Before the Commonwealth existed, there was an expanding, multi-galaxy civilization. Due to the combined effects of a too-aggressive policy of expansion, civil unrest, the inequality and abuse of the classes, and the categorizing of augmented humans as a slave class, the Central Allied Worlds (CAW) disintegrated.

 

The period of darkness and barbarism that followed is referred to as the Downfall. Various groups of people fled the Central Allied Worlds (referred to by its descendants/survivors simply as “First Civ”) as they became endangered or more powerful people tried to have them classified as mutants or non-humans, and either sterilized or made them into slaves. Among them were the Khybors, the ancestors of the Leapers.

 

Some groups of people managed to get hold of ships and flee to distant galaxies.

 

The legend of the Talon continues to grow.

When Edrian Rensler regains contact with a hidden village that provides a plant vital to his family’s protective elixir, he gains new allies in the battle to defend Rensler.  In coming years, the colony world deals with invaders trying to change Rensler’s society and soul for their own profit and power.

He and the Nightskimmer, Aeza, grow even closer as adulthood brings new challenges. Edrian thinks about the future in new ways, when Aeza takes a mate and urges him to finalize his soul-bond with Aura. Then a series of crises and losses strike the planet, the colony, and the Rensler family, and Edrian risks death to protect and avenge those who hold his heart and soul.

Genre: Science Fiction    ISBN: 978-1-922548-68-9    ISBN PRINT D2D: 9798227456229   ASIN: B0DK3ZVYGB    Word Count: 70, 106

 

Continue the series:

Age 1:

Chapter 1

 

 

“Is something wrong, Father?” Edrian Rensler paused in the doorway of the family dining room.

That particular off, strained note in the atmosphere wasn’t exactly a sound or a scent, but struck him as both physical and mental. It warned him that something had happened. His father had learned something in the short time since both Edrian and his brother, Eryk had run out from Government House to deal with yet more problems relating to the latest shipment of undocumented and unanticipated and increasingly uncooperative hopeful settlers.

“I was hoping not.” Erion glanced up from his datapad. He tried to smile, but only succeeded in looking as weary as a man was expected to look after a fourteen-hour day at his desk, dealing with multiple crises at the same time. Normal for the governor of a colony world, yet draining because his health had never fully recovered from the genetically engineered attack on him and his late father. “Do you remember your grandfather ever telling you about Ensancta?”

“Bedtime stories, I think.” He shrugged and glanced over at his mother, who had just stepped into the room with a tray of plates and cups and utensils.

Gaelen shrugged, but she didn’t look worried. He took it as a good sign. Whatever worried his father, it wasn’t serious enough yet for his mother to sense anything amiss. Sometimes Edrian thought the Borderland folk blood in both his parents had forged a psionic connection between them that went beyond the closeness of two people married nearly thirty sols. Too bad that connection hadn’t been enough to guide and comfort her during the long lunars when Erion had been a prisoner of the Set’ri occupation force. All she had known was that her husband was alive. Nothing more.

“What about it?” Edrian asked, when his father seemed to have fallen into his thoughts.

Erion leaned back in his chair and slouched just a little. “It’s a real place, not merely stories. I guess I assumed with all the other secrets the two of you shared, he would have mentioned Ensancta. If just to prepare you for taking up his duties… Well, to start, it’s a village as far north on the coast as we can get before there’s nothing alive but lichen on the rocks.”

“I don’t remember getting any reports from there. Unless it’s under a code name?” He took the plates and napkins from his mother and set them in front of their four chairs.

“Ensancta isn’t in any reports, and the regular satellite sweeps are programmed to ignore whatever they might pick up.” One corner of his mouth twitched, signaling to Edrian this was yet another Rensler family secret, just like the Nightskimmer caverns in the roots of the butte holding Government House. “That village is the source of cryptyn.”

For half a second, Edrian almost said “what?” He muffled a whistle of surprise, and took the handful of utensils from the pile his mother had left when she went back to the kitchen.

The elixir to protect the Renslers and their closest allies from poisoning and other chemical assaults from enemies was another family secret. The ingredients included several rare plants that grew in the dark and damp of the Nightskimmer caves. The difficulty in finding those plants, and then the danger involved in obtaining them, made it nearly impossible for anyone else to control the elixir. Someone must have suspected something, because the genetically engineered disease that struck Erion and Elbarto had been able to bypass the protections provided by the elixir.

Still, there was a chance that intrepid explorers might find other places on their world where those plants grew, outside the guardianship of the Nightskimmers. They couldn’t live in every cave on the entire planet. Aeza, Edrian’s Nightskimmer companion, had told him there were some places on Rensler that the Nightskimmers refused to go, or were forbidden to go.

The final ingredient in the elixir was an extraction taken from the roots and leaves of the plant called cryptyn. All Edrian knew of cryptyn was that his grandfather received a bulb of the plant from some undisclosed source. He tended it, with the help of Gaelen, in a secure greenhouse in the gardens of Government House. None of their few relatives and allies who shared in the elixir’s benefits had any knowledge of the ingredients. Everyone thought the greenhouse was merely Elbarto’s private hobby, which he shared with Gaelen, trying to adapt a few more Vidan-original plants to Rensler’s ecology. Elbarto handled all aspects of the growth and harvesting of cryptyn and creating the extraction. He provided the finished result to Dr. Parys, who created the elixir.

Gaelen now had sole control of the greenhouse. She had protected it and deflected the suspicions of Panterra and his people during the Set’ri occupation, and managed to convince the invaders that she grew nothing more than exotic flowers there.

Medicinals might be the main export of Rensler, but the main product of the Rensler family seems to be secrets, he mused.

“Has something happened to Ensancta?” he asked, as he put the utensils by their plates.

“No way of knowing unless someone goes out there,” his father said with a slight shrug and an even more slight curve of one side of his mouth.

That got Edrian’s thoughts racing. He knew Aeza would be pleased, if another trip of exploration lay ahead of them. His Nightskimmer friend liked any chance to challenge her endurance and speed, and even more, a chance to go somewhere new.

Ever since she had become the focus of the young, mature male Nightskimmers, Aeza had been more eager than usual to get out and away from the nesting caverns. Edrian would have accused her of being either shy or finicky, or perhaps on the hunt for a mate from one of the Nightskimmer tribes that didn’t inhabit the caverns under Government House. Perhaps she just didn’t want to be paired with someone she had grown up with. Nightskimmers mated for life, after all. He would have teased her, but he didn’t know the words for shy or finicky in Nightskimmer. He couldn’t imagine Aeza being afraid of choosing a mate and becoming a mother. Consider how she teased him from time to time about being afraid to claim Aura as his mate, Aeza wouldn’t dare show any fear when it came to her own mating choices.

At least, Edrian hoped so.

“They didn’t keep in contact with us?” he said, thinking aloud now.

“They did. To a point. Without communication nodes or messenger hubs. The village isn’t near any known roads or and they don’t have a jet-sled guidance beacon.”

“Then how did we get the cryptyn for the new batches of elixir?” Edrian resisted the need to press his knuckles into his temples. He felt like he was participating in a conversation where he was only getting half the information. Not that he minded. He liked puzzles.

“Your grandfather flew out somewhere alone, a different place, every three sols to get a fresh bulb. Cryptyn is a triennial.”

“The root goes through the growth cycle three times before dying,” Gaelen said, while Edrian thought through the different applicable meanings of the word. “It generates runners that root and send up stems and leaves and the nodules that provide the cryptyn extraction. Enough for a sol’s batch of the elixir and enough to put aside for emergencies.” Her mouth twitched and a flicker of pain touched her eyes, just for a moment.

There had been plenty of the elixir to treat Elbarto during his last downward slide of health. It eased his suffering and made his last days comfortable, but even it hadn’t been enough to purge the poison from his cells at the mitochondrial level and uproot what had dug into his genetics.

Edrian remembered several characteristics of cryptyn now. The elixir only required a tiny amount of the extract for each batch. However, the elixir itself had what was colloquially known as a short shelf life. A batch had to be used within a sol before it turned bad and decayed into poison.

 “So I’m guessing we’re at the end of the three sols, and I need to fly out there and get a new bulb?”

“Not exactly.”

Erion and Gaelen exchanged one of those glances Edrian had always thought he would understand when he had grown up. Maybe he still had a long way to go, even though he was over twenty now, because he still didn’t understand. He supposed he would have to be content with knowing that his parents could somehow read each other’s thoughts, exchange rapid, deep communication with a single glance, a nod or a shake of their heads.

“We have another growing cycle in the current bulb. However, we’ve lost touch with our contact at the village. There are emergency communication channels, but I’ve sent messages and no one has responded, even after half a lunar. Common sense says to rectify the problem now, rather than wait until we’re in desperate straits.”

“We heard from them after the funeral,” Gaelen explained, “but nobody has checked in since. With all the trouble we’ve been having thanks to the illegal settlers and the pirates trying to land them and cause all sorts of confusion…” She shrugged. “We thought silence was a good thing. It meant nothing had happened to alarm them. We had no indications of any unusual events within a hundred kilometers of the village’s territory, no hints of any threats.”

“We’ve been so on top of things, intercepting the invaders who tried to get down dirtside, we could have missed a small craft that launched from far out in orbit and came in with nothing but guidance jets,” Edrian offered. “Someone could have accessed the security satellites, and got curious when they saw the blank spot in the sensor records. They could have found some hint of human habitation, despite Ensancta living low-tech. They do, to avoid notice?” He waited until his father nodded. “When there were contradictions in their sensors, they kept testing. That’s what I would have done. All the small anomalies would make me think there was something to hide.”

“Exactly,” his father said. “While many of the people who have tried to bypass our immigration regulations and procedures have been motivated by fear and a simple desire for a better life, just as many are motivated by greed. Too many invaders, when they’re caught, express an antagonistic attitude toward us, a need to destroy what we protect if they can’t profit from it. They despise our attitude of stewardship toward the planet. Anything we are hiding, those people are determined to find it, and if they can’t take it from us, then they must at all costs destroy it.”

“If we can’t have it,” Gaelen murmured, “then no one can.”

“How soon do you want me to fly out?” Edrian laughed at himself when his brain slipped into planning mode. He had to build an excuse to be out of commission and contact for several days at a time. How long would it take to work his way up to another bad spell of illness, so he could retreat to his room and no one would think to stop by to check on him? Usually, the symptoms had to be somewhat disgusting, to discourage visitors. Edrian had come to dislike the need to sneeze and cough and wheeze, with some disgusting spots and excretions. Especially since a growing number of people in Eryk’s inner circle, whom he considered friends, wouldn’t let disgusting smells and sounds keep them from visiting a sick friend.

Maybe Dr. Parys could come up with that “new” treatment that would simply knock him flat for a few days, so he could seem to sleep himself well, negating the need for visitors, and bypass all the disgusting parts of the deception?

“Deep thoughts?” Eryk asked, having arrived while Edrian was still untangling his new considerations. His brother braced himself with both hands on either side of the door frame. “You look like you were coming to some uncomfortable realization.”

Edrian explained what he had been thinking as he helped Gaelen put the last few dishes on the table. That got thoughtful looks from his father and brother, and a sympathetic sigh from his mother. He helped her clear the last few hot dishes from the tray to put on the table, then set the tray on the sideboard. They sat down and held hands as Erion spoke the blessing over the food. Edrian wished they could have a simple family dinner for once, speaking of simple, ordinary things while they ate. Chances were good they would spend the entire meal dealing with his impending mission to Ensancta, and how to explain his absence. He almost laughed, as he reached for the nearest dish and held it for his mother to serve herself. They were Renslers. “Ordinary” dinner conversation, for them, was usually focused on protecting their people and if they were lucky, playing nasty, amusing tricks on people foolish enough to oppose them.

“How long do you think we have before someone gets suspicious of the usual tactic?” Erion spoke slowly as he ladled grains and chunks of meat in a thick, spicy sauce onto his plate. He seemed to be paying more attention to his food than what he was saying.

“Before someone decides Edrian is a fake and malingerer?” Eryk said.

“Dr. Parys already accused me of that, in front of several invaders,” Edrian said. “Accusations like that usually convince them I really am sick. Why doesn’t anyone trust a doctor who is on their side?”

That earned smiles and a few snorts of amusement from his family.

“We need to come up with better reasons for you to be near the location of whatever new crisis strikes, ready to assess the situation, and deal with it. The more easily you can deal with it as yourself,” Erion dropped the serving spoon back into the pot for punctuation, “the less need there is for the Talon.”

“And?” He could see where his father was going with this. Did Erion suspect that Edrian sometimes longed for the day when he didn’t have to wear a mask and live two distinctly different lives?

“People are more apt to suspect the extremes. The less useless you appear to be, the less prone people might be to suspect you are the man behind the mask. People like the romance, the contradiction, the legend.”

“The less the Talon is seen,” Gaelen offered, “the less real he will appear to be. And the more exaggerated the stories told about him. Yes, you were entirely correct at the time, to deal with the imposters by making contact, letting people get close enough to see your build, hear your voice. Now it’s time to retreat back into mists and rumors.”

“Until the next time someone tries to borrow your mask to harm others,” Eryk added.

“The more time we spend flying and exploring, and the less time near the ground with people shooting at us, the happier Aeza will be,” Edrian said. He shuddered, having an image of Aeza heavily pregnant, flying clumsily, or perhaps unable to fly at all. He could never ask her to risk her kit’s life, not even to perform his duties as the Talon. “What do you propose, Father?”

“You need to slide further into your role as Eryk’s extra set of eyes and ears.” Erion gestured with his fork, drawing lines in the air over his plate as he spoke. “If we keep you constantly moving, constantly visible, constantly asking questions, becoming the face of Government House, the one everyone turns to for answers and to get their questions and requests before my desk, and someday Eryk’s, the more familiar people will be with you. The less prone they’ll be to match your voice and build with the Talon, because they know you. The more easily people will tell you the things you need to know, without you even asking. And the more invisible you will be, in a sense.”

“And the closer I’ll be to the trouble spots when the Talon needs to swoop down out of the night sky to act.” He nodded. “So how does that tie into my getting away for at least a quar, to fly to the coast and check out Ensancta, try to make contact with our friends?”

Erion scowled and shook his head, which prompted laughter from Eryk and Gaelen.

“There will have to be a delay, I suppose.”

“Or not. Since we’re essentially moving into a policy of hiding in plain sight…” Edrian’s mouth twisted into a grin as the plan unfolded inside his mind. “We haven’t had a true holiday in sols. Between putting the colony back to rights after Panterra and his people left, and then dealing with the invasion, and then Grandfather…it’s been constant work and worry for sols. We used to go camping several times every spring and fall, when the wildlife was quieter and the truly dangerous blooming cycles had ended or hadn’t started up yet.”

“I hardly think a family camping trip could be excused right now,” Gaelen said. “Though it is a lovely idea.”

“True,” Erion said. “But the idea is good. Not a family trip, but just the boys. A pressure valve. An acknowledgment of all the work they’ve been doing, the burdens they’ve been carrying, far ahead of their physical maturity. A dividing line, I suppose, before they move into new duties and responsibilities.”

“Act in plain sight,” Edrian mused aloud, testing the idea. “We wouldn’t need all the guards and secretaries and other people who would have to come with us if you two took time away. We could make it an exploration trip, and go far off known trails, and anyone who checked on us wouldn’t be surprised. We’d have to plan ahead, so Aeza could fly out to join me, lair up during the day somewhere, then fly out the next night, spend a day or two exploring, looking for messages, then fly back at night. If you don’t mind being alone for a few days, Eryk?”

“Mind? Solitude? Time enough to sleep late and laze about reading? Find me a quiet cove on the river or the sea, where I can fish…” His brother slouched in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head, as if relaxing in a lounging chair. “You should have made me part of your coverup contingency sols ago.”

“What did you just think of, Mother?” He caught a glimmer of mischief, oddly mixed with wistfulness, just for a moment in her eyes.

“I was going to suggest you two bring some company. But that would require chaperones, or at least enough people to ensure no scandal resulted, and that would entirely negate the whole purpose of the trip,” Gaelen said, ending on a sighing little chuckle.

Edrian’s heart skipped a few beats, alerted by how she focused on her plate as she answered, instead of meeting his or anyone else’s gaze. Then her words registered in his head.

“Chaperones?” Eryk scowled a little when Erion chuckled. “I don’t–“

“She was thinking of your Danine, to start with,” their father said, and picked up his mug, to salute Gaelen.

“My–” He choked, then flushed dark. “Who told you?”

“It’s obvious to everybody.” Edrian chuckled. “Well, not to everybody. We were wondering when you two would figure out what was going on between the two of you.”

Eryk shook his head. “I should have known it was impossible to keep secrets in this family.” His voice sounded like he tried to be angry, but his mouth kept curving up and laughter danced sparks in his eyes.

“Who told us what, exactly?” Gaelen rested her hand on Eryk’s, stopping him from taking a mouthful of food that was large enough to make him choke.

That should have been a clue, Edrian realized. As a child, Eryk had often hidden behind mouthfuls that would take him a long time to chew and swallow, to avoid answering questions.

“Well…” He set the fork down on his plate again and hunched his shoulders, both elbows on the table. “For starters, yes, we figured out what was going on, as Edrian so diplomatically put it. A long time ago. We just figured it was our business and nobody else’s. And yes, we both know that eventually we won’t have the right to keep it just our business.” He sighed and scrubbed at his face with his palms. “I meant, when did you–who told you–she hasn’t even told her mother yet.”

“Oh, darling…” Gaelen blinked rapidly, eyes glistening with what Edrian suspected were tears. He hoped they were happy tears. “You have to know we approve.”

“More important, her mother and her uncle and grandparents on both sides approve,” Erion added.

“You…hush. You’re not making it any easier on the boy,” she retorted, and wrinkled up her nose at her husband. Then they both laughed, softly.

“So…” Edrian said, when Eryk looked back and forth between their parents, blushing darker and grinning. “Did she ask you, or did you ask her?”

“Yes.” His brother grinned and sat back and crossed his arms over his chest.

Edrian thought about demanding a straight answer, then decided it didn’t matter. He was glad for his brother. He had known for several sols now he and Danine Aynborn were perfectly matched, as if Fi’in had made them specifically for each other and no one else.

“So… do we turn this into a betrothal holiday?” he asked, more to break the continuing happy, teary-eyed silence.