Before giving you a first look into my new novel, here’s the blurb:

Hidden away from near-Earth planets in remote spiral arms of the Galaxy are Human worlds that have lost contact with more progressive worlds and reverted to strange and primitive customs and traditions, their leaders using religion, superstition, and imported technologies to rule in tyranny.  Survey ships explored and catalogued these planets as suitable for future colonization centuries earlier, but groups with a special interest in ensuring a homogeneous and often despotic society didn’t bother applying for permission to colonize.

Following the ITUIP (Interstellar Trade Union of Independent Planets) Protocol, ships were restricted to observe and maintain a hands-off policy for these rogue planets, even when there was great temptation to intervene.  Eden, where a theocracy rules with an iron fist, is such a planet.  A group of rebels struggles to end the oppressive regime to forge a new future.

Set in the same universe as the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy” and the Dr. Carlos stories, this sci-fi saga once again explores the never-ending battle between good and evil so prominent in my other books.

I had fun writing this hard sci-fi tale with a fantasy flavor.  I hope you have as much fun reading it, soon to be available on Amazon and Smashwords and all the latter’s associated retailers for only $2.99 (much more filling than a McDonald’s order, better for you too, and less expensive).  I have yet to decide whether there will be a print version (Create Space).  And, as usual, you can read for free in exchange for an honest review (I’ll probably put it on Net Galley for a short time for those would-be reviewers who are too shy to query me directly).

Now, for the excerpt:

Chapter Four

The Entertainer

            Two weeks later, Kaushal wound through a maze of corridors and tunnels, many underground, and found a secluded and breezy courtyard he remembered from his childhood in the castle.  The walls were high enough to trap most sounds he made practicing the roki, and lush vegetation muted the echoes.  He knew several places like this, and rotated between them, randomizing his choices to avoid discovery.

He only stopped playing and singing when he saw the shadow cast on the stone floor.  When she peeked around the corner of the column, he smiled at Princess Anju.

“Will you report me?”

She stepped from behind the column.  “No, as long as you don’t report me.”

“Agreed.  Are you in trouble?”

“My uncle would go into a fit of rage if he knew I’m alone with a Second Tribe slave.  He might kill me even, like he did my father.  And he’d likely kill you too.  Or, at the very least, castrate you.”

“I suppose my voice would turn to soprano in that case,” he said with a smile.  He had no idea where he’d heard that.  Was it the practice in his father’s court?  Even the Second Tribe frowned on female singers, so boys and men singing countertenor took their place.  Maybe they weren’t countertenors to begin with?

            “That’s not funny,” she said.  She sat on the opposite end of the bench, folding her hands in her lap.  “Can I listen to more?”

“You make me nervous,” he said.

“A performer with no audience is a hibjab shrieking at the moon.”

“What’s a hibjab?”

“Some animal on Paradise, I suppose, before the Ice Age.  It’s just a saying.  It means—”

He held up a hand.  “I figured out what it means.  You’re saying I should practice with an audience, and you’ll be my first audience member.”

She nodded.  “Please, continue.”

She listened to him for a while and then stood.

“I have to go.  Do you often come here?  I only found this place today.”

“There are many secret spots like this in the castle.  I can show you if you like.”

She raised an eyebrow but followed with a smile.  “I’d like that.”

***

            “You didn’t!”

“People in the court will love your songs and playing,” said Princess Anju.

“I don’t want to entertain the court.  Why should I?  You people have taken over my world.”

She frowned.  “Not I.  And don’t be so stubborn.  Other Second Tribe slaves are courtiers. It’s a privilege and an escape from a hard life.”  She put her tiny hand on his arm.  “Do it for me.”

He looked at her long hair, longing to touch it.  Her cloak and dress hid her youthful figure, but not from his imagination.  This girl was an angel.  He smiled.  Maybe the capital city and huge inlet from the sea, Angels’ Bay, is named for her and her kindred souls?  But a sour taste filled his mouth.  Those would be the Founder’s angels!  He equated those with demons.

“Maybe.  Let me think about it.”

Kaushal was already wondering if being a court entertainer might allow him to be near enough to attack the king or First Pilgrim.  How to do that and survive afterwards were two problems he’d have to study in calmer circumstances.  It was hard to think straight with Anju nearby.  Her strong personality was as intoxicating as her beauty.

“OK.”  She took her hand away.  “You were going to show me more secret places.”

“Only if they stay secret.  Our secrets.  You can’t tell anyone, especially your uncle.”

She frowned.  “I’d never tell him anything.  Or the First Pilgrim.  Many days I want to run away from them.”

“Where would you go?”

“Maybe I can join the Wilders.”

“Risky.  Your people behead them.  They might do the same to you.  You’re safer here, at least for now.”  He stood and went to the opposite wall, reached up, and found the spot he was looking for.  A panel slid open, revealing a dark corridor.  He turned to her.  “Your people have stolen our technology but not all our secrets.  Are you coming?”  He touched the receptacle on the right side of his head.  Still there, he remembered its use more as magic than science.

“How does this work?” she said, touching the panel.

“The panel opens when an optical sensor tells it to.”  He noticed her raised eyebrow.  “Many emit a laser beam that triggers the mechanism opening the door when it’s interrupted.  This one just senses when the light from the skylight dims as I cover it with my hand.”  He reached up again and the panel slid shut.  Once more, and it slid open.  “Come on.”

“How do you know these things?” she said as he touched a panel on the inside wall, closing the panel again.

He put a finger to his lips.  “Whispers.  We will be going places where voices behind walls can be heard, and that can be dangerous.  Your people are believers in magic.  They will assume there are spirits in the walls.  But the First Pilgrim and others know differently.”  He took her hand and led her along the corridor.  Soft lights turned off behind them and came on in front.  “To answer your question, I can’t remember when I learned my way around the castle.  Someone showed me long ago.”

My mother?  Should I tell her I’m the son of the Second Tribe’s king?  It was his father, of course, who constructed the secret doors and passageways, for both security and a playground maze for his offspring.  He decided giving Anju more information wasn’t a good idea.  The less she knew, the less potential trouble for her.  He wondered if he should even be showing her the secret places.

They walked for a long way.  He saw her tense at every noise.  One time he put his hand over her mouth to stifle a scream—he’d seen the vermin before she did.  It was standing on its two hind feet, its red eyes gleaming at them.  The fur was blotchy and it stank.  He led her toward it, and it dashed off.

“What was that?”

“I don’t remember the name.  They can bite, but they’re cowardly unless they’re cornered.  Many animals are like that.”  He smiled at her.  “Even Humans.”

Soon he opened another panel and they stepped into a large room with high walls and a domed ceiling.  Frescoes were painted on the ceiling.  They contained all sorts of creatures, including Humans.

“This is beautiful.  Are all those creatures from the Second Tribe’s legends?”

“I don’t think so.  Once someone told me they represent the sentient peoples from the known galaxy.  This room is called the Creation Chapel.  It celebrates the diversity of the Almighty Ra’s Universe and Nut’s unselfish creation of the planets Paradise and Eden for the Tribes.  The frescoes were painted by one of our famous artists, a favorite of King Merson’s predecessor.  I heard he spent forty years doing it.”

“It’s beautiful,” she said, taking a seat in the front row of seats.  She pointed to the fresco behind the altar.  “Who’s the creature next to the Human?”

“He’s called a Ranger.  I have no idea why.  They are very intelligent, so the legends say.  Humans and Rangers made first contact long ago during dark times when both were fleeing their home planets.”

“What were they fleeing from?”

He shrugged.  “I have no idea.  I don’t know the whole story.  Or can’t remember.  I heard it when I was a child.  Maybe it’s all myth, but I believe the Rangers are real.  Some of their ships used to come here to Eden.  They never went to Paradise?”

It was her turn to shrug.  “I don’t remember much about Paradise.  I was a baby.  I only know it became an ice world, and we had to take refuge here.”

Kaushal looked away from her.  And we gave the First Tribe refuge, and yet they stole Eden from us.

***

“Well done, boy,” said King Breman.  “Don’t you agree, First Pilgrim?”     

Gol Kovlyn inclined his head.  His halo of hair framing his bald pate was white and unruly now.  His eyes were always squinting through folds of fat.  He sat back, hands folded over his paunch, and studied the boy, who sat politely and waited for the applause to end.  He felt some primal stirrings.  Too bad this one is an entertainer.

The First Pilgrim surveyed the banquet hall.  The king had become more corpulent than he was.  The buffoon sat at the head of the long table with Kovlyn to his immediate right.  Had they spiked the punch?  The First Pilgrim had prohibited public displays of drunkenness long ago, but the king was swaying a bit.  He had a long history of abusing liquor.  Or, had the royal chemists prepared a new designer drug for his highness to try?  That technology inherited from the Second Tribe helped to keep the masses under control, but the First Pilgrim didn’t think it was appropriate for the ruling elites who needed little excuse for escapism.

Everyone had enjoyed the performance, especially Princess Anju.  What’s going on there?  He wrote it off as simple infatuation for a good-looking fellow who was an entertaining musician.  How many women in the court have secret trysts with their slaves?  The aging king wasn’t the image of a romantic lover, although there were drugs for that too.

His eyes returned to the boy.  He reminds me of someone.  Govlyn thought it shrewd of the lad that he had chosen officially sanctioned music to play and sing.  He will go far and be a favorite.  He might suggest to King Breman that it would be prudent to make him into a eunuch, though, like some other slaves.  He smiled.  It wouldn’t please the king if he bedded Anju and discovered she was no longer a virgin.  You can’t trust women these days.

The musician played some more.  After-dinner entertainment only ended when the king’s chin fell to his chest, and he started to snore.  That is a common occurrence.  While courtiers helped the bloated sack to his quarters, the First Pilgrim approached the boy.

He held his instrument to his side so he could bow low.

“At ease, master musician.  As the king said, you have done well.  How did you come to the court?”

Kovlyn already knew.  It was a test.  People who lied to him often suffered for it.  A particularly egregious lie would send the oaf to a public beheading.  To lie to the First Pilgrim was to lie to the Almighty Ra or his daughter and son, Isis and Osiris.

The boy rattled off his history.  His words contained more information than Kovlyn knew beforehand, so he was satisfied.  A teetotaler, he was still lethargic from the meal.

“Your talent would be wasted as a common slave.  You’re now a master singer for King Breman’s court.  What say you to that, my lad?”

“If the king wishes,” said the boy.

“The king is in no shape to wish for anything right now.  I’ll simply tell him he made you a master singer.  He’ll remember nothing, so he’ll accept what I say.”  And he would, even if he did remember.  He knows he’s replaceable.

“I’m honored, First Pilgrim.  It will be a pleasure to serve the court.”

“Go grab your things and report to the head of security.  He will show you your new quarters.”

“Yes, sir.”

The First Pilgrim watched Kaushal go.  Good lad, for a Second Tribe member.  He considered them only a bit more evolved than pond scum.

 

Chapter Five

The Voices

            “We should learn more about this room,” said Princess Anju.

Kaushal knew she had no idea where she was.  He thought she might be dazzled by the scientific relics, but it was one place he had wanted to keep secret, so he was giving her a special treat.

“I have no idea what most of the things do,” he said.  “I was told commoners in the Second Tribe sometimes used these things, but they didn’t understand how they work.  All of this likely came in trade for our natural products and ores from our mines.  After your people took over, those who understood a little were executed, so these things fell into disuse.”

Again, he touched the side of his head in reflex.  What happened to all that information?  As a boy, people like old Benish weren’t required.  He would form the question in his head and the answer would be there.  He missed that.

“Does any of it still work?”

“Some of it seems to.  I play with things here, and sometimes they come to life.”

“How do you know all these places?”

He shrugged.  “Does it matter now?  These things are meaningless to the First Tribe, and the Second Tribe has forgotten what they’re here for.  They’re the decaying fossils of the civilization depicted in the frescoes.”  He grabbed a tablet and waved it at her.  “This one, for example, comes to life sometimes.  It looks a bit like the messenger tablets, but I suspect it was much more.”  Kaushal pressed buttons and icons and the screen lit up, but it only became a grayish white.

“Let me play with it.”  She pressed more buttons.  The tablet started to speak.  She dropped it.  “Is it some kind of message?”

“Maybe.  I don’t recognize the language.  It’s not yours or mine.”  He meant the dialects of the First and Second Tribe.  He listened.  “It sounds a bit like what the merchants spoke.  I didn’t hear it often because I was just a boy.”

“I recognize some words.”

“I suppose we have words in common.  Your and my languages are similar, for example.  The merchants’ language is probably older.  Maybe our languages came from theirs.”

There was a burst of static.  Kaushal glanced at the tall windows that showed a darkening sky.

“Outside there’s a storm,” he said.

Lightning flashed.  Another burst of static.

“It’s like the voices are in the clouds,” she said.  “Can they be angels of the Almighty Ra?”

“Don’t be naïve.  There are no angels of the Almighty Ra.  There isn’t an Almighty Ra, at least not the one your people champion.  Isis and Osiris are only drugged dreams of the Founder.”

“That’s blasphemy.”

“Truth is blasphemy then.  These are real Humans speaking, but they’re likely voices from the grave.  We called them recordings.”

“OK, old wise one, why did the static occur with the lightning?  Was that only coincidence?”

He laughed.  “Probably not.  The device is old.  It’s susceptible to static like our messenger tablets, only worse.  That doesn’t mean the voices come from live people.”

***

The junk room became Princess Anju’s favorite secret place.  She would sit for hours working with devices while Kaushal would play and sing and secretly admire her beauty.  One day he stopped playing and studied her.

“Don’t they ever wonder where you are?” he said.

She glanced up from yet another tablet.  “I can ask you the same question.”

“I work at nights, so they let me sleep during the day.  I’m technically sleeping.  Fortunately, I need little rest.  You don’t have that excuse.”

“Until I’m of age, I have the run of the castle.  I hope the old lecher dies before I’m of age.  I’d hate to have him put his hairy paws on me.  I’d vomit.”

He laughed.  “I wouldn’t blame you.  Besides, he doesn’t need another wife.”

She cursed.  “He’s beheaded some of them for being infertile.  Rumor has it he’s the one who’s infertile.”

“In earlier days, that could be tested.”

“Really?  I wish I could prove it now.  I wouldn’t have to marry him.”

Marrying him would be a tragedy, thought Kaushal.  Voices interrupted his daydream about marrying the beautiful Anju.

“Look, people!”

He went to look over her shoulder.

“Merchants,” he said.

On the screen, a Human male was talking.  He was a tall man dressed in a uniform.  A short beard and sunken cheeks gave him an ascetic appearance.  He looks more like royalty than either Breman or Kovlyn.

The room he was in was bathed in a soft blue light.  A row of people sat with their backs to him.  They were monitoring large tablet screens pinned to walls.  Some were adjusting controls.

“It’s a spaceship,” said Anju.  “I remember.  The First Pilgrim showed me something like this.  I saw Eden from space.”

“That’s how you came here, of course,” said Kaushal.  “But look!  Rangers!”

***

            They studied the creatures from the frescoes.  They were perched on special chairs and used some tentacles originating from around their mouths like hands.

“Is this a recording?” she said.

“I don’t think so,” he said.  He pointed to one of the wall tablets seen on the device’s screen.  “Do you know what a map is?”

“Of course.  I’ve seen maps of Paradise and Eden.”

“Do you recognize what’s on the screen?”

She looked closely.  The entire tablet wasn’t large, although it was mostly screen with a control bar on the bottom, so the screen in the background of the speaker in the strange uniform was even tinier.  But she could see blue-green ocean and various islands.

“I’ll bet that’s Eden.”  She watched clouds flitting over islands in an archipelago.  “There’s the Big Island.  See?”

“Yes.  I can see Big Island with Dragon’s Head in the north, Three Rivers Fjord in the south, Peace Bay to the west, and Hope Bay to the east.  You can see the start of Founder’s Channel by North Point too on that island that looks like a sheet flapping in the wind.”

“I can maybe see the old volcano named Devil’s Mountain too.  Is that a recording?”

“It could be.  I don’t know.”

“Are they watching us?”  Her eyes were big.

“I have no idea why they would.  What’s there to see?  Maybe forests being cleared in the Northlands to make land for crops and some storms and clouds?”

“It would be creepy, that’s all.  They could zoom in, couldn’t they?  It would be like King Breman watching female slaves bathe using the spyglass.”

“He does that?”

“I’ve heard he does.  Maybe he even watches me.”

Kaushal turned red with anger.  “I should kill him!”

She laughed.  “Would you like to watch me bathe?”

Fortunately his face was already red.

***

            Seeing the merchants on the tablet motivated them to try to learn the language.  Anju was good at it.  She was also good at taking notes.

“It’s clear our languages were derived from theirs,” said Kaushal, days later.

“I’m more interested in what they’re discussing.  They are watching us.  Not us personally, but Eden.  They’ve put us into something they call a quarantine.  I’m not sure what that means.  In both our languages, a quarantine means separating the sick suffering a disease from those who don’t suffer from it.  But I don’t think they’re saying we’re all sick.”

“They’re in orbit around our planet.  I want to go there.  I’d convince them to blow the First Pilgrim and King Breman into shredded pieces of bloody meat.”

Anju frowned.  “That’s a bit violent.  If they blow up Starlight Castle, they’d likely kill us both.”

“Starlight Castle?  You use our name?”  She nodded.  “I always wanted to go into space and visit the stars, but I often wondered why King Merson gave his castle that name.  Even on darkest nights, it’s hard to see stars from here.  In the mountains, we could see many stars.”

“You came from the mountains?”

“We were in hiding.  Your soldiers found us.  I prefer not to talk about it.  They killed my mother.”

“We have something in common.  King Breman killed my father, and he killed your mother.”

“Yet he’s not the most dangerous.”

“The First Pilgrim is.”  Kaushal nodded, making fists with his hands.  “We can dream about punishing both of them for their transgressions and avenging my father and your mother.”

She smiled.

***

In libris libertas…

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