by J. L. Doty
Deland frowned, then, like a viper he struck without warning, a psychic blow meant to exert control. Tranquility staggered under the onslaught, but while Deland could hurt him, the implant’s firewall prevented all external control and he struck back.
As Deland staggered, desperately shifting his attack from that of control to a kill strike, Tranquility crossed the space between them, pulled his dagger and buried it in Deland’s chest. Deland immediately shifted to feeding in an attempt to repair the damage. Nearby servants and retainers dropped in their tracks, but holding onto the hilt buried in Deland’s chest, Tranquility ground the blade back and forth, and intensified his own mental attack.
Deland shifted tactics again, struck back, and Tranquility felt him hammering at his mind. Oblivion seemed only a blessed step away, a mental leap that would finally free him from centuries of torment. But that would leave Deland unhindered to propagate the abomination of his desires throughout the galaxy. Tranquility could not take that step no matter how tempting it might be; he must prevail, must succeed, must persevere until the end. With one hand gripping the hilt of the blade buried in Deland’s chest, he reached up with the other and wrapped his fingers about the Master’s throat with crushing force. And as Deland struck at him, he struck back.
Tranquility felt them both weakening, two elevated Masters in a killing frenzy; locked in a death grip as they both spiraled down toward oblivion. It was time for the end of the Order, time for the last two members of the Order to end the Devastation, time for peace, time for resolution, time for what lay beyond.
••••
God was dead. Palaski could not imagine life without his God. He lifted the gun, placed the muzzle in his mouth, and pulled the trigger.
••••
Jack regained consciousness slowly, at first only aware that he was alive and surrounded by a blanket of silence. He hurt everywhere, and when he opened his eyes he hurt more.
He lay on his side on the floor facing Deland, who also lay on his side facing Jack. Jack’s hands remained clenched about Deland’s throat, and Deland’s open, lifeless eyes stared back at him. Traces of blood trickled from Deland’s eyes, ears, nose and mouth.
Jack struggled to his hands and knees, checked Deland’s pulse, confirmed that he was dead. But he could allow no room for error in this, so he reached out, gripped the hilt of the dagger in Deland’s chest, and pulled it free. Then he plunged the blade into one of the man’s eyes, and ground it side to side, a bit of lethal insurance that would give him peace of mind. That done, he staggered to his feet. Several servants lay lifeless on the floor nearby, all with the look of the victims of favour.
He thought of Tranquility. The man seemed to be gone from his mind, though there were traces of strange memories that were clearly not Jack’s. He knew where his stealth clothing and equipment were stored, so he followed those memories and retrieved them quickly. He also knew the location of the dungeon, and felt he owed something to the warrior.
As he made his way down to the cell where they had imprisoned him, he stumbled across body after body, all showing the pallor of Deland’s feeding. In the cell he found Tranquility’s body, as dead and lifeless as Deland’s. But where Deland had died with a look of horror on his face, Tranquility seemed to have finally found peace.
Jack got out of the palace before he changed into his own clothing. It was late at night and the city remained still and silent. He switched on the relay, got through to Candow who blubbered something hysterical about Palaski berserking-out and murdering everyone else. He got her calmed down, arranged to meet her in the forest outside the city.
She looked at him oddly when he stepped into the shuttle. He ignored her, confirmed that Palaski was dead, then sat numbly in the co-pilot’s couch as she piloted them back up to SSS-047.
He needed to come up with something reasonable for his report to his superiors. And he knew better than to report anything about mind-reading, mystic monks who had discovered the secret to youthful immortality. His bosses might still reinstate him, but they’d pension him out in short order. Jorgenson had said something about scary powerful people who were scary scared. They wouldn’t believe him if he didn’t come up with something scary, but the inclusion of monks and mental mumbo-jumbo would be going a bit too far.
He decided not to worry about it for the moment. He’d have plenty of time to come up with something plausible enough to be believable, but implausible enough to satisfy them. He leaned back and closed his eyes, and tried not to think of Tranquility.
Once back on SSS-047 Jack confirmed that Zarkovy and Stowicz were dead. He helped Candow put the bodies in cold storage. All the while she kept glancing at him oddly as if she saw something wrong with the way he looked. He shrugged it off and told her, “I hurt all over. Just leave us in orbit for a day or two while I recuperate. Then I’ll be in good enough shape to help you get us out of here.”
He had a couple of wounds to bandage and he badly needed a shower and delousing. When he climbed out of the shower he glanced in a mirror for a moment and started with surprise. He looked again more closely. The Jack Strand that stared back at him was about twenty years younger than the man who had gone down to the surface of DD-281–2 some weeks ago.
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A Note from Jim on
Commonwealth Re-contact Novellas
THIS IS THE first Commonwealth Re-contact Novella. I’m considering doing a series of such novellas in which a re-contact specialist must go undercover on the surface of a planet that’s emerging from retrograde regression. Jack strand will certainly come back for an encore or two, but sometimes it’ll be someone new. And each planet will be at a different stage of development. However, each novella will be a complete story in and of itself, beginning, middle, and end. Hence, it won’t be necessary to read them in a particular order, or to read all of them. Perhaps I’ll write the story of Jack and Celia, perhaps not. But before I continue down this path, I’d be very interested in feedback. Will you, as a reader, be interested in more stories of this nature and in this vein? You can let me know your opinion on this by clicking here to send me an email.
Furthermore, if you’re interested in more Commonwealth stories, following this are some sample chapters from A Hymn for the Dying, the first book in my new hard science fiction series. All four books in the series are being issued in rapid release beginning on July 1, 2020.
A note from Jim
I hope you enjoyed this story, and if you can find the time please write a review. It doesn’t have to be long or elaborate; just a few words can make an enormous difference to a writer.
Thank you for your time and attention, and I hope I can continue to entertain you with my writing.
Jim
Sample Chapters:
The Blacksword Regiment, Book 1
A Hymn for the Dying
The Kelk Conflict: Annihilation
Book 1 of The Blacksword Regiment
by
J. L. Doty
For many, the dying part is hard.
For some, the living part is harder.
1
Taken
NEAR MID-AFTERNOON Mathius approached the street where he, his sister, and their parents lived in a small apartment. So far the area had been spared the bombing that had turned most of the city into rubble, perhaps because one of the government factions occupied their district. The regime’s soldiers were not kind, but Mathius had heard the rebels were worse.
As their neighborhood came into view, some instinct warned him something had changed while he’d been out. He paused, step
ped into the shadow of a nearby building, and scanned the deserted street. He waited, watched, and listened—nothing but silence punctuated by the occasional pop of a distant gun shot, then more silence, too much silence.
Mathius had started the day like any other by going out to scrounge for food and water. Every day it had become more difficult to find the tiniest morsel to alleviate the gnawing emptiness in his gut. Even water had become scarce, so much so that they had stopped bathing. Today his scrounging had not been successful, and if his father’s luck had been no better, then he, his sister and their parents would go without dinner that evening. Of late, they’d gone without dinner quite frequently, and hunger had become a constant companion.
He watched the street for several minutes, but saw nothing to warrant his caution. Nevertheless, when he stepped out of his shadow he moved in a crouch, then stopped in another shadow. He held his breath and scanned the street in both directions—nothing. Skipping from shadow to shadow, stopping in each for several seconds and waiting, he reached their building without incident. As he approached it the door swung open, revealing his father, who must have been watching for him.
“Get inside quickly,” his father said. But his eyes suddenly widened, and he looked past Mathius.
Behind Mathius, a gravelly voice said, “Ain’t you a cautious one!”
Mathius jumped at the sound of the man’s voice and spun about. Two rebels dressed in faded, dirty military uniforms stood across the street. Both held rifles aimed at Mathius and his father. One of them had a smooth chin and appeared to be a bit younger than Mathius’s sixteen standard years. The other appeared to be middle aged, with several days of prickly stubble blanketing his jaw.
The older man said, “Guess we know which building to search first.”
Looking down the barrels of the rebels’ rifles, Mathius and his father stood unmoving as more rebels emerged from hiding. Their leader barked orders, pointing and waving his hands, and four of them slung their weapons over their shoulders. Two of the four pinned Mathius’s arms painfully behind his back, and the other two did the same to his father. One of the soldiers slammed the butt of his rifle into Mathius’s gut, and pain forced him to double over and gasp for air. The men holding his arms didn’t let him fall to the ground, and thankfully he hadn’t had anything to eat that day, so he didn’t vomit.
Their leader demanded, “Which apartment is yours?”
Mathius’s father pleaded, “Don’t hurt the boy. I’ll show you. I’ll show you.”
Mathius still couldn’t breathe and continued to gulp for air as the two men dragged him up the stairs to the second floor, then into the living room of their small apartment. One of them slapped Mathius’s face hard and said, “Stand, god damn it.”
Mathius managed to get his feet beneath him, still struggling to breathe. One of the rebels restraining his father grimaced with effort, and his father cried out, pain distorting his face.
The rebels searched the apartment, emptying drawers onto the floor and overturning furniture. One of them emerged from a back bedroom holding a dress. “Women’s clothes,” he said. “Other women’s stuff too. They got women.”
The rebel leader grinned, reached down to a holster on his hip and pulled a grav gun. He pressed the muzzle of the pistol against the side of Mathius’s father’s head and demanded, “Where are the women?”
The rebels’ wary eyes darted continuously about the room. The boy about Mathius’s age had the same hard, unyielding look of the older men. Smudges of dirt on their faces and arms gave them a filthy, hungry look.
One of the rebels said, “Mercier, just kill the old man and get it over with.”
Mathius had just learned the name of the rebel leader, though he wasn’t sure how that would help him and his father.
“Where are the fucking women?” the man named Mercier snarled. “Where did you hide them?”
Mathius’s father grimaced as one of the men behind him twisted his arm upward. Hissing his words through clenched teeth, his father said, “I don’t know . . . where they are.”
With the government split into two opposing forces, and the rebels split into three, and all five vying to annihilate each other, the civilian population had learned to live with whoever gained control of a piece of the city on any given day. That morning their district had been under the thumb of the more benign of the two government factions. While Mathius had been out scrounging, a rebel faction must have swept into the west side and met little resistance from their previous masters.
Mercier pressed the muzzle of his gun harder against his father’s head and shouted, “You’re lying.” Mathius’s father cringed as bits of spittle erupted from the rebel’s mouth and spattered his face.
His father shook his head. “I sent them away and didn’t ask where they were going. That way I wouldn’t know and couldn’t tell.”
The rebel leader must realize any smart man would have done the same to protect his wife and daughter. Mathius’s father had nothing to reveal, so killing him would be useless, senseless, a complete waste of a human life. Mathius hoped Mercier would realize that and lower his gun. He and his father would get away with just an unpleasant beating. During the last year they’d endured far worse; they could survive a beating.
Mercier nodded, and Mathius stifled a sigh of relief as the man did lower his gun. But then, in one quick motion, the fellow pressed the muzzle against Mathius’s father’s knee, and pulled the trigger. The grav pistol roared with the characteristic sound of a giant spring uncoiling, followed by a blast of supersonic shock as the projectile exited the barrel. It disintegrated his father’s knee in a cloud of meat, bone and blood, spattering bits of it across the room. His father screamed and collapsed, but the two soldiers holding him kept him upright, and he dangled by his arms from their iron-like grips.
Mercier snarled in his father’s ear, “Don’t lie to me again, asshole.”
With tears streaming down his face, his father gasped, “I really . . . don’t know . . . where . . . they are. I . . . swear . . . I don’t.”
“You swear you don’t,” Mercier said. “Well that makes all the difference in the world.”
The rebel leader straightened, lowered the gun and nodded thoughtfully, rubbing at the stubble on his chin. With the exception of the boy standing near the door, all of the soldiers exhibited several days’ growth of beard.
“Yah,” Mercier said. “Come to think of it, you probably are telling the truth.”
Mathius’s thoughts raced. After the rebels released them, he’d have to get his father to a hospital, if he could find one still functioning. His father would probably lose the leg, but at least he’d live.
“Yah,” the rebel leader said. “So you’re of no use to me.” He raised the grav pistol and pressed it against the side of Mathius’s father’s head.
For the rest of his life Mathius would always wish he had had the foresight to look away. But with nothing to gain from a senseless killing, he’d assumed Mercier would let them go, and he stupidly looked on as he again heard the roar of the grav gun. His father’s head exploded, showering the men holding him with bits of bone and blood and gray matter, pieces of it sticking to the wall behind them.
“No,” Mathius shouted, struggling against the men holding him.
Mercier turned at the shout, looked Mathius in the eyes and said, “But you’re young enough we can use you.”
He looked over Mathius’s head at one of the men holding him. “He’s your responsibility, Cranoch. See to it he learns to shoot what he’s supposed to shoot.”
“You killed him for no reason,” Mathius shouted, tears streaming down his cheeks.
Mercier shrugged, swung the heavy grav pistol out and slapped Mathius in the face.
••••
The rumble of the big transition ship’s drive vibrated through the deck as Cadet Nikaela Vreekande stopped outside the office of the ship’s commanding officer, Command Eagle Kristdokar. She wanted to make a
good impression, so she took a brief second to check her Kelk uniform, made sure there were no wrinkles, and that every emblem and insignia had been positioned properly. Some of the most powerful members of the Larscom—the highest ranking officers and ruling elite of the Kelk Supremacy—were known to seek Kristdokar’s advice upon occasion. And rumor had it that the command eagle might someday occupy a seat on the Larscom Executive Council. Such a sponsor could be enormously beneficial to Nikaela’s nascent career.
Nikaela rapped once on the office door, and spoke through her implants, “Cadet Vreekande requesting permission to enter.”
A harsh female voice answered. “Enter.”
Nikaela pressed the door switch and it dilated, revealing a small room with an older woman seated behind a compact desk, the flash of brass eagles glinting on her collars. Her salt-and-pepper gray hair had aged to mostly salt with just a hint of pepper, and like all Kelk men and women, she wore her hair long. Kristdokar had opted for the shorter style of shoulder length, which was about as short as any Kelk would allow, but not uncommon among the military because of its functionality aboard ship, or beneath the helmet of combat armor. The slight bluish tint to her chalk-white skin had faded somewhat, but the bright red irises of her eyes pinned Nikaela to the spot with a piercing stare.
Nikaela stepped through the door, eyes locked rigidly forward, and heard it contract behind her. She snapped to attention, raised her right hand and held it flat just above her left breast. “Cadet Nikaela Vreekande reporting as ordered, mistress.”
Mistress Kristdokar raised her hand and returned the salute as crisply as any of Nikaela’s instructors back at the academy. “Ease,” she said.
Nikaela put her fists on her hips and spread her feet to shoulder width, standing as rigidly as she had while at attention.
The command eagle leaned back in her chair and eyed Nikaela with that piercing stare. The moment drew out into an uncomfortable silence, and when she finally spoke, Nikaela almost flinched.