Why the Weirwan? A Spiral Arm Story Featuring Orion the Hunter

By Clifford VanMeter

Federation Marshals Geos Ah’rion Rassas rel Pen’atha (known as Orion) and his partner Danni Jahleel have been diverted by an emergency hyperspace relay message from delivering a prisoner to the Federation Justice Center on Midway. While their prisoner is sent on ahead, Orion and Danni find themselves faced with investigating the murder of a weirwan scientist on a Federation science outpost. A murder almost certainly committed by a terrachian perpetrator.

The imagined future of this story takes place 280 years from our own. This puts it just a few years after the formation of a Federation largely run by humans (terrachians) and another spacefaring race called the tir’a. These two races formed the Orion Federation, named after the Orion Spiral Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy where both the terrachian and tir’a spheres of influence exist. After years of war, it was a way to peacefully link their cultures. Many atrocities were committed on both sides and many innocents were killed or captured and interned during that lost decade.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Clifford VanMeter
• Release date: Oct 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370495351

Clifford VanMeter

Clifford VanMeter began his career after college as an illustrator working primarily in the role-playing game field. Early work included the Star Trek and Dr. Who role playing games for FASA, leading to a long run on titles like Battle-Tech, the DC Universe Role Playing Game, Chill, Traveller and much more. Later he founded Starchilde Studios where he created, wrote and published the game Justifiers RPG. Moving to New York to pursue work in comics, Cliff wrote and drew for Valiant Comics at the height of their popularity. Additional work came from Marvel, Milestone/DC Comics, and Image. He also started Comicolor, one of the first digital coloring and lettering companies for comic books in North America. He currently lives and works in Kalamazoo, Michigan with his wife, and daughter.

Book preview

Why The Weirwan?

A Spiral Arm Story Featuring Orion the Hunter

By Clifford VanMeter

Published by Clifford VanMeter at Smashwords.

Visit my web site at http://cliffordvanmeter.com

Distributed by Smashwords.

Copyright 2016 Clifford VanMeter

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Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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From the prisms of The Darkness Of The Blue-Gold Sea, poet laureate of the weirwan of the Tidal Pools of Forge: The afflictions, passions, and evils of the intolerant and self-important are rooted in the three poisons; greed, anger, and delusion.

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Why us? he asked as he squirmed to fit his two-meter frame into the acceleration webbing of the jump seat.

We’re the closest, she replied. The report that came in claims an, ‘existential threat,’ to the Federation. I’m not any happier about putting our prisoner into the custody of the ship’s crew than you are, Orion, but we go where we’re told. When we’re told.

Hmmm… was his only reply.

Her much smaller frame allowed Federation Marshal Danni Jahleel to fold her legs beneath her even in the confines of the webbed seat. In all, she was a compact woman, but muscular and broad shouldered. Standing face-to-face with her partner, the top of her close-cropped black hair would have barely reached the chin of the big man.

Federation Marshal Geos Ah’rion Rassas rel Pen’atha, her partner on the Fugitive Task Force, was a massive individual and would likely have been uncomfortably constrained in almost any seat he filled. I don’t like it, his deep hoarse voice echoed in the tiny cabin of the massive FTL ship.

Orion… look, she said modifying the alienness of his name with the nickname she’d first given him at the academy. I know this one mattered more than most to you, she continued, her striking green eyes softening.

A decade growing up in the camps, Orion replied. Camps like his.

And you were in one of the better ones, she said. "Not one where the camp warden was selling off food and medical supplies