| |
––––––––
The Third Chronicle of the Guardians of the Word
––––––––
“Dynan.”
A grated floor flashed into view – of a ship, but he didn’t know why he would be on a ship. He saw his twin brother, Dain, dragged on board, unconscious, his blond hair stained with blood. Booted feet charged by, clanging sharply, jarring through the pounding of his head. There was someone beside him, but he couldn’t see who. The hand of a woman came into view, dabbing at his face with a wad of bloody cloth. When he tried to look up, the dark came in, leaving only sound for a moment, exploding noise all around him – the ship trying to rise, its engines struggling against a constant barrage of hits, the alarms sounding. It came through that laser fire must be striking the ship, since that was the only thing that made sense. Why was he on a ship that was under attack?
Sight flashed back into being. A boy with dark red hair sat on his knees beside Dain, clinging to him in the pounding vibrations that shook everything, at the same time as trying to help him. Dynan thought he should know him, but pain exploded through his mind, rising to take vision and sound and thought, and all the questions eroded until there was nothing but the dark.
“I don’t think he’s breathing.”
Geneal Elger nodded tersely as she watched Dynan fall unconscious again. She gave him an injection of bueterel, a drug that ought to help stabilize his condition, except of course, she didn’t know exactly what that condition was, and she was fighting the usual issue that sometimes meant no drug would work on a telepath. If this was a medical problem, it would help, but if it was telepathic...
Someone had attacked their minds. Tortured them. There were only two people she knew who had the ability and she hoped it wasn’t true for both. Carryn Adaeryn, whose disappearance made others suspect she was involved with the attack, and her brother, Maralt.
Geneal shook herself into action. There’d be time to think about it all later. The noise of it all – the engines straining to lift them off the shore, the blasts of lasers striking the ship, the responding fire from the XR-30 cannons – combined to make thinking coherently almost impossible. The ship’s inertial dampening system was on and rising, making movement difficult and painful.
She clawed her way to Dain’s side through the unrelenting pounding. The boy was wrong. Dain was breathing after all, but only barely. Nothing the biomonitor said explained why he was having so much difficulty. She noticed his brain activity levels were excessively high. Dark, scribbling lines covered the entire depth of the chart. The same was true for Dynan.
Before she could treat Dain, the ship jarred violently out from under her. She fell backward when the floor came back up, pounding into her knees. The boy caught her at the same time as he fell too and kept the rest of her from smashing into the deck. The next strike threw them both against the back wall of the hold, into the bolted chairs next to the control station. Dynan and Dain were thrown the opposite direction. The dampening system failed and then came right back on. That one moment jarred every bone. Geneal thought for the third time that night, she wasn’t going to survive.
The boy crawled over to her, picked her up and maneuvered them both back under the control station, using his boot against the chair stand to keep them wedged in, when the ship was struck again. Geneal wondered if they’d fall into the sea. The engines screamed, making a high-pitched whirring sound that no spaceship she’d ever been on normally made. The noise was deafening and constant.
The engines sounds dropped an octave. Geneal wanted to recognize what was happening, but feared she was wrong. The boy holding her gasped.
“We’re making the jump.” His arms tightened around her as if that would help if anything went wrong. She understood he meant the jump to sublight speed, which would instantly remove them from the vicinity and throw them across space.
The noise of laser fire stopped. Geneal felt the thrust of forward motion for a moment and then silence. The boy was panting in her ear, shaking. His hands were covered in blood. Probably Dain’s. She was breathing fast too, but after a moment of blissful silence, managed to recover.
“What’s your name?” She eased out of his grasp, looking him over to make sure the blood wasn’t his.
“Gaden Ahreld.”
She smiled briefly at that as she tried to stand. “I know your brother.”
Her legs weren’t cooperating. She went on hands and knees instead, unsure what might happen next, but needed to treat her patients. She found most of the contents of her medic kit scattered on the deck, gathering them as she went. Nothing seemed to be broken. The biomonitor worked and she picked it up. She crawled over to Dynan first.
“How did you end up on board?” she asked to fill the silence, while she quickly set up her supplies.
“Trevan invited Allie and I to go on the flight with Dain ... With that girl’s grandparents.”
She nodded, knowing that Jaiel and her grandparents were now dead.
Trevan Golyin came from the flight deck of the XR-30, having just saved everyone’s life. He glanced at Dynan and Dain, sprawled on the floor, but went straight to the control station. “Everyone all right?”
“Mostly.” Geneal wasn’t really sure of that, but wanted to sound hopeful instead of terrified.
“Are they alive?” Trevan was an engineer by trade, one of the best, having created the ship they were now in. Geneal took comfort in the fact that he knew what he was doing.
“Yes.” She didn’t add, barely.
Trevan was also a Lt. Commander in His Majesty’s service, or rather, the Regent’s service now, wearing the short, blunt haircut of most military people, reducing what would have been dusty brown hair to stubble. He was older than everyone on board. He started pressing keys, activating different screens. They made little chirping sounds when touched, and other sounds when activated.
The noise of others coming to the hold clanged against the grate. Ralion Blaise and Sheed Lasser came from the laser cannons, looking tense and angry, still ready for battle. A brief flash of the raging fight on the shore went through Geneal’s mind; Ralion killing four or five men in a row, one after the other, with Sheed behind him lunging after any the other missed. Sheed moved to Dain’s side, kneeling down beside him.
“He’s bleeding.”
“I know.” Geneal ran the biomonitor over Dynan again. The brain scan was no longer mad scribbling lines, but flat ones. “Well, at least I’ve seen that before.”
Allie Ahreld came back, moving to the control station beside Trevan, hardly sparing his brother a glance while he worked. They looked alike, with the same dark red hair and brown eyes, though Allie was older than Gaden by sixteen years. That left only one missing. Geneal knew Lycon Tylam was flying the ship. They were all of them in a state of near rage, contained only by years of professional training, except for Gaden, who hadn’t had any training and was still curled up on the floor.
Ralion fixed that when he went over and held down his hand to him, but then ended up lifting the boy into a seat by the controls. “You hurt?”
“No,” Gaden said, but leaned over his knees.
Alarms sounded, ringing through the hold of the ship and freezing them all in place. Ralion swore as he looked over the screens. Trevan left the station for the flight deck. “Border patrols,” he said as he rushed by, making Geneal’s heart stutter in her chest. “I’m changing course!”
“Why?” Geneal tried to keep her focus where it belonged and moved over to Dain. “What good will that do?”
“The XR-30 profile wasn’t ever entered into the system,” Sheed explained while he started helping with Dain’s wounds, applying bandages he dug out of the kit. “The King didn’t want the ship tracked by just anyone. Right now, they’re tracking a ghost signature. They don’t know it’s us, except for the last heading they had us on. We keep changing course until we lose them.”
Geneal nodded as she sealed closed one of the deeper cuts on Dain’s shoulder with a cauterizer. She didn’t ask why they were being tracked and chased and shot at, since the answer meant a drastic shift in what she knew of the world. Being chased from the Palace was one thing. Being chased from the Cobalt System meant a broader, vastly different reality. Dynan and Dain were being hunted by people sworn to protect them. She wanted to believe it was a mistake, rather than the downfall of the Telaerin Throne.
“Where are we going?” When Geneal looked up for the answer, Sheed could only shake his head that he didn’t know. “Help me get them to a place where I can work. They need to stay together.”
Ralion was already lifting Dynan off the floor.
About the Author
“I’m a writer, a mother, and manager of chaos. I have two new adult kids, though I’ve yet to experience the sorrows(joys?) of an empty nest, which means I try to do too many things at once, like so many of us, but it all usually works out. I love writing. It’s what I’m passionate about and what I want to do above all other things.”
After reading The Lord of the Rings, the fantasy bug left a permanent mark with the author, which was then complicated by her immediate love of Star Wars, Star Trek, and other works of science fiction.
She has become a recent and avid fan of the television series, Supernatural, and immediately fell in love with the SPN family community. You can find her on twitter any given day, discussing the show with fellow fans.
Jolea resides in New Jersey at the Cottage by the Bay where she is becoming reacquainted with city living after spending most of her life in a 200-year-old, haunted farmhouse in Virginia. She has two grown children, who she is incredibly proud of. Currently she is working on three writing projects for future publication.
For more information about the author, go to
on Facebook at Jolea M. Harrison
and on Twitter JoleaB
and by email subscription
Dedication
This book is dedicated in loving memory
to my father and mother, Doug and Fran Minnick
and my sister, Lindy.
––––––––
The author would like to thank her children, Kate and Ben, who have put up with years of Mom being glued to the keyboard, and other members of her family – Coni, Brother Bob, Uncle Bob, Mary, Kathy, Denny, Carmella, Rob, Terry and Conni, Ricky, and Malena the Mermaid. Special thanks go to Chris and Matt, and to the people who read the story and made it better with their valued suggestions.
––––––––
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic or paper editions, and do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated.
