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 colony world of Rensler remains under occupation by enemy forces. Erion Rensler, governor, and his father, Elbarto, the former governor, are still prisoners, their location unknown. All that stands between the invaders and success are the Rensler brothers, Eryk and Edrian.

Eryk leads the resistance fighters in the forests of Rensler. Edrian stays under the watchful eye of the enemy, playing a dangerous game of deception. At night, he sheds his pretense of being a sickly book-head and becomes the Talon, defender of the colony, riding on a deadly Nightskimmer…

Genre: Science Fiction    ISBN: 978-1-922548-67-2    ISBN PRINT D2D: 9798224853014    ASIN: B0DK3VJCSZ    Word Count: 65, 150

 

Continue the series:

Age 1:

Chapter 1

Inspector Panterra and his Set’ri forces had invaded the colony world, Rensler, under false pretenses at the end of spring. The rains held on into the summer, making Edrian Rensler think the fifteen-sol cycle of horrific weather had broken and would strike early. While he could see advantages to the foreigners struggling with the unpredictable weather shifts, frustrating their constant hunt for resisters and the traitors among their own ranks, the disadvantages for the colonists loomed larger.

The main industry and source of income for the colony was the research, development, and processing of the exotic native plants and minerals for medical use. This made Rensler valuable enough for the Central Allied Worlds to keep up at least a pretense of support and protection. The killer weather cycle could seriously disrupt the growing and harvesting cycles.

The planet remained a prime target whenever there was a new uprising and rebellion in the CAW. The planet’s location off the beaten track should have relegated it to backwater status, but the medicinal wealth of the colony undid all the efforts of the first generation of colonists to fade from the memory of the Central Allied Worlds. Insurrectionists had tried to recruit or threaten Rensler’s people into supporting them at least once every generation. At the time of the founding, the planet had been beyond the rim of CAW colonization. Edrian’s multi-great-grandfather had hoped the Central Allied Worlds would never find them.

What use is hoping? Edrian clicked and whistled to his Nightskimmer companion and mount, Aeza.

They had paused in their regular nighttime patrol of the skies over the colony core to sit on a high outcropping and simply look over the landscape. Everything was dark with wet and shadows. At this time of the summer, the stars and moons should have illuminated the rivers and plains and forests spreading out below him brightly enough not to need his infrared or ultraviolet lenses to see while flying.

Aeza didn’t answer, and he smiled inside the stifling protection of his flying mask. Nightskimmers were intelligent creatures, and Dr. Parys had commented more than once that they showed their intelligence by ignoring rhetorical or philosophical questions.

The constantly miserable, wet, cloudy weather allowed Edrian to stay out until nearly sunrise, but also created problems. It encouraged a prolonged growing season for the springtime species that thrived in wet weather. However, they choked out other valuable species needing drier conditions. Some plants were vital to the chemical balance in the soil for the dry weather plants, which in turn prepared the soil for plants that would sprout, mature, and ripen during the fall and winter. A delay in the change of the seasons could create a cascade effect that impacted the entire harvest cycle.

The wealth of Rensler didn’t matter to Edrian as much as the retaliatory actions the occupation forces would take when the harvesters, explorers, and research scientists couldn’t bring in the abundance of pharmaceuticals from the forests and jungles and river plains. Just two nights ago, while listening inside the walls of the invaders’ quarters in Government House, Edrian had heard several of the Set’ri complaining to Panterra. If they didn’t start seeing some of the wealth of native pharmaceutical to assist their plans for galaxy domination, they might consider abandoning Rensler. Their superiors had promised them incredible rewards and a chance to create new ways to control minds and bodies. Rensler wasn’t the ripe fruit, easily plucked, they had been promised. The people weren’t as easily subverted or intimidated as they had been led to believe.

Inspector Panterra hadn’t snapped and snarled at his underlings. Edrian wished he had a video feed in the man’s office, so he could see his expression. For a long time, his dearest hope, the focus of all his efforts at harassing the Set’ri forces, was to get the inspector to fail so miserably his superiors shipped him off Rensler. A long, quiet discussion with Dr. Parys and his mother, Gaelen, had taught Edrian the error of that goal. They didn’t want someone new to come in, an unknown quantity, and therefore hard to predict and work around. They wanted Panterra to stay, until he convinced his superiors the Set’ri should write off Rensler as useless and a waste of all their time and resources.

But not before they released Elbarto and Erion, Edrian’s grandfather and father, the former and current governors of the colony, before fleeing the solar system for good.

Rain, Aeza chirp-clicked. Heavy cold long. Before sun.

Edrian sighed and patted her long neck, and turned to swing up into the saddle on her back. While Nightskimmers enjoyed being out in the rain, unlike the horses they resembled, with the addition of massive leather wings, fangs and talons, he did not. Last summer he had experimented with flying costumes because of the sweltering conditions, even flying at speeds guaranteed to dry his sweat instantly. This summer, he was glad of the heavy cloak and thick tunic, padded with heat-absorbing material to hide him from the ever-watchful Set’ri spy-bots. The invaders seemed to have an endless supply, producing new ones as quickly as they were destroyed. At least the Nightskimmers enjoyed their nightly games of snatching the tiny flying devices from the sky and smashing them to the ground.

He tightened his flying straps and patted Aeza between her floppy ears. They immediately stiffened and rose up, widening to scoop up all the sounds the most sophisticated spying gear couldn’t catch. Edrian had proof the Nightskimmers could hear activity underwater and underground, kilometers away. Aeza’s sensitivity had saved his life dozens of times as he interfered with Set’ri activities, warned the resisters, and help defectors escape their Set’ri superiors.

Without prompting, Aeza flew north and west, toward where his older brother, Eryk, had relocated his resistance command post. Edrian always checked in with him either at the start of his night patrol or at the end. Making their mother happy was even more important than staying on top of changes in the invaders’ activities. Until their father and grandfather were released from Set’ri custody, their number two priority was assuring Gaelen they were safe and being sensible, and hadn’t gone haring off across the continent to the coast to attack the base the Set’ri were rumored to be constructing. Their first priority was getting deep enough into the Set’ri security system to learn where Elbarto and Erion were being held prisoner. They assumed their father and grandfather were being held prisoner on board the Set’ri mothership, but it had left orbit soon after Councilmember Anselm Luzayn and other high-ranking government officials had escaped, with Edrian’s help. So far, no clues had appeared to give the Rensler family any hope or guidance in locating the two missing men. Eryk’s specialty, after flying, lay in manipulating tech, creating new invasive programs that kept devouring Set’ri programming and turning it against them. On a regular basis, when Edrian inserted his lesson datapad into the computer system of the Archives, he had a new “gift” from Eryk to inflict on the occupation force. Nobody ever suspected Edrian. He was the sickly, oblivious, fussy dresser. No one expected him to be a hero or to care about anything beyond his latest illness or his newest academic obsession. No one saw him as a hero except Aura Luzayn.

Edrian smiled as Aeza skimmed over the last edges of the jungle and turned south when they came out over the murky dark water of the Asway River. At this season, the sandy banks should have been nearly as wide as the river itself. Edrian had fond memories of lazy summer days, lying in the shallows, letting his skin brown, digging for bi-valves and sand-dwelling river fish and crustaceans. Followed by enormous, succulent feasts, roasted on the long fires, fragrant with the spices added to the flames to drive away blood-sucking insects.

Hungry, Aeza chirped, and banked hard to the right, just before Edrian saw the lone, blue-tinted torch Eryk left burning at the water’s edge.

“Let’s see what he found to spoil you with tonight,” he said, and chuckled as he patted her neck. Eryk always made sure he had some freshly captured jungle creature to offer Aeza, to thank her for her long night of flying, when Edrian checked in with him.

Eryk must have been watching for them. He stepped out of the shelter of the camouflaged canopy at the edge of the jungle and waved his pulsar rifle as Aeza silently glided in to land. Edrian slid out of the saddle and stumbled a little, his boot sliding in the mud that shouldn’t have been so prevalent, this far into the summer. He ducked, laughing as his brother tossed a long-tailed scarlet bristlebrush over his head. Aeza chirped with pleasure and reared up, catching the meter-long, wriggling vermin with her front paws. The sharp smell of the creature’s blood competed for a moment with the moldy stink of its fur.

“Downwind, please?” Edrian said.

Eryk’s smile of greeting flattened into a frown and he hooked his thumb over his shoulder, into the shadows of the jungle and the tents behind him. Edrian sighed, even as he was grateful for the warning. He tapped the side of his flying mask to open the sealed compartment holding the pungent herbal-slime mold compound that relaxed his vocal cords and deepened his voice, as part of his disguise.

“You cut it close tonight.” Eryk stepped closer to Edrian, now that Aeza had moved down the flooded riverbank with her treat, to shred and devour it. “How can you smell anything with that puke you have to breathe?” he added, lowering his voice.

“I wasn’t breathing it.” Edrian shrugged. The noxious scent would soon fade from his consciousness, but how could he explain to his brother that he was so used to it, the dimming of other scents really wasn’t noticeable? Besides, there wasn’t time to go into a mini medical lecture on how the senses adapted and the mind filtered out constant input. “Any changes?”

“Caught two more defectors.”

“That’s… no.” He caught something in his brother’s expression, a darkness in his eyes that was nearly hidden by the infra-red lenses in his mask. “What happened?”

“I think they’re catching on to us. Or at least they suspect the forces harassing them so well are mostly Borderland folk.”

“The Set’ri are arrogant enough to be stupid, but Grandfather would probably say we’re the stupid ones, to expect them to be that oblivious. It was just a matter of time, right?”

“The defectors were carrying some pretty sophisticated, miniaturized equipment when we caught them. The kind of tech you wouldn’t expect people on the run to take with them. Something that fancy should be tagged and easy to track.” For a few seconds, his face half-hidden in the shadows, Eryk looked like their father and grandfather, aged beyond his sols by the stresses of the last few lunars. He more than lived up to his heritage and duty as a Rensler, protecting the people of their world.

“What exactly did they have?”

“Our best guess, geno-typing scanners, top of the line, and some kind of… I don’t know, we’re guessing a toxin.”

“Why not just poison all the resistance? Why the testing?” Edrian shuddered at this proof the Set’ri hadn’t put aside their primary goal, to rid the universe of any genetic material they considered defective.

“I’d say they’re looking for some specific geno-type, maybe to harvest it to add to their big super-human project.” Another hook of his thumb back toward the shelter. “Graybar removed the power packs, but the alloy the devices are made of could be something their sensors can pick up, even without a homing signal. Can you fly it away, send them on a tangle hunt?”

“I’ll do better than that.” Edrian chuckled at the image of the Nightskimmers playing their tossing game, going higher and higher, until the devices disintegrated with the force of impact when they hit the ground.

He passed on Aeza’s warning about the incoming storm. Dawn approached, and he had to get back to the Nightskimmer caverns under Government House before the light, however dimmed by rain and clouds, harmed her photosensitive skin. He needed a few hours of sleep before he put on his day uniform, and coughed and slouched down the halls. Sickly, bookish Edrian Rensler would play his part, spying on and distracting the invaders and most of his own peers.

At least Aura knew the truth, and she admired him. If he didn’t have her smiling at him, believing in him, how could he endure the masquerade of the daylight hours?

 

***

 

“We have a problem, Mother,” Edrian said that evening.

He took one last verifying glance at the small blue-white flashing white noise stick that ensured private conversations in his family’s quarters, then closed his eyes. With a sigh, he scooted down a little more on the long couch in the family’s common room, and put his bare feet up on the arm. These hours of privacy, when he could be himself, neither the Talon nor the book-head with the persistent cough, were rare. Only with his mother and Dr. Parys. He didn’t want to ruin the relaxing time after dinner and the brief illusion that all was right with the world. Still, who else could he bring the problem to? If anyone could convince him his worries were exaggerated, Gaelen Rensler could. She was to all appearances the head of the colony while her husband and father-by-law were “guests” of the invaders, wherever they had gone. Thanks to Dr. Parys’ gift of persuasion, she was treated with respect because the Set’ri believed she kept the common people calm.

“Your wardrobe?” Gaelen barely glanced up from her knotwork.

Edrian snorted and opened his eyes to grin at her. They were two of a kind, both with long, olive-toned faces and dark eyes and midnight hair. She looked up long enough to match his grin, and returned to her work. He had taken to wearing loose clothes, whenever he wasn’t in his house uniform or dressed in the semi-body armor of the Talon. Just for some relief from the two extremes of his life. Tonight his clothes were two sizes too big, loose trousers held up to his narrow hips with a drawstring closure, and a long tunic that hung nearly to his knees, with sleeves he had to roll up so he could use his hands.

Gaelen’s knotwork, while it appeared to be some fussy, fancy, useless bit of threads to adorn a fashionable outfit, was anything but. She had a talent for designing clothes that were functional, sensible, and could double as armor. She had designed Edrian’s flying clothes, using native materials that muffled his heat signature and bio-signs, to make him close to invisible to sensors. Tonight, she fashioned threads of a new flexible, impervious material into a lightweight shirt and hood that Edrian could wear under his flying gear. It would breathe so he wouldn’t sweat, while protecting him from projectiles, such as pellets or scatter-rifles or shrapnel from explosives going off nearby. While rescuing resistance fighters under attack, he might be hit by friendly fire, such as poison-tipped spears and arrows. Nightskimmers had tough hides and were impervious to most native elements that were toxic to humans. However, Edrian was not, and there was no guarantee if he were injured and poisoned that Aeza could get him to assistance quickly enough to save his life. His serious injuries, shot while helping the prisoners escape, had proven that being paired with a Nightskimmer wasn’t quite adequate protection.

“The weather,” he said, after stretching until he found that particular spot in the cushions that cradled his body just right. He had taken that specific position often enough, he was making the couch conform to him.

“And how is that not a wardrobe concern?”

“What if the fifteen-sol blight is coming earlier than expected?”

“Hmm, yes, that is a concern. But we have more than enough stored up against any shortage, either in food or in materials to ship offplanet.” Her mouth flattened for a moment and her deft fingers slowed in the knotwork. “Not that I wouldn’t gladly pretend we have nothing to export, and we have to do without imports for a few sols. Just to make sure those vermin can’t get their hands on the fruit of our labors, or find something to turn to serve them. We are more than self-sufficient on Rensler.”

“Father and Grandfather made sure of that,” he offered, voice soft. Again, she looked up from her task and they shared another smile, this one touched with sadness. “I’m not worried about having enough food or exports or covering expenses. Because do you really think Panterra will allow another ship to dock that isn’t under his control? We should be getting communications from all the brokers and government purchasing authorities to prepare for harvest in another two lunars. There’s always a handful who try to get a jump on the others, competing to examine our newest creations first. Once they can’t get through, or we don’t respond, the CAW will at least suspect something is wrong, and start doing something.”

“They should have started doing something by now,” she said, voice pitched low.

Edrian nodded. That was all the reference they could afford to make regarding the officials he had helped flee in a stolen scout craft, to try to make contact with the CAW and get help. Three lunars of waiting meant either they hadn’t escaped, they had been delayed in reaching the proper authorities, or insurrection was taking place all over the Central Allied Worlds. Cut off as they were from the rest of the universe, there was no way for Rensler to know.

“The rivers seem to have stopped rising, but what if the fall rains are even worse because the dry season never came?” Edrian sat up and swung his legs off the couch. He was only sixteen, but the weight of responsibility, to ask the right questions and find the answers, made his entire body ache just as much as his mind.

“What if people are flooded out of their homes, you mean?” Gaelen pursed her lips and slowly put down her knotwork on her lap. A few tiny lines appeared between her brows, the only marring of her customary serene expression. “More flooding than anyone is used to or prepared for. Not just the temporary and seasonal settlements, but deeper inland, into the jungles…why, we shall do as we have…ah, yes, of course. With all the members of the occupation force taking up quarters that are usually empty, where shall we put our own refugees? There was one bad sol where we put them in the caverns.” A weary shudder washed through her. “Where the Nightskimmers are now thriving. Oh, dear. I’m sorry, Edrian.”

“Why are you apologizing to me?” He could almost have laughed. He hurried to cross the floor and went to his knees in front of her chair, to wrap his arms around her.

“So many burdens placed on your shoulders. First we take your childhood away from you and make you live a lie, live behind multiple masks. Now you must look lunars ahead to possible disasters, and risk exposing the one secret that gives you some joy in all this. You make me so proud.” She knuckled a hint of wet from her eyes and leaned down to enfold him in her arms.

Edrian breathed in the soft, citrusy perfume of the herbs she used in her clothes chest and soaked in the warmth of her arms around him. “I’m being selfish, and panicking a little, I guess. If we need to shelter people in the caverns, then my secret will be revealed. So be it. It’s useless worrying. If the floods hit, there won’t be time to empty my lair, or hide the nesting scaffolding.”

She snorted and released him. “There are several fine ladies whose reactions I would dearly love to see, the moment they realize they’re in a cave inhabited by Nightskimmers. I’m sure their shrieks will be even more ear-piercing than anything our friends produce.” She chuckled. “Oh, my dearest, all we can do is make the best preparations we can, and double our prayers. Tying our insides into knots won’t do us any good, won’t change the future the slightest bit.”