Ashes: Infinite Redress

By Lee Edward McIlmoyle

To the Quotidien, the interplanetary police arm of the Pancivilion Transunion, Chief Bioengineer Djoran Sendal Lav is more trouble than her groundbreaking research into Foldspace travel is worth. When one of Djoran’s bioprobes infects her with the spore-borne spirit of an alien prophetess, it becomes the perfect opportunity for her superior officer, Shipmaster Salus Pree, to have her declared irreparably contaminated. Then he has her removed to a far-flung prison hospital for dangerous political prisoners, while having her research project dismantled and removed from his ship.

What Pree doesn’t count on is the determination of Djoran’s senior assistant, Dolen Zhessoff, who tracks her down and arranges for a spectacular prison break. What Zhessoff doesn’t count on is her escape route being hijacked by political terrorists trying to liberate their imprisoned ruler. What Regent Lukas doesn’t count on is falling in love with Djoran and risking his entire revolution to help her. What no one counts on is Djoran actually being dangerously unstable.

When she recovers from near-fatal illness, Djoran develops abilities that enable her to take over an entire crew of armoured mercenaries, compelling them to take her to Paenilene, the planet where the prophetess inside Djoran’s mind lost her life. Djoran fights to regain control herself while leading her companions to solve the mystery of what killed B’tel Azur Zheyen and her colleagues, along with the entire civilization they were initiating into the Transunion. Djoran’s discoveries lead her deeper into the planet, exploring ancient cities and uncovering a sinister connection between the ashen remains of the deceased citizenry and the Fell, the savage tribes that rule the jungle surface world. But her greatest discovery could prove to be the undoing of the Quotidien, if not the Transunion as a whole.

Djoran will have to save her companions, unravel the threads of the conspiracy that destroyed a burgeoning galactic civilization, and prevent the spread of a dangerous contagion that even now threatens to consume her and everyone she holds dear. The Quotidien are on her trail, the predatory natives are growing smarter, and her crew is dwindling by the day. Time is running out, but Djoran must persevere and triumph, or risk everything she knows turning to ash.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lee Edward McIlmoyle
• Release date: Dec 17, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465769220

Lee Edward McIlmoyle

Writer/Artist/Musician/Cartoonist/activist.Canadian.Married to NYC book reviewer who won't review my books.Two cats, both insane.Help.

Book preview

ASHES

Act One: Infinite Redress

a novella by Lee Edward McIlmoyle

© 2011 Lee Edward McIlmoyle

Published by Lee Edward McIlmoyle at Smashwords

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TABLE of CONTENTS

Title Page

Dedications

Overture:

Coda

Seconds Out:

The Prisoner

Foldspace Theory

Dream Diary

Salus Pree

Dolen Zhessoff

The Last Probe

A Dream of Pirates

Contamination

Perpetual Change:

A New Ally

Regrets

A Dark Dream

An Encounter

Project Phenris Aborted

A Window Opens

Fracture:

Aftermath

The Argument

Djoran?

Taking The Open Door

An Interview

The Escape

A Change of Clothing

All Aboard

The Home Stretch

Exiles:

The Getaway

Afterword

Glossary of Alien Terminology

Measurements

Races

Planets

Major Concepts

Slang

Tech

Creatures

Cast of Characters

DEDICATIONS:

To Dawn Marie Iwanowski (McIlmoyle),

who shared with me one of the best gifts anyone ever gave me,

even before she agreed to marry me.

To Karen Burkey,

my colleague and friend,

for pushing me, without knowing it, to reach for the stars again.

To the Scapers,

I’m sorry I didn’t finish it the way I promised,

but really, it’s better this way.

To Virginia Hey,

I gave it a pretty good whack, wouldn’t you say?

Hope you like it.

To Brian, Rockne and David,

So long and thanks for all the fish.

And to my Mom,

because really, can you ever thank your parents enough?

Overture

Coda

She watches in horror as B'tel Qox Mowreen crumbles to ashes in the clearing before her.

A burst of light evanesces and fades to nothing, save for the queasy phantom glow trapped in her retinas. She feels more than sees the infection heaving softly all around her. It has already been inside of her for several dyurns. Somehow, she had hoped beyond sense that the B'tele would survive what had ravaged the vast cavern nation state of Ahl'Byan, decimating its population. Hearing the howls and grunts of the savages from the foliage around her, she is forced to run back up the path she had come from. She finally takes refuge inside the mouth of the cave entrance to the dead city of Y’lunden. Panic fills her eyes and ears, but she presses herself against the rips of the cave wall. She prays silently that the Professor shall deliver her from harm.

It seemed so futile. By the time the B’tele had finally realised the truth about the source of the troubles, the city’s populace had either migrated en masse or had already vanished from the caverns. A great civilisation, well on its way to Transunion, decimated in a matter of a few short merids. No one could recall who had been the first victim, but by the time they had realised there was an epidemic, families were already shutting themselves inside, refusing to hear the B’tele as they taught for tranquility and clarity of thought.

And then the first of her band, B’tel Æstmun L’ndah, had begun to experience the Fever. She was soon followed by B’tel Bowid Patai, who not only succumbed to the Fever but attacked both Qox and herself, infecting them both with her tainted lifesap before she too erupted and burned to ash before them. It was then that true horror crept into her heartwood, even as the infection took root in her trunk.

For though the B’tele had travelled to all of the stars of the known galaxy, and stood witness to many a great and wondrous Transunion, as well as far too many a tragic Dissolution, such was their unique physiognomy that they had never before in the annals of B’tele history been subject to the poisons, illnesses and impurities of their pupae. She had lived through a mere three hundred thirty-six S’iljari, by the telling of her seedworld’s calendar, and yet she had been the senior B’tel of her band. Once she had been the youngest B’tel in recorded history. Perhaps it was her innate connection to the Flow of the Matter that had saved her this long. She sent up a heartwood wish that it would be enough to see her through this trial.

The sounds and voices drawing nearer to the entrance break her hymn of remembrance, and as fear enters her anew, she retreats ever further within the cavern, deeper into that desolate crypt. She slips back into the passage leading to the winding steps, and presses a jutting stone carving that activates the perfectly cantilevered stone door, which swings aside as if on the breath of the Mother Tree.

She enters and walks quietly toward the steps, listening for the doors to swing shut once more, and then descends carefully in the darkness, hoping not to call attention to her whereabouts.

Alas, her heartwood begins to ache as she hears the loud scraping sound of the doors being forced open behind her. The savages have figured out how to defeat the intelligent locks that recognise and deny their twisted natures. She scurries down the steps in a fevered panic. Feverish indeed. She feels the residue of her overheated lifesap oozing up through the pores of her fine, supple bark.

She can feel the contagion coursing through her, pulsing to the rhythmic flowing of lifesap through her heartwood. The guttural voices of the savages, growing ever nearer, begin to echo amidst the canopy of her mind. Vivid images of the cavern city below shift and shimmer just on the edge of her clarity, but with a faint odours of dried blood and decayed flesh lingering on the acrid breeze. She delves deep within herself for tranquility, but can only feel the frantic rhythm of her pounding feet running to stay ahead of the pack.

Hearing a scream behind her, she twists awkwardly and spies a lone creature lurching toward her, mere spans away. She steps back in fear, only to trip backwards over the precipice of the perilously open stairway, and falling several spans to hard stone. Her body threatens not to move; she can feel something broken deep inside of her.

Reaching out for something to pull herself up with, her hand presses against cold, gritty stone. Turning her head up slowly to see better, she notices that she is leaking dark blood into the grooves of a slightly weathered and worn pattern carved onto the staircase wall. Looking closely, she can make out the shape of a stellar body with the arms and legs of a quadruped.

She presses hard against the wall, using the peculiar carving for purchase, and begins to push herself to her feet. The stone under her bleeding hand starts to give way, however, and a tremour erupts beneath her feet. The very ground beneath her shifts and shuffles violently, flinging her off balance until she loses her footing and falls hard to the shaking ground. When the tremours subside, she finds herself laying painfully in a heap at the top of a short set of stairs leading down beneath the wall into a dark space.

Hearing gibbering and howling echoing above her in all directions, she grips desperately at the edges of the stone steps and drags her damaged body down into the darkness. Crawling ever downward, she fears she will not live to reach the bottom before the creatures find her and ravage her dying body for whatever sustenance she has left. Her fears are replaced by a more immediate terror however, when she drags herself down yet another step, only to be met by another tremour. The steps behind her suddenly rise back up into the ceiling, the steps before her drop away, and she plummets once more to hard packed earth.

After a time of blackness and pain, she hears a wafting, chiming sound, and feels warmth bathing her battered face and form. She opens her eyes and takes in the sight of a brilliant floating sphere in the center of the dark room. It is made of concentric glowing wheels, spinning and rotating on shifting axes within one another, all white with purple and blue divisions in the spinning arcs. She thinks she can almost make out symbols etched in indigo into the flat faces of the arcs, like arcane writing. The sphere starts to drift toward her, but she can't find the strength to even recoil as it floats directly above her. She barely manages to roll onto her back in time to see the arcs inside the sphere align and open a space, effectively bisecting itself, before lowering to the ground. The circles begin spinning wildly once more, with the arcs passing harmlessly around her and straight through the earth beneath her like it wasn't there.

She slowly rolls over, forcing herself to kneel beneath the canopy of swirling light. Patterns and symbols begin shaping themselves on the ground around her within the sphere. Her hands rest on the ground before her, fingers slowly tracing the symbols nearest her. The pain and sickness she feels throughout her ravaged body almost overwhelm the fear she is fighting down. She centers her mind once more, and reaches out for a familiar, comforting presence, but finds herself completely alone. Even the voices of the savages have receded to a dull buzzing. Tears stream down her face as she comes to the realization that all they had built, all they had sacrificed for, had been swept away. Destroyed by a foe they'd failed to deal with or even recognize before it was too late. Her friends. Her loves. Her people. These alien builders as well. All gone.

The ambient light grows to blinding. In another instant, the room vanishes, to be replaced with open vacuum in the glittering, weightless void she knows as Foldspace. The open vacuum of lifeless space has already begun to tear at every fibre of her being. Even that will not be fast enough, as she feels herself begin to discorporate, her essence erupting in a burst of pure inner radiance. A familiar word comes to her at that moment: dispersal. Indescribable. And then... just... gone.

1) Seconds Out

The Prisoner

Soft moans are abruptly cut off by a brief yelp of anguish, and the fabric of the bed sheet slides away to reveal a woman curled up on an institutional cot against the wall of a cold, sterile room. Her knees are tucked up to her chin, head turned down, hands covering her face. Her dark golden hair is cropped short, flattened with perspiration, skin still showing through at the sides and back.

The woman slowly uncoils her long frame, her rumpled institutional clothing twisting against her skin. She turns her face to the thin mattress before pushing herself to her feet. She struggles to straighten her clothes, a simple open collar tunic and trousers, before slumping in slippered feet towards a small basin against the back wall. Passing her hands through the pooled liquid within, she cups and pours some over her head, running her fingers through her soaked hair and down her face.

The woman leans forward to observe her handiwork in a mirror hanging over the back of the basin. She peers into deep blue eyes, haunted but beautiful, under high arched brows. The skin below her eyes is red and swollen. She's been crying in her sleep again. She wipes the last of the tears from her face, her hands slowly descending over high cheekbones and a solid, gracefully cut jaw line and along a soft though slightly aging neck to rest at her bare shoulders.

Stepping back, she notes that a crack in the mirrored surface runs straight through the image of her face, slightly refracting the two halves at odd angles, the edges barely meeting correctly. She tries to smile, but it looks forced, and soon grows to a rictus of grief.

She turns away abruptly and bolts for the far wall, a clear blast shield pocked with screened apertures filtering air in from the hallway beyond. She looks furtively up and down the hall for some sign of salvation, a glimpse of a faded image in the back of her mind. Her band. Surely they would know she was here. She knew it would only be a matter of time before... no. That wasn't her memory; It was something else; someone else. It was getting harder to keep things straight in her head.

Stifling an urge to weep, she presses her body and face against the cool blast shield and slowly breathes in the fresh air jetting through one of the round air filters nearby. Listening carefully, she can hear distant echoes of footsteps in corridors, voices in stairwells, and the low mumbling of other prisoners being held in cells out of her line of sight along the hallway. She begins slowly talking to herself, chanting off verbatim those facts she had clung to ever so tenuously since coming to this place.

"I am... Djoran Sendal Lav. I am Manusan. I am