Taj's Early Years

By Lotta Bangs

Biogengineered 8-y-o assassin Taj escapes from her secret base & loses the companions she taught to love. She is in a world of strangers, hunted by her former masters. Enveloped in love from birth, Taj is lonely, reaching out and searching for her lost mates. Only the unknown love fountain responds. She builds a martial arts empire, using instead the love of her students. Taj makes new friends, finds contentment & love, immersing herself in work, further education & new discoveries. Then only a year later, her life is shattered and again she loses what is most important to her.

Taj’s Early Years is the first part of a trilogy replacing the rewritten and greatly expanded Getting to Galen. The rest will be published when my busy cover artist finishes his work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lotta Bangs
• Release date: Jun 29, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311360823

Lotta Bangs

I’m Aussie, way over 35, thankfully and very happily divorced, and have a wonderful daughter who very occasionally beta-reads for me. A few years ago we had 13 cats; we just lost another, so now only one of those remains. We have added 6 more over the years, including the sweet feral ragdoll which is my Facebook avatar. I generally prefer female cats, but have also had some magnificent males. I couldn’t live without cats, just wish their lives were longer. I’m having a lot of problems adjusting to social media which doesn’t leave me enough time for writing and editing, so I won’t be expanding my web presence any time soon. If you want to know about NEW RELEASES and SPECIALS you will need to FRIEND ME ON FACEBOOK. I have announced coupons to get a new release free here, but apparently nobody reads author biographies. Of course my books are what you are really interested in. Originally, I wrote a long continuous story, starting at Reacquaintance, told from Ro’s POV. Then when Ro disappeared for a year or so, I had to use Taj to fill in the gaps, and she proved so feisty and interesting, that I added in her back story, starting with Getting to Galen and continuing in The Deep End. After Thxx’s Story, the various POVs continue in the same stream. I had to break up my huge tomes into installments that could be published separately as I finished editing them. I’m afraid my writing was quite stuffy at first, with convoluted 12- to 15-line sentences, turgid half-page paragraphs, and a lot of pompous pontification and personal political opinion which the story didn’t need. I had to rip out a lot before I could publish. I think the books are greatly improved now. I was giving away my books for free for most of a year, hoping to develop a fan base quickly, but learned that people don’t value what is free. Though over 20K copies have been downloaded, very few seem to have been read, and even fewer have been reviewed. I was unlucky to attract an ill-wisher who thought it amusing to devalue every one of my few 5-star reviews. Perhaps that put off others from reviewing. Certainly, without good reviews, few readers cared to buy my books, so if you have enjoyed them, I really would appreciate a short review. With the next book, The Power of Art, I will be doubling all my prices, so they’ll never be cheaper than they are now. I believe that I am the only person writing Utopian books today, though mine are nothing like the political satires of yesteryear. My books are based on the power of love to bring out the best in everybody, to develop their souls and help them to evolve into higher beings. Ro started Galen, and she, Taj and their men lead their people to make Galen a true Utopia which reaches out to the stars. Cat lovers will adore Brinna, my sentient sabretooth, though we have intelligent dogs and dinosaurs too. Though you couldn’t call my series a space opera, I do have a space battle planned, probably the cutest ever written, but that is still a way off. I really will have to buckle down and get more books edited and published so I can write some more.

Book preview

It was our grins that made Ryger suspicious. Ava caught that too, smiled even more widely, her teeth flashing brilliantly in her sooty face as she stepped forward, saluted smartly and said: Platoons A, B and C all present and almost correct sir! As if we had been amused by our lack of uniform.

We were all dressed in motley. Some wore boots, others sports shoes. Jeans or track pants and sweaters had been hastily pulled on over pajamas, all topped with unzipped regulation, puffy down coats.

The younger children with less control, their eyes watering tracks down their smoke-blackened faces, held the coat flaps over their noses to breathe through.

Ryger wasn’t fooled and aimed his fancy, non-regulation, pearl-handled Colt .45 directly at her. Commander, take the company back to the dormitory.

We had come so close—along the endless wide institutional corridor of our wing, past the smoke-obscured wired glass windows set high in the outer wall. Cameras couldn’t see through thick smoke any better than ordinary humans and we had ensured the few gas masks were misplaced.

Holding onto each other, we had pressed blindly through the roiling smoke, glad of its density, relying on it to keep the unaugmented officers at bay. Now, having turned the last corner before the exit we could smell freedom and the blessed outdoor freshness.

The acrid smoke swirled out through the open doors behind Colonel Ryger—open only so he could breathe and see us with the electricity off—and Ryger had only one officer with him, Eddie Richards, holding a powerful torch on us.

We had worried the doors might be locked, hence my fire ax.

But sir, the quarters are full of smoke. Everything’s wet. We put out a small fire, but there’s still smoke coming in from somewhere. We’ll be damaged. The whole building could go up in flames at any moment.

You’ll recover. Take them back. That’s an order, Commander.

Before he finished speaking, Ava reached out her arms and gave Evan and me a little push away from her.

Ryger shot her as Evan heaved the extinguisher he carried at Eddie’s head and I flung my fire ax at Ryger, aiming low, as even in my rage I couldn’t bear to destroy this man who had tried to make me into a killer.

Though I had never thrown an ax before, I am naturally left handed, and the blade bit satisfactorily deep into the side of Ryger’s right knee.

He crumpled almost as fast as Ava had.

The company poured after Evan and out the door.

Lim collected Richards’ torch on his way.

To ease her passing, I sent a great gush of love to Ava, pushed up my sleeves and quickly emptied her coat of items that might give away our plans.

Her weak return love flare, using her little remaining strength, broke me up.

I immediately took a grip on my feelings and buried them deep. This was not the time for weakness.

She’d been hit high in the heart area, possibly in the aorta, as the blood spurted extravagantly.

I grabbed the metal hip flask she’d dropped, booted Ryger’s jaw hard as I went past, feeling the bones shatter, and fled after the last stragglers.

I wiped Ava’s blood off my hands, the flask and the plastic-wrapped packages in a slushy pile of dirty snow before transferring them to my own capacious inner pockets.

Still sending Ava love, I raced to the nearest of our two predetermined crossing areas, almost midway between the two outer gates. That one was the least accessible to vehicles.

* * *

I saw little 6-year-old Cass, easily recognizable by her bright blonde curls. She was being dragged along by a guard, so quickly that she could not keep on her feet.

It was an obvious trap.

Vene was approaching carefully, using all available cover.

She knew I would help, broke into the open, and feinted with a kick to the captor’s knee, before springing up and slicing the side of her hand across his nose, shattering it.

When his companion leapt out, gun drawn, I had my sling ready, shot first at his gun hand and then his temple, knocking him unconscious.

As Vene freed Cass I retreated.

Neither of us was prepared for the third guard who grabbed Vene.

Cass skedaddled.

Evan approached from behind the guard and jumped onto him so he lost his grip on Vene as he fell, but managed to grab and cuff Evan.

Vene raced after Cass.

I slung two stones at the guard and knocked him out.

I collected all my thrown stones and found the guard’s key-ring, but somehow Evan had already broken the cuffs.

We fled together, finding Lim and Vene again, waiting outside the wire. Our group ran together for a while.

We stopped to don our primitive overshoes—three simple large ovals of rabbit or other furs, worn fur-side-out and laced tightly though holes cut in the edges. These spread our weight over a wider area, disguising and softening our footprints as moccasins do, but more so.

I shared out Ava’s water, stones and furs, keeping the smallest, giving Lim the middle-sized pair and Evan the largest. I kept Ava’s sling too. Then we separated and ran alone.

* * *

It was at the end of winter and cold, with mushy snow on the ground. The thaw had already started and streams were moving again.

Our hair was near its maximum permitted length and we had prepared well.

I wore boots, jeans and a fleecy cotton top, with a cotton blanket wrapped and belted around my body under my knee-length nightdress. The unzipped, puffy jacket camouflaged my extra bulk while appearing to have been grabbed in a hurry.

I also had 3 very large, heavy-duty, black plastic, garden waste bags, 2 coils of nylon rope, 2 flat metal water canteens, 5 small bottles of water and some packaged food in the many inside pockets. There were also dark-colored spare clothes and eight rounded stones for my sling.

The Clan of the Cave Bear had been my favorite book. Circulated by one of the medics, the author described how to scrape and cure animal skins and then make slings.

On the internet you can clearly see the shape of a sling, much longer than you’d expect, in pictures of the statue of David.

We’d all secretly made our own and practiced every chance we had.

Each of us had learned Ayla’s trick of throwing two stones in rapid succession. I and three of the others could now throw four stones fairly quickly, with great force and accuracy.

* * *

I had slept well the previous night, so could run for two days or more before tiring.

We all knew to avoid the main roads, to orient by the stars. Mostly, I followed deer trails where possible—a trick we had learnt from the TY6s, which the officials hopefully knew nothing about.

I ran through the forest, staying in the mountains inside the trees. I avoided snow fields where I would have left tracks visible from the air.

Each time I stopped to reconnoiter, I sent out more love to everybody to encourage them to keep going.

Nobody answered, but they may just have been too busy or out of breath.

Finding a fast narrow waterway, I stripped off my upper garments.

I bunched stuff into the coat pockets, wrapped that around me over the blanket, with the tripled plastic bags over the lot. I tied these tightly under my armpits, wrapping the ends of the plastic several times around the pre-stretched nylon ropes.

I used yoga techniques to lengthen and narrow my chest, emptying my lungs as hard as possible to get the ropes tight enough to keep everything inside dry.

Only my naked arms, shoulders and head were free.

The bank was rocky. I didn’t need to worry about slide marks, so sat down and eased myself carefully into the gelid water. It was less of a shock than expected, now I had cooled in the freezing wind.

I swam downstream, drinking delicious mouthfuls freely until I found I needed frequent bladder breaks. These necessitated getting out of the water and the bags, not fun in the arctic gusts.

I collected several dozen pretty rounded gemstones, mostly agates and chalcedony, in one sheltered bay.

The safest way to avoid leaving footprints was to grab hold of an overhanging branch or several, to pull myself up into a tree. I would urinate down the other side or from an adjacent tree before rewrapping and diving in again.

This wasted so much time I was more sparing with the drinks afterwards, though I collected three more lots of attractive stones. Gemstones are even harder than ordinary pebbles, but easier to explain away.

Occasionally I needed to descend to defecate. There is always a good space under the pine branches, where I used a stick to dig a small hole among the rotting old pine needles and covered it to keep away flies.

The air trapped inside the bags and jacket down aided my buoyancy and would reveal any leaks quickly, though I had no way to patch them. The blanket, clothes and hard exercise kept most of me warm enough for comfort, and the cotton blanket wicked away my sweat.

To avoid tearing the bags I had to swim like a fish, keeping both legs together and moving them up and down. This propelled me faster than my arms could manage alone, and became easier as I grew accustomed to the movement.

When I grew really tired I took a big drink of river water, again climbed up into a tree, stripped and urinated. Climbed down again for a good wash, wrapped up warmly, ate some food, and tied myself into a branch fork, sending love to my friends and my love fountain until I fell asleep. The love fountain was the only one who reciprocated.

My bladder usually woke me after three hours and I would set out again.

I noticed each time I climbed out that the climate had grown much warmer and the trees had changed. There were fewer evergreens and more bare deciduous trees which were easier to climb into.

Also the river water was now dirtier, so I had to use my bottled store.

I spent some time one afternoon making a small smokeless fire, boiling up water in my metal canteens and decanting it into plastic bottles swirled in the river water to prevent their warping. Iodine would have worked better, but we hadn’t scored any.

The river must have been flowing southwards sometimes, not just east as I had judged.

But it’s easy to get directions confused when riding a current. That’s one reason so many people drown in rip tides.

Chapter 2

What Mother Taught Me

Swimming becomes automatic after a while. I just plowed on through the water, arm over arm, legs kicking rhythmically, mind awhirl with memories and regrets.

I was distressed at losing Ava. She had been the best of us. It was so unfair that she had died before we escaped. No child should die at only eight years. Neither should any child have to live as we had.

At least, her last breaths were of clean air flowing through the open doors.

Ava would probably have still been alive if I hadn’t passed on what my mother had taught me, but her leadership and sacrifice gave the rest of us the chance to live free.

* * *

I am Taj. My mother named me. Taj means ‘the finest, the very best of the best’. I have tried to live up to her expectations, but it has not been easy.

She first spoke to me in utero, probably accentuating the spoken words with telepathy, so that I understood her clearly from the first.

Mother always passed on her love and hopes for me. She told me about the world outside the wire—how beautiful and free it was, though dangerous too. And she warned me always to be very careful, to hide my abilities as much as possible. Not to show off what I could do until the other children could do the same things.

But also not to be slower than the others, so I wouldn’t be left behind.

And always to think carefully before speaking to the adults. To reveal as little as possible about my friends or myself.

My mother gave me practical advice as well: always to be aware of my surroundings and to look out for spies and listening devices. She explained how to network with the other children, to choose a strong leader, to form cells with different tasks. To keep a lookout, to spy on the adults who would be around us, to learn their plans. To be prepared.

She said the grown-ups here weren’t loving people. We couldn’t expect anything but harshness from them. We should never trust any of them, because they didn’t care for me or the other children I would grow up with. But I did find one whom we could trust.

I have many memories of my mother’s speaking to me, filling me with her love as she fed me her milk. She apologized for birthing me in such a terrible place where she would soon have to leave me. She told me she loved me and would never stop trying to get me back.

And she said that someday we would be together again.

My mother said my life here would be harsh and difficult. When things became too unbearable, I should remember her loving me. And try hard to love all my friends who also would be suffering. To teach them to love and be kind and supportive to each other.

They too, had been taken from their mothers. So they also needed to be loved and comforted. She said that all children needed love to help them grow straight and true.

We ourselves had to provide the love we needed for each other.

She also said that I should remember that she would always love me. And that she would be outside in the world waiting for me.

And then she was gone.

Chapter 3

Taj’s Early Life

So I already understood language when I was born. But I didn’t speak until the other children in the nursery did. And I used only the sounds and words they spoke.

For years afterwards I woke in the night, feeling my mother’s presence envelop me in her love. I heard her voice inside my head telling me once more that she loved me and that we would find each other again.

I wanted to speak to her too, but I didn’t know how to reach her. There were so many questions I needed answers for, but I couldn’t ask them.

I often dreamed of her too. Her message was always the same: to remember that she loved me, to be wary of the adults, and to love and comfort all my friends.

So I did love the other children in the dormitory and tried to touch each of them at least once every day, and to comfort them whenever the adults hurt us.

* * *

There were originally over a hundred of us TY7s, some a little older, some younger, and our company was divided into platoons of 20 to 24 children.

Only I had been named, and I was one of the oldest. Eventually the others too all chose names which we used among ourselves. The adults called us by the numbers we had tattooed high on our right upper arms.

One girl was a natural leader. She was very intelligent, big and strong with a dominant personality and a certain way about her we all respected. The other kids in our platoon looked up to her. Ava became our platoon leader and eventually the Company Commander, and Evan was her second.

I managed to tell Ava most of what my mother had told me. She put the ideas into effect, organizing our company into five platoons and then into small squads of four to eight persons specializing in certain functions. The cell idea caught on and the older companies reorganized themselves on the same principle.

There were four boys and one other girl in my squadron. Our task was spying, mostly eavesdropping. There were also other squads of specialized spies with different tasks and talents in other platoons.

Evan, who was big and stocky, was our squad leader and platoon strategist. He reported back to Ava. The three other boys, Vene and I were small and skinny.

Lim excelled at being unobtrusive, somehow managing to disappear into any background. Even when I knew he was there I often forgot about him, so he was a natural for this work.

Zade had a talent for finding the listening devices and soon learned to temporarily disable them to give us privacy.

Cute looking Tam and Vene were our charmers. They both had big, liquid, long-lashed eyes and lovely dimpled smiles. And Tam had curls, even with a buzz cut.

They managed to get around a few of the more amenable adults and get special favors, such as comics, and books and videos that weren’t part of our curriculum.

Several mushy romance novels were a revelation for us.

Despite our days being crammed with planned activities, we managed to organize an extensive internal spy network, not just in our company, but including the older companies too.

We bugged some of the adults’ areas to discover what they might be planning for us, cobbling together the bugs from parts of their devices, which we sabotaged so they didn’t work properly, and by stealing others from stores.

We small ones who could easily wriggle into tiny spaces, took shifts just hiding in closets adjoining the adults’ dining and rec. rooms. We listened in with the aid of paper cup megaphones and our heightened hearing.

Vene and I did that a lot as we both had enhancements that let us function without much sleep. She and I were usually paired with one of the boys, all of whom were very light sleepers and could be awoken in an instant to listen in on anything either of us thought important.

Two sets of ears were always better than one.

Because we worked together and had to trust and depend on each other so much, I became great friends with each of the boys. Several times, they helped me evade discovery or provided me with an excuse to be caught out of bed.

And many times, Evan would appear and move us out of where we