Her parents would probably have had a conniption fit if they’d seen him let her use the air jack as a lift to get to the top-most tray. He’d been careful and showed her where NOT to put her little fingers so they’d avoid getting crushed when it folded and raised. She’d simply nodded.
That became the habit. Violet did what Jack told her and they didn’t talk much. By the time she was eight, she knew every nook and cranny of the station and how to fix almost every moving part of any ship. Jack’s knowledge was her knowledge. All of Jolly Jack’s crowd knew that the little Camden brat was Jack’s kid and you left her alone. You sure as hell didn’t report the little runt.
Not that she was a bother. Nope, she was actually very entertaining. Some of the stunts she pulled were dangerous as hell, but she always managed to pull them off. Violet was particularly fond of hover lifts and discs. She’d fly them all over the bays, especially in the rafters where no one looked unless they knew she was up there. Sometimes she’d jump into the air, spin the damn things around and catch them again. It was frightening. Pretty soon, everyone knew she wasn’t gonna screw it up and quit bothering to hold their breath.
When the incident with the earring and the emergency room happened, her parents had called in to the med bay from the science lab, checked that she was ok, then her mother said, “Ok, kiddo, we’ll see you tonight. Best you go home and rest.”
Violet felt like screaming. She was in pain, scared and frustrated. When the doors to the med bay slid open and Jack had stumped in looking like a thunderhead, Violet had burst into tears and flung herself headlong into his sinewy arms. Once of the nurses would tell her later that the looks he’d cast had been so furious that none of them had the balls to say a word to him. He’d simply stomped out of the med bay and taken her back to his quarters. Some of the older mechanics came over sat around talking quietly. Jack gave her a couple of sips of Deltarian whiskey and hugged her while she fell asleep.
The next day she started self-defense training with the best instructor on the station, Major Donji. Violet took to the traini
ng like a duck to water. Her belligerence fueled her workouts and her lack of fear allowed her to try moves no one else had thought of. Three months later the girl that had ripped her earring out was admitted to the emergency room with a similarly ripped earlobe, a broken hand, a busted lip, two cracked ribs and a dislocated shoulder.
Violet handed Jack the bloody earring later that day, then perched on a tall work stool while Jack deftly slipped out the surgical steel pin they’d put in the torn hole while it healed and inserted the gold earring that matched the other one. “You ok?” Jack asked the twelve year old Violet. “Sometimes it’s harder than it looks to stand up for yourself.”
“I’m fine,” Violet whispered. “I know I should feel bad about hurting her, but I don’t. I feel less angry. Better,” she added thoughtfully. “Does that mean I’m a bad person?”
“Nope. It doesn't mean yer a bad person. As long as what you do with physical actions is ta’ enforce justice, the ‘right’ justice, it’s ok,” he assured her gruffly. “Gotta have some spine in this here universe or ya just end up getttin’ yer butt kicked,” he added. “Don’t ever let people shove you around. This is a rough sorta life. The weak get run over. The strong run the place. Just a fact of life,” he ended resolutely.
After that, no one bothered Violet. Her proficiency in combat arts was well known and her moniker of “Jack’s brat” protected her. Violet wasn’t sure why people were so afraid of Jack and it never occurred to her to ask. Jack was just Jack. Her Jack. Kind, gruff, grumpy and always there.